Newbie questions about Evolution.

Discussion in 'Religion' started by LFiess1942, Oct 15, 2014.

  1. LFiess1942 Registered Member

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    Hi, I'm posting this here because this thread may delve into religion, but I just want to ask some amateur questions about evolution for now.

    Please be kind, I know you are use to dealing with trolls, but I just want to learn. =) Thank you for being friendly.

    If I understand evolution, it is that a single simple cell evolved into all other animals? How could a simple cell be simple if it had all the genetic code to turn into everything? Where did the code come from that dictated what the cell was to do? I've heard that enough time went by for all the mistakes to die out and it to thrive, but where did the possibilities come from. I agree with natural selection, and it's brilliant in terms to allow, say a finch, to thrive with it's environment. But where did the choices of those variations come from?

    Thanks.
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The first life was likely some kind of replicating molecule. On it's way to the formation of a true cell, it must have gone through mutations which are errors in copying. This is where the variations come from. Eventually it happened on better ways to code possibly using RNA and then DNA. Or perhaps the "cell" came first which was just a bubble of something or pores in a rock which protected these early reactions.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The number of different single cell lineages, among the millions available, that launched multicellular organism lineages, is unknown.

    The break into multicellularity apparently came after billions of years of unicellular and colonial evolution on the planet. Cells as we know them are complex and varied - there are no "simple single cells", and quite possibly never were any. The complexity is likely to have come first, spread out in the local environment, and found its way into tight cellular organization later.
     
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  7. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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  8. LFiess1942 Registered Member

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    As for another question, the fossils. I read somewhere that the amount of fossils that support evolution could fill a train car, that's saying there aren't that many. But, actually there are many because there are fragments that these scientists get to observe and guess. It's just such a problem with me because there have probably been trillions+? of animals and scientist could guess which are related without knowing for certain. I have such a distrust with people and their intentions. Were the hypotheses validated by a smart guy that no one would question because no one know more than this guy etc.
     
  9. Landau Roof Registered Senior Member

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    If it's not too unfriendly or unkind... I don't think you understand how big a train car is. A train car is about as big as a house! I don't think you understand how much a trillion is. A quick search tells me there have been about 8.7 million animal species, quite a bit shy of even 100 million, is it not?

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  10. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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    I think you're being a bit too literal here. There are many more fossils than would fill a train car. The White Cliffs of Dover, for example, is essentially a bed a fossilized and lithified remains 350 feet deep and 4 miles long.

    And while we cannot be certain that a specific fossil is directly related to another or a modern organism there is a definitive order to the progression of fossils through the strata.

    You have to think of fossils as samples of populations of organisms rather than a direct lineage.

    The strongest lines of evidence for Evolution, however, are observations of current populations and genetics.
     
  11. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Well, but so far you have only directed us to the religious (fundamentalist) beliefs about what is going on in the world of science, which are usually extremely slanted and stridently anti-science in content. If you want to delve into evolution, you have to overcome the learning deficit that plagues hardcore Creationists. This requires answering the questions that stump them:

    (1) How did 19th c. geology bring an end to Catastrophism?
    (2) What did Darwin find at Galapagos?
    (3) What are the principles of evolution stated in On the Origin of Species by Mean of Natural Selection?

    There are right and wrong answers to these questions. The wrong ones are found at sites like Institute for Creation Research, and the hundreds of other fake science sites produced by hardcore Creationists.

    The probability of keeping this friendly is entirely dependent upon your intention to answer the questions you raised candidly, without expressing fear and loathing of science, since readers tend to react negatively to subterfuge and dishonesty.

    No, see (3). And Darwin did limit (3) to animal evolution since that would omit parts of his findings in (2).

    Cells don't turn into things; fish don't turn into amphibians. They evolve. This leads to the next questions that plague Creationists:

    (4) When did living organisms first appear on Earth?
    (5) What is the difference between a eukaryote and a prokaryote?
    (6) Diagram and explain the following: eukaryote, prokaryote and typical modern animal cell. How many genes are contained in the DNA of each? Explain the differences in DNA length in terms of each.

    (7) How do the laws of chemistry govern the organization of atoms into molecules? Explain: monomer, polymer, nucleotide, RNA and DNA. Where did the code come from that dictates what a water molecule does? How do the chemical laws affecting the behavior of molecules in inert matter differ from the laws affecting the behavior of molecules found in cells and tissues?

    (8) What is a random process? What random processes are found in nature which affect biological evolution?

    A finch isn't "allowed to thrive" under natural selection. On Galapagos, the colonists were exterminated by natural selection, whereas their evolved descendants were able to survive this "hell on Earth". See (3). Also:

    (9) What is natural selection? What is an ecological niche? What do we mean when we say a species evolves to "fill the niche"?

    This refers back to (8).

    (10) How much space would be required to pack a sample of every element found on Earth into 10 cc containers?

    (11) What does scientific theory mean?

    (12) What is paleontology?

    (13) Why do Creationists fear evolutionary biology, paleontology, chemistry, geology and probability theory? Why do they stridently publish false and incorrect answers to the questions I am listing here?

    This refers back to (3), (11) and (13).

    Answer these 13 questions correctly and I think this thread will be resolved. Indeed, nearly all of the Creationist arguments against science will be resolved.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2014
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    There isn't a single fossil that doesn't support evolution. And you don't have to take scientist's word for it, they publish their results in scientific journals and if that isn't enough there are popular science journals written for the layman. The evolution of horses and whales are particularly well established by the fossil record. Their "guesses" are educated guesses. In many cases, it would not be possible for such related bone structures to occur without some direct relationship of lineage. Bone structures are very distinctive.
     
  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Both plants and animals (along with fungi and protozoa) are what biologists call 'eucaryotes'. Eucarytic cells share characteristic kinds of complexity, such as having their most of their genetic material in a cell nucleus, possession of defined cell organelles, and so on.

    It appears that the eucaryotes evolved from a simpler kind of cell that biologists call 'procaryotes'. Procaryotic organisms are still very much with us today, they include the ubiquitous bacteria, along with blue-green algae and the 'archaea', essentially bacteria with enough biochemical peculiarities that biologists think they branched off from the other bacteria very early.

    I'm inclined to speculate (I don't really know) that the procaryotes in turn evolved from even simpler pre-biotic chemical replicators. The problem there is that unlike procaryotic cells, these chemical replicators don't seem to exist in the present-day environment. It's possible that they were driven to extinction by cellular life, or that the pre-Cambrian 'oxygen holocaust' destroyed them. A very speculative third possibility is that life didn't originate on Earth at all, but arrived here in the form of bacterial spores or something after having originated much earlier elsewhere in the universe.

    The early procaryotes didn't already have genetic blueprints for all succeeding forms of life already written into their genomes.

    It evolved over time. The genetic code was always changing, through mutations and transcription errors and so on. Those changes are ususally disadvantageous, result in a reduced liklihood of reproductive success, and tend to dissappear. But occasionally a change might confer some advantage in some ecological niche, so the change propagates. That's almost certainly where the incredible biochemical diversity of bacteria came from, allowing them to use a tremendous variety of things as feed-stock. Life tends to expand into new ecological niches.

    Where do possibilities come from? That's a metaphysical question. I'd be inclined to say that it might be a mistake to think of possibilities as if they were substantial things. It might be better to conceive as them as lack of constraints, whether physical or logical. In other words, something is possible if there isn't any reason why it can't happen. If we imagine an abstract space where every point is some way that life might successfully be lived, we can say that life appears to be expansive in that biological possibility-space.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No, you don't want to learn and discuss evolution - you just want to preach intelligent designer / creationist POV.

    That is why you abandoned the first thread you started a few days ago with that in mind rather than try to reply to your ideas being shot down in flames here:
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/th...s-for-intelligent-design.142790/#post-3233022
     
  15. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Aha. Thanks for that, I didn't see it. So this thread is a continuation of the premises of evolution, split off from the main post-modernist creationist claims. One of these days it would great to see a young creationist drop by with a similar opening, only to reply to posts such as your with "OMG! I was lied to!"
     
  16. LFiess1942 Registered Member

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    Read what I said in that thread:

    I haven't even read a lot of what he wrote, it's just too much, but I'd be interested in looking at critiques of his work. Sorry that I didn't make this clear in my first post.
     

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