does evolution exsist

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by sifreak21, Jan 19, 2011.

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

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    That does not seem very likely as the long term trend has been for them to become less massive, but one can not rule out evolution selecting for their increase if some utility does emerge for them which justifies (pays back) the biological cost of making them.

    For example, they could resonated with some sound waves in water that come from whale making infra-sounds that indicate a desire to mate. Far fetched, but one can no predict what chance driven evolution may produce.
     
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  3. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    Or maybe they will grow legs again.

    Theoretically, do you think it would be possible for humans to selectively breed whales based on the quality of the calcium deposit, to eventually make legs of it?

    Also, do you think it's possible to selectively breed dogs so that they become smarter than humans, or bigger than whales?
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    and then did this for all the other creatures so that their fossils would be in just the layers that evolution theory predicts? He also made the changes in DNA conform with the fossil changes, etc. - I.e. you are suggesting the "evil god" constructed and created all on in just such a way that intelligent many would invent a false theory. I.e. evil god tricking intelligence.

    For example, less than 8000 years ago, He created the preá just so it would look like the melting ice that had cut off and isolated a few guinea pigs on a tiny rocky island subjected them to the seven stresses that evolution theory predict will greatly accelerate the rate of evolution and permit the new species (the preá) to form.
     
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  7. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    These are very general statements you are making. You need to be more specific so I can specifically respond....

    I have no problem with believing these isolated guinea pigs changed into preás. It makes sense that an intelligent designer would design his creations with the ability to change in order to adapt. As to the degree of change that is ultimately possible, I suspect that there is a limit. I don't think these preás could ever change into something dramatically different.

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

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    No. Evolution NEVER works towards some distant goal. For whale to grow legs again there would need to first be some external part to transform into legs (and some advantage of having legs).

    For example the coelacanth was not trying to grow legs when it moved (over thousands of generation) its fins a little farther from the body with what would become bone stocks. It probably was benefiting by getting more propulsion force or the ability to rest on the bottom with it longer fins touching the sea bottom, etc. Each stage must give a benefit to be selected for, but none is working towards some future generation's benefit, not yet present.
     
  9. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    I understand that.

    But there doesn't need to be a benefit for each stage if it is being artificially selected for by us, right? Shouldn't the clever imaginative mind of the evolutionist know exactly what to select for in order to make a leg appear(over thousands of years).
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    What I am trying to call your attention to is that the theory of evolution unifies 10s of thousands of experimental observations into one logical frame work.

    It would be possible for some "evil god" to independently create all these 10s of thousand of factual observation so as to be consistent with this unified frame work, but that implies He is intentionally tricking man - just as he could trick us into thinking supernovas exist 10 billion light years away from Earth.

    As an analogy, note that 10s of thousands of astronomical observation are all as given by the theory of gravity, but that theory need not be true, if an evil god is moving all the planets, asteroids etc. as if gravity did exist - tricking man to believe in the theory of gravity.

    What you are suggesting is that the theory of evolution, which unifies 10s of thousand of observation, is false as god could have independently made each of these observed facts be the same as predicted by the theory of evolution to trick intelligent man.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 27, 2011
  11. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    I think you're mistaking my ideas with those of religion. I don't believe in God or religious stories. I simply believe that we were created by an intelligent source, based on evidence and common sense. I can not begin to describe the thought process behind this creative force.

    There's no need for trickery from God as you suggest. The dinosaurs were apparently created before birds and man. I accept that as true, and I have no reason to think otherwise based on the evidence I know of. I can not refute your claimed unification of "10s of thousand of observations" with evolution because I don't understand what you even mean by that statement. You really need to be more specific.

    By the way, have you figured out how to select for the whale to grow back it's legs yet? Would you select based on the physical appearance of the calcium deposit, or would you select based on the underlying DNA associated with the calcium deposit?
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    So you are atheist?

    Please state that plainly, so we can avoid the common merry-go-round.
    It wouldn't grow back its legs - it would be gradually modified into an animal with legs.

    We do know the basic approach for doing that. It would take probably several hundred million years, with a captive breeding populations of hundreds of thousands of whales - unlike in special creation methods, novel new features are much more difficult than loss or modification of existing ones. That was one of Darwin's original insights, and a major component of his demonstrations of evolutionary structure.
     
  13. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    I'm agnostic.

    Correction. You believe you "know".

    So how would you select for it?
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It's not a matter of belief. We've written it down, checked its predictions, tried it out, and it works.

    That's what we mean by "knowing" something.

    Find a variation in the right direction, breed it into the population, cull the rest, wait for the next one.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2011
  15. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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  16. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    invalid question.
    science is neutral on the concept of "god".
    whether someone believes or not shouldn't enter into the equation.
    what matters is if they argue from the standpoint of logic, reason, and evidence.
     
  17. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    the question of whether evolution is science can be answered with the following question:
    is there a test that can be falsified that will prove evolution to be true?
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No. This is science, not mathematics.
    Mathew is not just talking about science. He has introduced his belief in a creative intelligence so far superior to ours he can't even begin to imagine what it is like.

    We just want to avoid a familiar waste of time, here.
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    On (1) It was you, not me, in post 496 & 500 that suggested the alternative that "god (or whatever) created..." I glad you have dropped god here as that means you are not just spouting dogma, but have a basis for your POV that life was created by an intelligent designer, ID.

    On (2) Unfortunately there is a need to postulate "trickery" by this ID if he made 10s of thousands of independent facts all fit into one theory but were not actually consequences of that theory's "force laws".

    I gave you the example of 10s of thousands of astronomical observations, all of which follow from the theory of gravity but need not be due to gravity IF some ID has been moving the planets so as to be in accord with the theory of gravity.
    Likewise 10s of thousands of biological observations, mainly fossils and DNA sequences changing all agree with the theory of evolution, but it I admitted need not be true if some ID has been carefully creating all these observable facts so as to be in accord with the theory of evolution.

    I.e. both gravity and evolution theories could be false if some ID has, for unknown reason decided to trick man into concluding these theories were true.

    On (3) I obviously can not "be more specific" / list here 10s of thousands of either gravity or evolution facts, which have been consistent with their theories. I can mention one well known historical example of a theory unifying 10s of thousands of known / observed facts:

    Before Maxwell's theory there were at least 5 thousand observations of a magnetic nature and 5 thousand observations of an electric nature. To make the connection with evolution more direct note that a great deal has been learned about DNA changes - how DNA has changed- at least 5 thousand facts. Also there are at least 5 thousand facts known about how fossils have changed - at least that many just relating to trilobites! (More than 20,000 species in at least 10 different orders are known!)

    Evolution theory, like Maxwell's theory, unites two superficially unrelated bodies of knowledge. (DNA and fossils). For an ID to make this unification possible with two superficially unrelated bodies of knowledge would require him to intentional set 10s of thousands of independent facts as if they were governed by the rules of these theories - a huge trick that misleads man into believing in gravity, in evolution and the fundamental connection between electricity and magnetism.

    I can not proof this evil ID did not just tricking man into these beliefs.
     
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  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    There would be no point as recreation of how the three different wheats came to evolve from one has been postulated and then reproduced / achieved in the lab, so nothing new to show; but if I were to attempt it, I would insert some DNA from a land animal closely related to the one whales evolved from that has four legs into a female whale's single "egg" cell. - Easier said than done. - I.e. make a "genetically modified" creature. Mostly this has been done with plants although some male "genetically modified" mosquitoes that are sterile have been created and released with reduction in malaria achieved on the island where they were released.
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Cetacea has been combined with Artiodactyla to form the superorder (or in some classifications an unranked clade) Cetartiodactlya. Other articles classify Cetacea as a suborder of Artiodactlya. This relationship was discovered so recently that the dust has not completely settled yet.

    One article said that of all the even-toed ungulates, cetaceans are most closely related to the hippopotamus. If this is true it makes sense that their distant ancestor was a hippopotamus-like mammal who swam all the way out of the mouth of the river into the ocean and liked it there.

    It's not too outrageous that the cetaceans, all predatory carnivores, are found among the ruminants. Some artiodactyls, like goats, are omnivorous scavengers, and wild pigs can even be predatory.
     
  22. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    If I had to choose one, I guess I would choose atheist. I don't believe in supernatural things. Even if one of the many religions is true, the god of that religion would be a natural thing in my eyes. What right do we have to call anything other than it being "natural"?

    Now, in order to avoid a semantic argument, I should clarify my previous choice of words. For example, when I say that the creation of man could not have come about by "natural" means, I am using that word in a different way and in a different context. I simply mean that man must have been designed by an intelligent designer. Now of course this intelligent designer is a "natural" product of the universe.

    My belief in an intelligent designer was born solely from my realization that life on this planet is too complex to have formed by "natural" means. In other words, I didn't believe in "God" first.

    In my understanding, the complex interactions that evolutionists take for granted is akin to a radio receiver picking up random noise which just happens to have the form of Beyoncé's latest single. If given enough time, an evolutionist would believe that this would occur. The problem is, evolutionists don't realize that this is what they actually believe in. They believe it is more akin to a claymation doll being transformed gradually into different positions while tumbling down a stream. If given enough time, the doll might eventually give a perfect salute. I believe evolutionists just underestimate the complex, inter-dependent intricacies of the programming of life. Although there seems to be much flexibility pre-programmed into the DNA code of life(which makes complete sense from an ID perspective), evolutionists take this concept to outrageously different levels, while assuming it's the same thing(ie. microevolution vs. macroevoluion). In the end, the argument of evolutionists amount to "DNA is complex beyond our understanding, therefore we have the freedom to imagine simplicity in it's place. Simplicity + time = complexity."

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  23. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    So now you're just playing with definitions.

    And reverting to turtles all the way down: if this designer is natural (in the usual sense) then you've just defeated your own argument. If that designer is natural, why aren't we?

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