Evolution

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by garbonzo, Feb 20, 2015.

  1. Enoc Registered Senior Member

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    There is still a lot we don't know about life and the origin of life.

    Anyone who just reads Wikipedia or even Encyclopedia Britannica knows how very ignorant we are of everything and how much more there is to know and discover about virtually everything.

    Btw where is wellwisher? I really enjoyed his comments.
     
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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    You are sort of a glass half empty kind of guy I guess? I would say it is incredible how much we know and understand the universe.

    Wellwisher has been banned from posting in the science section for a while because his 'enjoyable comments' are riddled with pseudoscience.
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Me too - They normally gave me an opportunity to teach some physics, without appearing pedantic - I was just correcting his imagination. Now it is mainly QQ who extends that opportunity to me. Hurry back WellWisher, soon as you can. I need you.
     
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  7. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    Feel free to "correct" my argument against evolution. Or rather provide proof for the story you told earlier in the thread.
     
  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You do not have an argument. Evolution is as near fact as any scientific theory could be.
    Evolution is so well established, evidenced and set in concrete, that no new findings or discoveries will ever invalidate Evolution....refinement of details, times etc are the only aspects open for interpretations, and which includes Panspermia.
    Abiogenesis although we have no direct evidence is obviously the logical default position of the beginning of Universal life.
    WE ARE ALL STAR STUFF!
     
  9. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Feel free to actually make a correct argument against evolution in the first place.
     
  10. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    790
    For goodness' sake, let me re-iterate my arguments with proper adressees this time so now no one will have an excuse to not respond. You posted in this thread and decided to debate me, now finish the debate please.

    You keep claiming it, and yet you cannot provide a single instance of how that could be accomplished that did not already happen, and did not falsify it.

    I would.

    I would.

    As I said in my first replies, those are just so stories unsubstantiated by evidence. Just because someone tells you that something could, possibly, maybe, we have no evidence against it, have happened a certain way, doesn't mean it did.

    And by studying it, I don't mean reading TalkOrigins and memorizing talking points.

    Let me put it to you bluntly.

    You say that 'blood cloth' do not need all of the proteins that are used for it. What are the function of those unnecessary proteins, how does blood cloth works when those proteins are missing, what covers for their functions on their absence?

    You said that proteins are also used for the digestive system, but the text is ambiguous. Do you mean to talk about the necessary or the non-necessary ones? What is the evidence that, despite their presence on present day's digestive system, they were also present on ancient life form's digestive system? What is the evidence that they were re-used? Do we have examples of life forms that possessed them in both digestive and cloth system? What's the evolutionary path, showing the progression from a digestive protein to a blood cloth one?

    So we learned a new word and are eager to use it. Does not mean what you think it means, though. However, since you raised a strawman, I will have to, again, point out the dialog to you.

    Me: Counter-evidence from sexual reproduction. Explained away by claiming without backing evidence that creatures simply evolved into hermaphrodites first, and then split the sexes away later.

    You: Except there is evidence - organisms that still reproduce both ways.

    Me: The fact that hermaphrodites exist is evidence that they exist, not that our ancestors were hermaphrodites. There is no evidence of the latter.

    You: I'm not interested in word games.

    So, let me get this straight. I asked for evidence that the organisms that reproduce sexually were once asexual and then hermaphrodites before becoming sexual. Your 'evidence' was 'there are hermaphrodites today'. That's it? That's your damning evidence? Stones exist, therefore all species were stones one day?

    Again, what's the threshold? And also, define species.

    The desperation of the evolutionists. You can't reply so you will just link to talkorigins and declare victory.

    This does not mean what you think it means. Although evolutionists do tend to beg the question a lot.

    Really? When did I allude to anything? Are you sure we are following the same discussion?

    Again, define species. Then demonstrate that those are new species by your own definition.

    Ok, prove. You have to keep in mind that I don't fall for the fairy tales of the evolutionists. Every time you decide to make your point with a fairy tale, I will ask you to prove it. A hint; 'the preã exists' is not evidence.

    Prove. Where are the skeletons of the 'ancient' preãs with eyes that are not close together on the front of their face.

    Fairy tales, fairy tales, fairy tales. Not a shred of evidence for the claims. As always, evolutionists are always confusing a good tale with scientific evidence. You can tell tales until the cows go home, I told you already. Prove them. That's the challenge. All you have are fairy tales.

    Cool, we have a time frame. I love time frames. Let's do some math, shall we? How many mutations it took to evolve those hind legs in those short 8000 years, and is such mutation rate possible?
     
  11. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    790
    Here's some more replies to arguments I found while taking the time to go through all the posts again:

    Irrelevant. Could be convergent evolution, by your own scientific theory. Sharing features isn't what it used to be since they became a problem for Evolution and evolutionists needed to come up with the epicycle of convergent evolution to explain them away. Obviously, it cuts both way. You need to prove it is not convergent evolution, but a case of common descent. The same goes for the rest of your argument.

    Because He wanted to? Seriously, are you really keep questioning God? If you want a theological debate, we can have one, but then I don't want you whining that I was supposed to restrict myself to scientific arguments. You are the one that keeps making theological arguments.

    I hardly believe that God created every single specie of dog, cat, horse, bird and flower out there, given that many of them are man-made. Are you defending this idea? I don't remember having ever mentioned it.

    I don't remember "insisting" on any idea whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, this is a debate on the merits of Evolution. Why are you trying to change the subject? Ran out of just-so stories already?

    I do not have to, since we both agreed that one; 'I do not know' is a valid scientific answer and two; that was not your question anyway. You are basically trying to change the subject to avoid admitting you cannot counter my point.

    Again, you did not deny that creating it using DNA was the smart thing to do. Can you address the point, please?

    No, I am not. I am discussing the merits of Evolution. The only mention I ever made of a Creator was to address your idea that DNA proves Evolution when I said that DNA fits equally well in a narrative of Evolution, Creationism or Panspermia. I have kept myself and my arguments solely on the scientific and logical side, save for the one exception I made to address a theological argument that you made.

    I would like an apology for this. I came on a science website looking to debate science, and you bring up theology. What is this poppycock? This is in Biology & Genetics, is it not? We are not in Religion.

    I already did. I showed you three examples of convergent evolution, one between humans and hyenas, one between humans and macaques and one between humans and birds that break the paradigm of common descent by the evolutionists own admission.

    Where in the creationist narrative it says that every organism was created without reference to any other? All that the Bible says is that each organism was created individually. Can you point me to the verse it says that they were created without reference to any other?

    And again, any super-intelligence, be it alien or divine, that has figure out the spark of life will have long before figured out engineering. DNA means life was not merely created. It was engineered. That's why it fits perfectly well either on creationism or panspermia.

    Local reductions in entropy can exist. The key word being local. Since you did not read what you replied to, I will write it again here: "A local reduction in entropy requires a greater increase in entropy of the external environment." Crystallization is an exothermic reaction. Yes, it does reduces the local entropy, but at the cost of the external environment.

    Light is an EM phenomena. I do not know what you mean by it being known to be incorrect.

    Evolution, however, is known to be incorrect. There have been calls for a new evolutionary theory that encompasses the newest knowledge for a while now.

    Then explain your point.

    Here's a quotation from someone I was talking to regarding this, feel free to respond, I also told him he could join this forum to respond:

    You did not address the point. Every circumstantial beneficial mutation carries with it a detrimental effect. Every time evolution selected for the circumstantial beneficial effect, it also selected for the detrimental effect. Circumstantial beneficial mutations are circumstantial, and their benefit may or may not be relevant later. Detrimental effects, however, are always present and are forever. In accumulating circumstantial beneficial mutations that may or may not benefit us now, we have also accumulated detrimental effects that are always active, and remain with us.

    To put it in your terms, how are we not the luckiest and the best of the best piles of green goo right now? Or put it in even more direct terms, how did we overcome the piling up of detrimental effects, since we could not have done so bymutating, as the mutations were the ones creating them to begin with?

    I will have to check my sources on that. I found the article but it seems that there are some people disagreeing with it.
     
  12. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    Well, garbonzo, how would you explain all the different species without evolution? Did they all just pop into existence, each of their forms and genetic compositions complete and separate from every other species? That would require Life to spontaneously appear millions, perhaps, trillions of times over the course of Earth's history.

    What is your explanation for how that is happening?
     
  13. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    748
    So here you are using evolution to disprove it? Oh, but I thought species didn't evolve at all? Go on...

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  14. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I noticed you picked up "just-so stories", above. This term comes from Kipling, and is conventionally used to address theology's impression of natural science: theological explanations are "just-so stories", told without reason.



    Oh, so you have a decent counter-argument for the evolution of the jaw, of morphology, of cranial structure in birds and mammals? Very well: what is it?


    You have decried speciation, and then turned around and attempted to raise evolutionary arguments using the concept. Pick an explanation, and stick with it.



    A species is a reproductively isolated taxonomic unit. It is a quantitative definition, however, so that closely-related species can occasionally produce viable or infertile hybrids: wolves and dogs, lions and tigers. More distantly related species do not reproduce at all. Done. The classic error - to which most biologists also adhere - is to consider it as a binary or state process. It is not.


    Wrong, flatly. Sorry.

    Strange. I wasn't aware that I was working in convergence. Anyway: how strange that the converging features occurred more distantly in the past... when evolution, supported by paleontological evidence, predicts they should share an ancestor. Did they evolve from strong differences in jaw and cranial structure to a convergent state, and then back out along some other axis to their present structure?

    Just did, above: unless you have some kind of evidence that they converged to the state of being the same and then differentiated again to their present state. For that, you'd have to prove that there was an even more ancestral state where they were different, in the evolutionary time between the origin of the different groups and this convergent state.

    But one of the more central problems is that you again play loose with your claims about evolution: earlier, you took the position that speciation wasn't real. Now you're so well along that you're claiming convergent evolution could explain why ancestral reptiles and birds shared jaw structure, unlike today. So which is it? Are species immutable, or not? Why are all bird and reptile jaws so different today, but not in our proposed evolutionary past? Did they all disperse in jaw and cranial phenotype - chickens, robins, ostriches, emus vs. all squamates, chelonians and crocodilians - in exactly the same way? And all mammals - lions, tigers and bears, oh my, vs all squamates, chelonians and crocodilians? Again? Why would that be?
     
  15. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    :yawn: A bit more difficult to dismiss than that.



    You don't have any cogent counter for DNA similarity among highly phenotypically similar organisms - to which I add, you have no explanation for high DNA sequence similarity in non-coding regions, which have nothing to do with phenotype let alone morphology. Why is this DNA-level similarity in non-coding DNA? Surely God has no reason for that - and if He does, can you demonstrate Him? You are the one proposing special creation. Very well: let us see your agent.

    Interesting! There are lots of organisms that are not man-made. Which ones did God create?

    On the contrary, I am attempting to get at the root of your own doubts about evolution. Creationism is, indeed, a "just-so-story" (and by all means, keep using the phrase; but as you say, it doesn't mean what you think it means). If you believe otherwise, present evidence. This would, however, be a second step in proper debate, so that you would still have to sink evolution first. I don't deny this is a nigh impossible task.

    It is not a valid rebuttal to the proposition that DNA sequence - including, I remind you, in non-coding regions - is similar among similar species because of common ancestry. As you have said, you do not know. Thus, DNA sequence is similar among similar species because of common ancestry. Done. Unless you have suddenly found a counter?

    I struggle to recall what your point was. Does it matter, in light of one, above?

    Ah! You ask whether using DNA was not smart. I believe I did answer that, above. You claim DNA was the smart way. So your 'engineer' is smart. Very well. Why did this engineer or engineer leave us with useless organs, and vestigial appendages, and retroviruses - or, indeed, viruses at all, or any genetic disease - and mental illness, and male pattern balding, and capitalism? What the fuck was all that for? Did we piss them off, while still in the test tubes? I can only apologise profusely and ask their forgiveness, so that they reconsider our state. But as I think it unlikely that we could have so offended them that in the amazing effort of creating life in the first place, I am forced to conclude that we have all these things because our being has not been engineered. If you think that all of it is part of some 'greater plan', fine. But there is no naturalistic way to determine this, and no reason therefore to teach it in school.


    Well, as I see my own arguments being dismissed or misrepresented, so too must your ego go unwatered.



    You surely must be kidding. Behaviour, of all things? Do you feel that behaviour - a highly plastic set of traits - has some kind of paleological value in discriminating large-scale taxonomy? If so, what kind of value? Blue tits in Britain have learned to open milk bottles and siphon off cream. Cats do this also. Do you think anyone would take that as evidence that the blue tit and the common house cat were therefore more closely related than they were, respectively, to any other kind of tit or bird on the one hand, or any other kind of feline on the other? Are you mad, Sir? Good God: animals of all kinds pick up bloody behaviour of all kinds. Humans farm. Ants farm. AND? Should we now presume them more closely related on the basis that they have acquired the same behaviour? That might work at lower levels of organisation, with birds of whatever sort cracking nuts on things or not cracking nuts on things, but it is nothing against the mass of other dissimilarites and similarities in proportion that illustrate their true level of relationship - middling, in the case of hyaenas and men, although perhaps not all men. Are you unfamiliar with the masses of morphological data that indicate, for example, substantial distance in the relationship between hyaenas and men? Humans have a head. Beer has a head. Are humans more related to beer?


    If you wish to illustrate an example that will shatteringly disprove convergent evolution, or prove it in your favour, or do whatever purpose you are attempting to put it to, you will need a better example. Moreover, show me the quotes from those supposed evolutionists, and I will show you misappropriation, or foolery.
     
  16. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I proposed above that "DNA sequence is similar among similar species because of common ancestry" and you have admitted you have no answer to, above, they are certainly not individually. The Earth was formed long ago. Present-day organisms did not appear on this Earth, in their present forms and unchanged, those long aeons ago and remain as such, unchanged and created individually. Instead, present-day organisms have - as we demonstrate above, and to which you have admitted you cannot refute - evolved from other organisms that came before, and which the paleontological evidence shows are proportionally different to their descendants, and even to their ancestors. Dogs and cats and bats and rats were not "created individually". They evolved from earlier life forms, which more generally resembled rodents, at least in body size.


    Thus, there is no "created individually". You can adopt the paradigm of the Spinozan God, if you like. That's what I do, generally. But there's no naturalistic evidence for it. That's why one says "I believe".


    As in this: I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Under Pontius Pilate, He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.


    Or, in it's much-underappreciated Latin: Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae, et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine, passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris omnipotentis, inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem,

    vitam aeternam. Amen.


    Central to this is credo. Belief. It requires no evidence, and does appear to have produced any.

    Good! Demonstrate this engineer, please, or engineers, or force, if that force be with you.
     
  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    This is actually an exercise/evangelistic mission of yours to show Evolution is wrong and then conclude your deity of choice did it all.
    Your underlying motives are clear. Any evidence shown to you is just totally ignored or written off with "it's just fairy tales".
    You are also apt to be somewhat dishonest as shown in another thread, and will conveniantley twist and squirm with facts to project your own warped view on science in general.
    I don't know enough about the details of Evolution to debate it with you, but I do know that Evolution is as near fact as anyone could wish.
    http://evolutionfaq.com/articles/five-proofs-evolution
    This of course is recognised by the Catholic Church in not only recognising Evolution, but also the BB theory of Universal Evolution.
    From that point though, they depart from science and say God did it, [without any evidence] while the causes and why's and how's of the BB are still under scientific investigation.
    Science has pushed the need for a deity into near oblivion, with the plentiful access of data that has shown in actual fact, that all you see around you, the ground you stand on, the planet as well as yourself, are nothing more then star dust.
    We/everything was born in the belly of stars.

    And your delusions and Illusions continue as they did in the ghost/fairies thread.

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    If you had any solid evidence at all, refuting or invalidating Evolution, you would not be here. You would be writing a scientific paper and undergoing peer review.
    You have nothing but denial and are fooling no one.
    Well now that is a case of the pot calling the kettle black...Such indignation!

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    Especially since you have seen the need to lie in another thread.

    Reputable references or link to support that please?
    Or is this another lie? [And please don't give me some creationist website!..reputable is what I'm insisting on.

    I will also add since you did raise Panspermia, that Panspermia does not invalidate Evolution as you seem to suggest. They can and may go hand in glove. Panspermia is an extension of how life may have arose on Earth.

    We have no proof of Universal Abiogenesis either, but it is logically accepted as the default position, based on our cosmological model of the Universe. space-time, and matter/energy.
    It appears to be the only scientific solution.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2015
  18. Kajalamorth The Doctor Registered Senior Member

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    76

    Are you kidding me? It is a random process. A species is just as likely to mutate a benign trait or a disadvantageous trait as it is to mutate a beneficial trait. The only thing that mutation has going for it is that beneficial traits marginally increase the likelihood of survival. Look at the Ocean Sunfish for example, it has no means of escape due to it's inefficient means of movement. This fish lays about a million eggs per clutch and only one in a million of its offspring is going to survive into adulthood.

    It's an evolutionary dead-end.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Surely you're joking. Mutations provide variations on which natural selection works (and secondarily, sex increases the variations). Natural selection is the opposite of random.

    The Ocean Sunfish is a highly successful organism, it's the most common of all sunfishes. It's size means that it has few natural predators. It has existed far longer than mankind. I don't know what point you are making about the eggs. Laying lots of eggs is also a successful strategy to make sure that your species survives.
     
  20. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    10,890
    Especially when those eggs require a fairly minimal investment.
     
  21. Kajalamorth The Doctor Registered Senior Member

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    I'm talking about evolution as a whole. Not natural selection which is only a part of speciation. And while not random, there is no guide hand that always goes for desirable traits.

    http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_32

    http://ncse.com/book/export/html/1902

    Useful traits tend to be passed on but they aren't always useful.

    Anyway, I think we are have communication issues.

    On the Sunfish thing... I thought they were an example but I guess I made some poor assumptions. I apologise.

    Though a mutation is by definition an error created in genetic recombination.

    When I learnt about that, I found it humbling. Nothing is perfect.
     
  22. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Evolution as a whole isn't exactly random either. And useful traits are passed on. Why do you think they aren't? Every living species on Earth is an example of a life form that had successful ancestors, by definition. Evolution makes use of imperfection as a kind of driver of innovation.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Right, they don't have to parent any of them.
     

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