Denial of evolution II

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

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  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    So are you are saying that "truth" for Peter can be falsehood for Paul, and conversely? If yes, then you have destroyed the basic concept of "truth" - made it relative and not an absolute. If that is not what you are saying, and truth is absolute (but often unknown) why can only some be convinced of it? (Part of your text I made bold). One answer might be Calvin's - I.e. that God has selected some as his chosen. (Only they can understand, see the truth.)

    Calvin's version of the truth grew rapidly among the well off* as their being well off was evidence of them being among God's selected chosen. Anyway can you try again to explain to me how one sect can know its teaching are true and those of others are false when conflicting.

    Perhaps to facilitate discussion, let's dicuss only one aspect where there is a conflict, instead of the whole broader problem. For example, Is reincarnation, which I think more believe in that the Christian alternative, true or false? How does one show the majority they are wrong if you think the truth is that souls only pass one lifetime on Earth? If there is no way to show they are wrong, how do you know they are (instead of them being right and you being wrong)?
    Inbreading would, according to the now understood mechanisms of genetic inheritance, accelerate change (including often the extreme change of extinction). I think you would agree inbreeding tends to spread a mutation, especially if it was recessive and thus not often expressed - did not give any advantage when latent. (I may not be stating correctly the idea - but hope and think you get my point.)

    Also a mutation can much more easily become the "new standard" in a population of 40 or less than in 40,000, I would think you will agree also. I will not go thru the other three factors that most think speeds evolution (isolation, stressed population & no predator eating before the advantage facilitates reproduction). In part because I think you would agree all do if one assumes evolution were true. Instead I will admit that evolution could be false, but if it is true, then these five are logical parts of the complete theory. (I read Darwin's Origins a long time ago, but am nearly sure he stressed the isolation bit.) So when a new species appears in 8000 years or less, one needs to have most of these five “accelerators” present or the theory of evolution is in deep trouble. As all five were, for the whole 8000 years, this tends to support the theory.

    It is sort of as if you had asked a Chemist, who believes as his "theory of reactions" that there is a potential barrier to some exothermic molecular reaction making the reactants stable when mixed at room temperature, why he thinks heating the chemicals up will speed the reaction. He thinks that, for the same reason I think the five factors speed evolution. - I.e. it is basic part of (or a very direct consequence of) the theory.

    Thanks, I look forward to seeing your table of God's days verse our years.
    -----------------
    *An interesting exception to the general case: Usually the rich are the last strata of society to accept the Christian POV. It has more appeal to the poor and down trodden with the promise that their suffering (often at the hands of the rich) will be compensated in the next life, while the rich will most likely burn in Hell. (The bibical "eye of the needle" problem of the rich man.)
     
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  3. Pteriax Registered Member

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    Yes I did. That was me disagreeing.
     
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  5. Pteriax Registered Member

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    That's my point. Part of a system, like echolocation, would be extraneous until the system was complete - and would therefore be 'selected' out - preventing the whole system from being formed. Also, the unique circumstances that people claim accelerates evolution simply haven't happened enough for each creature to form, particularly since we are starting with single cells. Even then, I can bet you will say that enough time has passed for it to happen gradually. I don't think so. Picture this: the life of the earth from the time it formed until now represented as 1 year. Using percentages, lets fill in the dates and see how much time evolution takes. The first 20% of the year, the earth is lifeless - so the first cell shows up in early March. From there to when Dinosaurs were most abundant will take us to December 18th. Still no mammals, and the year is almost up. In fact, no mammals until December 27th. Just 4 days to go from rodents to Humans. It took a lot longer for everything else to 'evolve'. In fact, mammals are dramatically different from big lizards to only show up in a week and a half - and only 4 more days to diversify and turn into humans. The first apes actually manage to appear December 30th at about 5 am. from there to Human civilizations by December 31st at 11:59 and 30 seconds... Why so fast all of the sudden? It doesn't really seem plausible when you look at it like this. At all.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    You are incorrect. Echolocation is possible even with crude parts. For instance, humans can do it, especially blind people, and we don't even have all that good hearing.

    Also, your year was in fact about 3.5 billion years. Plenty of time.
     
  8. Pteriax Registered Member

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    No. Only that some truths are absolute and others are relative.

    Well, the church says souls only come to earth once. The ONLY supporting verse in the Bible is in the NT, and says "It is given a man to live once, and be judged". Other verses seem to suggest that reincarnation is possible, and no one explicitly states that it is false. Now, amongst many groups of people, there will be a cry of what about x or what if y... The truth is that we can only know so much about something without experiencing it for ourselves. Or as Spock said, "To discuss that, we would need a common frame of reference." To which Bones replied "You mean I've got to die to discuss death with you?" Quite a conundrum indeed. The problem in proving or convincing people of a point that has serious implications on their own personal life is the habit we have of getting stuck in a mindset that warps what we hear to establish what we already believe as the one truth. We pick at data like vultures devouring a carcass, taking only the morsels that feed our own sense of rightness, and discarding the rest. People of all religions and non-religions do this, and it is so worked into daily life, that most are unaware, and even need to be taught how to be aware that it's happening.

    Sure, inbreeding does spread mutation. I would not argue that. Look at the medieval nobility. Of course those people were harmed genetically by inbreeding, and did not evolve. Maybe they didn't have enough time, right? Given enough time, the inbreeding would have rendered them extinct. But then, most animals are simpler genetically than humans, so inbreeding would not have as detrimental of an effect, right? Well, there is the Kodiak Bear... Could it survive another several thousand years of inbreeding, when it already has genetic problems? But the prea is even simpler, right? I don't know. But, I am sure that mutations are the result of missing information in the DNA - now, how do we go to more and more complex life-forms if we keep loosing information?
     
  9. Pteriax Registered Member

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    No. I'm not saying a critter couldn't do it. I'm saying that some depend on it to live, and have several body parts enhanced and diminished, that if a part was to evolve it would be detrimental without the whole system in place.

    No. It wasn't 'plenty of time'. Look how long it took Dinosaurs to evolve, compare that to how long it took all mammals and birds to evolve. The numbers do not add up in a way that looks good for evolution.

    This will most likely be my last post until Saturday or Sunday, as I will be out of town. I will make my replies at that time.
     
  10. Roman Banned Banned

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    You know, every time you creationists say that, a decade later scientists show you that it's wrong. Besides, even 1/100th of an echolocation system is better than no echolocation system.

    Check out Hox genes.
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    This is indeed true. But, being that it's subjective, it's hard to consider it even as a viable null hypothesis.

    I thank you, sir.

    Actually, it's a simple process: random chance, or drift. Any phenomenon or system - ALL of them, really, or essentially all - is controlled both by deterministic factors, and by chance, which is random error. You might be tall partially because your parents were, partially because you're male, and partially because you have a good diet. These are deterministic factors - independent variables. Yet there will always be, on average, some component of a person's height that is not explained by genetics, or environment. That element we term error. Even in a tightly controlled breeding system under artificial selection (which is by definition normally flawless), there is always error; there is always a distribution.

    The same process applies to genetic inheritance itself. Allele A may, by chance from generation to generation, be more or less predominant due to reasons we cannot separate from random error, or due to sheer error itself. But you notice that the trend of those millions of years is linear - fewer, stronger toes, more complex tooth surfaces, and modified teeth types.

    Such as an appendix? Tonsils? Dewclaws? Wattles? Fingernails? Hair? Gills and lungs both?

    How about blind cave animals? They're related to non-cave animals, but have got no eyes. There's a creature with a partial sensory system right there.

    Which there are.

    True; this assists in both environments. But should there be an unexploited, open aquatic environment that a lineage might invade - say the pelagic ocean - might not organisms that adapt to live only in the deep ocean have advantages that coastal organisms might not? No competition, fewer predators, and so forth. One is never "fully evolved"; it's a process, not a destination.

    If only a coincidence, it is quite a coincidence. But on the contrary, I think there is good reason for a large number of the major changes that we see in lineages.

    Simple - organisms that co-evolve may provide fitness advantages to each other. A flower that produces pollen that a bee can eat gains by having its pollen more efficiently distributed; the bee gains from consuming that pollen (or, for modern bees, its products). The evolutionary process has no "goal". It is merely - red in tooth and claw - an endless, worldwide series of evolutionary experiments, with the less advantageous features being disfavoured.

    If you don't want to live in the world, that's one thing. But you cannot deny our impact on it.
     
  12. Saquist Banned Banned

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    His point greater.
    In order for this system to develop as certain cove of isolation would be necessary. It's specialized. The enviroment might have to be free of predators in the case of dolphins predators have always existed. Bats' could have adapted to the dark in caves, losing sight and increasing hearing.

    Dolphins and other mammals that developed this trait would have..(I think) started off with vision, but wouldn't that transistion be lethal?
     
  13. Roman Banned Banned

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    What does that mean?

    That's probably why we see the greatest proliferations of new species after mass extinction events- more niche space opens up.

    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

    Light detection developed very early on, as it's a relatively simply organ system to develop, and extremely beneficial to the organism. There are photoreceptors in varying stages of development, all the way up from worms to birds. The lens has also independently evolved in octopus. After you creationists started making noise about eyes, scientists looked into it, and now the evidence for eye development happens to be one of the strongest pieces of support for evolution!

    In fact, the hypotheses for how eye development worked- photoreceptive cells, then photoreceptors in small cups to better figure out direction, followed by crystallin, etc., have all been born out in phylogenetic observations of still living species.
     
  14. tuberculatious Banned Banned

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    Evolution is Lethal

    Yes, any evolutionary transition is lethal. That is because the smallest unit of evolution is a single generation. Hence something always has to die for the next step to occur in the process of evolution. Lethal indeed.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That's retarded.

    Any place there can be a gradient of improvement, that is how evolution can proceed. A small ability to echolocate would increase the places where you could hunt for food. Dolphins still have good eyesight, so they could hunt in clear water, but with some echolocation ability, they could swim to murkier waters and hunt there, where fish thought they were safe. This would be such an advantage, that echolocation would evolve easily. No other part of their body would need to be reduced, thanks to the increase in nutrient availability.
     
  16. tuberculatious Banned Banned

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    Are you allowed to call things retarded on this forum? If this is the case I have some similar words that express negative emotions which would describe my opinion on that 'thought' you just let some monkeys randomly type up.
     
  17. Roman Banned Banned

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    No, it's pretty retarded. You have a poor understanding of evolution, tuberculatious. Changes don't always come about through deaths. Sometimes (many times) it occurs by increases in reproductive output.

    Of course, mathematically, they're expressed more or less the same, but if you think about it wrong, like you have, you come to mistaken conclusions.
     
  18. tuberculatious Banned Banned

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    The smallest unit of evolutionary change is not a single generation?
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Totally wrong concepts.

    Not only is evolution very slow in most cases (see post 83 thru 131 for an exception) but also by extremely small steps, which very often are lost. Also evolution is never leading to some goal - it is just chance variations in the gene pool some of which help reproduction but the majority hinder it or are neutral.

    The genes in an old woman are not counted in the evolution of the gene pool as she is no longer fertile. It is the "reproductively active" gene pool that is slowing changing that is evolution. Death can play a role in this change, but only if it removes the particular genes of an individual who might disproportionally transfer them to the constantly changing distribution of genes in the gene pool.

    If all of your genes are quite common in the gene pool your living or dying, even while fertile, is not a significant concern / influence on / the evolution of that gene pool.
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Not sure this first was written by H.G. Wells, but his book The country of the blind it appears, and proves not to be true.

    This short story concerns a sighted hunter who falls down steep slope into closed valley where all are born blind. Eventually, because of all the trouble his sight causes him, he agrees to have his eyes removed, but early on the day of the surgery, despite his love for the bind girl who helped him adjust to homes with no lights, etc. he decides to try to climb out of the valley. (He made it and told his "true tale," but thus far this "country" in some South American mountain valley has not been rediscovered.)

    It is a small book all should read, IMHO, as it shows how having vision biases your POV about the world. Probably available free on the net somewhere.
     
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  21. Saquist Banned Banned

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    I forgot the "is"
    His point is greater.



    THAT makes sense.


    Indeed.

    YOU speak in absolutes about things that haven't been confirmed.
    You then draw up speculation based on speculation. I specificly am intresed in speculation on the facts. I'm okay with you thinking that's true but I'm not intrested in superlative speculation in regards to macroevolution.

    I have a question though.
    In your opinion is it possible for adaptation to be spurred by behavior? What I mean spurred is not just a moderate development but a rapid development like generations of bats in a cave to escape predators develping acute hearing?

    I ask because of the dolphin. I sense it would have to develop echolocation through almost exclusively behvaior. I can't imagine it would be a very fast development though. I'd like to hear your thoughts.


    But I thought dolphins required echolocation. They can only see laterally like most fish. But fish have the lateral line. They can detect changes in the water around them. Sharks have that as well as a strong sense of smell.

    Whether Fish or Mammal in the water it seems that most life in the water requires more than vision and it seems to actually need an acute sense of whatever that sense is beyond what vision could provide.
     
  22. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Usually "adaptation" has nothing to do with evolution. For example your bats that have well adapted for better eco-location in the cave will not have offspring that have better echo-location skills and not develop them if removed for the cave when born. Kids of the carpenter with well calloused hands have hands as soft as any other baby when born. Etc.

    There is one case I know where behavior has made a noticeable, but not planned change in some crabs. Japanese mythology (or history?) has a brave warrior who drowns in a small bay, which is nearly cut off from the sea, but some paintings of him exist. The top shell of some local crabs in that bay, where fishermen intentionally catch them, did look slightly look like a human face perhaps 2500 years ago.

    Some fishermen thought the warrior might be re-incarnated in a crab that reminded them of the painting of the warrior, so they threw those that were most like the painting back into the sea. Now too many resemble him and I think the practice has stopped. (Most must be kept to have a profit.) In his case the behavior that effected the change was of the humans, and not the crabs.

    Fashion in what is a well formed dog breed is a Western example. Within the last year the standard for the English bull dog have changed (less fat, look like a better runner, etc.) Breeders of show dogs, at least, are working to achieve the new goal. Obviously, GM foods, etc. are now making rapid very planned changes caused by human behavior.

    If you want to speed human evolutionary change, get some K40 (a relatively cheap radioactive isotope) and keep it near your balls. Then fuck a lot of girls when they are fertile. I doubt telling this “aid evolution” plan works as a seduction come-on line, but some dumb girls might take the long POV and agree to try. :shrug:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 23, 2009
  23. Roman Banned Banned

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    Of course it's all speculation- it's not like much of what you call macro-evolution can be observed in a lab. If you had a better grasp on cell biology, you'd understand what a phenomenal event the evolution of Cit+ E. Coli was (linked in a prior post.

    As to the definite origins of the eye (as definite as you can be in science without being able to set up your own experiments), look it up on wikipedia. They just search "evolution of the eye" or something like that. They even have handy links to primary sources. I have no interest in spoon feeding you what's already well known in the scientific community. Your claims of "it's all speculation" aren't very strong, seeing as how you have an immense body of primary material at your fingertips, but choose to ignore it. Here, to get you started:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#References

    I'm not entirely sure by what you mean, but yes, behaviors can definitely influence co-evolution of traits. Domestic dogs, for instance, are very gentle and playful, even as adults, since there has been very strong selection to get rid of any wolf like ferocity in their 10 or 20 thousand year domestication.

    Phylogenetics shows that dolphins and other cetaceans most likely descended from hippo-like ancestors, which means they were probably already swimming around in shallow, murky water, much like the hippo does today. They had all the apparatus hippos have today- eyes, nose, mouth, ability to produce noise, and hearing.

    Of course, this is all speculation, but there's no reason that some proto-dolphins, with an acute sense of hearing, began to find that if they clicked, they could locate prey easier, navigate under water, etc. Of course, the behavior for discovering clicking would also ultimately be genetic, and this is assuming that our proto-dolphin hung out in groups and was social. Even then, only parts needed to evolve to offer a slight advantage. Extra good hearing, for instance, to navigate under water, could have already been in development. A mutation that allowed the proto-dolphin to generate its own sound source to get a better acoustic map may have been useful.

    As you can see, the proto-dolphin is, at any time, still functioning as a proto-dolphin, but is evolving other systems that move it towards dolphin hood.

    You are assuming wholes without parts. Hippos, as far as I know, swim blind and without any way to navigate other than blundering around underwater. I could be wrong on this. But you could see how even a proto-echolocation system would be advantageous, given that scenario, yes?

    Absolutely, but the dolphin just didn't jump into the water, fully formed. As it slowly lost its form and became more streamlined, its echolocation system was also under selection to become better. I'm not sure on the fossil record for the proto-hippo to proto-dolphin to dolphin transition, but I know the phylogenetics on that is quite good.

    Here's the wikipage on it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea#Mammalian_nature

    They site only fossil evidence for their relationship to hippos, 47MYA in a tiny deer-like ancestor shared by sheep & deer. A simple google search of "hippo cetacean genetics" yielded a bunch of Pubmed hits on their phylogenetics.
     
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