by Natural Selection?

Will someone explain to me how natural selection is conducive to evolution? Darwin wrote that if biology, in the course of its development, ever demonstrated that an organ in its intermediate stage (i.e. half a heart) would not be functional, than his whole theory would fall to pieces. He was rather tentative about it. It seems like natural selection would serve only to eliminate those creatures who were "on their way" to becoming more advanced. For example, if an arm is starting to grow feathers, won't they hang up on things before they could ever provide lift, making that animal die off faster? Why am I wrong about this? Why is Darwin wrong about this?
As far as punctuated evolution goes, once life became advanced enough for life to reproduce sexually, once each "hopeful monster" was born, with what would it reproduce? How would the offspring be fertile? Wouldn't these have to inbreed, causing the genetic code to break down further? Don't evolutionists frequently argue (against the traditional Flood story) that not even two animals of the same species could repopulate earth? How does one unique animal do it the first time?
I am interested to see what evolutionists have to say about these questions. If you cannot answer them and still do not choose to believe in a Creator, then find a different theory!
 

troodon

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Rohatu Bhangaa said:
For example, if an arm is starting to grow feathers, won't they hang up on things before they could ever provide lift, making that animal die off faster?
You assume the first use of feathers was for flight. Other possible uses for them include incubation of eggs during brooding, insulation, and attracting mates. Any of these other possibilities can use protofeathers.

As far as punctuated evolution goes, once life became advanced enough for life to reproduce sexually, once each "hopeful monster" was born, with what would it reproduce? How would the offspring be fertile?
Speciation does not occur in one generation.

Wouldn't these have to inbreed, causing the genetic code to break down further?
Say wha?

Don't evolutionists frequently argue (against the traditional Flood story) that not even two animals of the same species could repopulate earth?
Two members of the same population ~4,000 years ago could not account for the genetic diversity seen in animals today. It's not a question of them reproducing enough to repopulate the earth, it's a question of current diversity.

How does one unique animal do it the first time?
Again, you're assuming that speciation occurs all at once.

If you cannot answer them and still do not choose to believe in a Creator, then find a different theory!
You're assuming all evolutionists are atheists.
*Frankenstein's monster voice* "Assumption Bad!"
 
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1) Jet Black: If I show an incomplete knowledge of evolution, please inform me. I am on a forum, after all, a medium of information exchange and of learning. If you are going to criticize, enlighten at the same time.
Isaac: I don't want to prove God exists; I want to debate evolution. To me, that seems like the ONLY way it could have happened - not in and of itself. Though I did leave room for other possibilities besides Creation and Evolution, if you care to read my post again. Look at the end.
Troodon: Thank you for engaging my questions intelligently unlike your predecessors.
1) I understand and partially agree with your suggestion on the feather example (I cant help but think that down warming feathers and primary flight feathers differ so dramatically that we would find the same problem we began with), but realize that this was an example, and that explaining feathers does not explain the root of my question: the usefulness of intermediate forms.
2) Thank you for clarifying the argument against Noah's story. It makes great sense and I was not aware of it.
3) According to Darwinian evolution, based on natural selection through a series of gradual changes, speciation does not occur in one generation. However, I am under the impression that punctuated evolution requires such changes do happen - MUST happen - in one generation. Isn't that the "hopeful monster" theory? By chance, one creature is born with a fully functional trait (i.e. a lizard gives birth to a gliding lizard). If this is not the case, how does punctuated evolution work?
If punctuated evolution has already been abandoned in favor of a newer flavor, how does THAT work?Short of divine intervention, how could evolution perpetuate itself?
 
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Duckie, you gave me three options.... though then again I'm not really an evolutionist... but they were 1) correct you understanding of evolution, 2) come up with a new theory, 3) accept creationism (hence belive in god)... now you forgot the forth option, 4) confess to ignorence, and make no assumption to replace it... with out the forth option, you are basicaly saying if we can't prove you wrong or come up with a new theory, that we must belive in god.
 
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worship4ever

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Natural selection is: "Biol.), a supposed operation of natural laws analogous, in its operation and results, to designed selection in breeding plants and animals, and resulting in the survival of the fittest. The theory of natural selection supposes that this has been brought about mainly by gradual changes of environment which have led to corresponding changes of structure, and that those forms which have become so modified as to be best adapted to the changed environment have tended to survive and leave similarly adapted descendants, while those less perfectly adapted have tended to die out though lack of fitness for the environment, thus resulting in the survival of the fittest." And please, if anyone has a problem with this definition of natural selection take it up with Webster, it got it from there.

I noticed everyone LOVES natural selection. I know what it is, and i've read the definition from webster a few times. I wanna know, how can this inatimate object can tell a species, "your not fitting into your enivronment well, your gone" Or how it tells a species to alter itself to improve the survibility of that species. Natural selection in not a person, place, or thing, its nothing. How can nothing tell something to change or die? People talk about it as if it was a person, or something, its not. Natural selection also says that if a something isnt reproducing, its gone, well, i hope i have kids because i dont want this "natural selection to take me out.
 
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Rohatu Bhangaa said:
1) Jet Black: If I show an incomplete knowledge of evolution, please inform me. I am on a forum, after all, a medium of information exchange and of learning. If you are going to criticize, enlighten at the same time.

it is not a matter of mere enlightenment and knowledge, it is also a matter of the validity of your argument in the first place.


"If you cannot answer them and still do not choose to believe in a Creator, then find a different theory"

this is a simple "from ignorence" fallacy, just beacuse something is not known to be true does not make it false.

on to evolution. your use of the phrase "on the way to becoming more advanced" makes it sound like that a certain group of animals is selevtively breeding themselves to have wings in a couple of hundred generations time, when this is not the case. Sometimes it does take a bit of imagination though to think how something could involve, and the wing is a good example of this;

first of all you get down, we have established that this is pretty easy, and pretty useful I suppose, now one hypothesis I have heard of, I forget whether there was evidence to back it up (though iirc birds nodding their heads and the way they take off is partially evidence too), is that the down also allowed the animals to hunt better, since by flapping their arms, the down would give them a bit of extra lift, and allow them to spend more time jumping through the air and less time being slowed by the ground... and so the evolution goes.

your explanation of punctiated evolution is wrong too. it is not reliant on a hopeful monster, but some kind of sudden change which provides a very harsh selection criteria with facilitates rapid evolution.
 
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Jet Black

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worship4ever said:
I noticed everyone LOVES natural selection. I know what it is, and i've read the definition from webster a few times. I wanna know, how can this inatimate object can tell a species, "your not fitting into your enivronment well, your gone" Or how it tells a species to alter itself to improve the survibility of that species. Natural selection in not a person, place, or thing, its nothing. How can nothing tell something to change or die? People talk about it as if it was a person, or something, its not. Natural selection also says that if a something isnt reproducing, its gone, well, i hope i have kids because i dont want this "natural selection to take me out.

if an animal does not fit into it's environment well, it will be selected out by evolutionary pressures. isn't it obvious?

species aren't told to alter themselves, but if there is some variation that is preferable, that particular animal is more likely to be successful and breed and hence produce more offspring that are successful an dthose breed and so on. see the galapagos finches for an ideal example of this: darwin's very own.

People do tend to anthropomorphise nature, but they are wrong in doing so. Scientists tend not to.
 
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worship4ever

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Tell me jet black, how are these species told to change in variation that is preferable, that particualr animal is more likely to be successful and breed. How does the DNA know to change, or even by mutated to help the species (lol). How does the species know its in trouble, or having difficaulty in its environment, and in addition, how does "natural selection tell it to alter themselfs thur DNA or mutation?
 
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Siliconaut

Not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell
@w4e:
I noticed everyone LOVES natural selection. I know what it is, and i've read the definition from webster a few times. I wanna know, how can this inatimate object can tell a species, "your not fitting into your enivronment well, your gone" Or how it tells a species to alter itself to improve the survibility of that species. Natural selection in not a person, place, or thing, its nothing. How can nothing tell something to change or die? People talk about it as if it was a person, or something, its not. Natural selection also says that if a something isnt reproducing, its gone, well, i hope i have kids because i dont want this "natural selection to take me out.
Uhmm... what on earth are you talking about? Certainly not natural selection. Natural selection is a phenomenon we can witness all the time. It doesn't "tell" species to die out. If they cannot adapt to changing environments, they simply do! Luckily, in every population there are lots of mutations, so some critters are simply better adapted to the new environment than the others. Since these stand a better chance to survive and father offspring, their genes will spread through the gene pool until a significant number of critters will share their mutation.

How do mutations survive against the old genes? Quite a number of these are caused by dominant genes - these are expressed no matter what genes the other partner contributes. Others are recessive (meaning you need the recessive genes from two carriers to express the mutation), but so beneficient that those who have it will, e.g. be much better protected against certain viruses and sicknesses (sickle cell anemia is an autosomal, recessive mutation that is a sickness, yet protects the wearer better against malaria. There are high rates of SCA carriers in places with high malaria rates, whereas SCA is no advantage with no malaria around and gets selected out. This is natural selection at work).

Point is: Organisms change all the time. Most of these changes never make it into the gene pool, but a few prove advantageous under the current circumstances and spread.
 
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worship4ever

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Mutations huh, so you have mutations and natural selection that change species.

1 - Rare effects. Mutations are very rare. They hardly ever occur in the natural world. Their very rarity dooms the possibility that they could produce the prolific number of plant and animal species found in our world.

Mutations are simply too rare to have produced all the necessary traits of even one life form, much less millions. For each plant and animal has millions upon millions of specific characteristics.

2 - Random effects. Mutations are always random—always! They are never purposive or directed. Yet the millions of characteristics in a living creature are very special: Each one is needed and serves an important function.

A mutation is a random, wild, event. It is something like an automobile crash: It comes suddenly, when least expected, and no one can predict the outcome. But one thing you can be sure of: It will produce damage.

3 - Not helpful. Evolution requires improvement, but mutations never help anyone. They only weaken or injure.

4 - Very harmful effects. Nearly all mutations are harmful. In most instances, they weaken or damage the organism so seriously that it will not long survive. If it does survive, its offspring tend to eventually die out.

1 - Not once. Not once has there ever been a recorded instance of a truly beneficial mutation!

There are instances of reshuffled genes, which produced better varieties of grapes, apples, and roses. But those were normal changes within species. (They were still grapes, apples, and roses.) None of these are mutations. A true mutation is a damage factor which produces injury or death.

As a result of millions of fruit-fly experiments, under intense radiation, not one useful mutation has ever been found.

2 - Only harm. Those organisms, which mutate and do not outright kill, are generally so weakened that they or their offspring tend to die out. Given enough mutations, not evolution into something better—but death—would come to everyone on earth.

3 - Usually eliminate. Organisms which have mutations are so badly weakened, that they tend to die out or are weeded out by the problems of life.

4 - Mutagens. For decades, scientists have been warning us about the dangers of radiation. What is that danger? It is X rays, radiation, and certain chemicals which can cause mutations in our body. How can such a terrible curse benefit us or produce new species?

5 - Dangerous accidents. It is only the rareness of mutations in the natural world (apart from X rays and atomic bombs) which protect the race from being destroyed by mutations.

6 - Intertwined catastrophe. Each gene affects many characteristics, and each characteristic is affected by many genes. This complicated interweaving of the DNA codes means that each mutation can result in damage to many things.
There is no way that a bunch of mutations could help anyone.

7 - Only random. People can never predict in advance when or where a mutation will occur or what type of damage will result. It is a totally random event.

8 - Small changes cannot do it. Evolutionists say that, given enough time, a few mutations, here and there, can produce new species. Each one changes one species a little more toward another. But that is not true, for we find no halfway species anywhere! All are distinct and different.

9 - Mathematically impossible. Not enough mutations could naturally occur to accomplish any trans-species changes. Mutations usually occur only once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule.

Assuming that all mutations were beneficial (which none are), the odds of even several mutations naturally occurring within one organism would be very unlikely. Four mutations, for example, would only occur once in a billion, billion times.

10 - Time no solution. Evolution requires millions of beneficial mutations, all working closely together to produce delicate living systems full of fine-tuned structures, organs, hormones, and all the rest. This could not be done in a little amount of time or immense amounts of time. How long would a new type of animal last while waiting for millions of years of mutations to put it together?

11 - Gene Stability. There is a reason we can know that mutations have been as infrequent in the past as they are now: the factor of gene stability. If mutations had been abundant earlier, then, during past centuries, our bodies would have been destroyed by them.

12 - Syntropy. *Szent-Gyorgyi, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, pointed out that it would be impossible for any organism to survive even for a moment, unless it was already complete with all its functions and they were all working perfectly or nearly so. Everything in a species has to work right, or it becomes weak and eventually dies out. Mutations do not strengthen; they only weaken. They do not produce new, stronger species; they only injure the ones which already exist.

13 - Minor changes damage offspring the most. Most mutations are small, but it is those little changes which would hurt offspring the most. That is because major mutations kill too quickly for there to be offspring.

14 - Single generation required. Hundreds and even thousands of positive mutations, working harmoniously together would be needed—and it would all have to occur very fast. It would be impossible for mutations, strung out over centuries or ages to produce the needed changes from one species to another.

15 - Not big enough. Most mutations are so minor that, although they are damaging or deadly, they could not possibly change one species to another. They just do not make a large enough change.

16 - Reproductive changes too infrequent. Mutational changes in the reproductive organs occur far less often than elsewhere. Yet it is reproductive changes which would especially be needed for new species to be formed.

17 - Evolution requires increasing complexity. Evolution, by its very nature, must continually move upward. Yet mutations only tear down and disintegrate.

18 - Evolution would require new information. Vast, new information banks in the DNA would be required, for a new species to be produced. Mutations could never accomplish that, any more than swinging a bat in a china closet would improve the glassware stored there.

19 - Evolution requires new organs and different structures. But mutations would not provide the new physical equipment and capabilities.

20 - Not enough visible mutations. For every visible mutation (which changes a body part in a way to be seen), there are 20 invisible ones which generally kill the organism.

21 - Never higher vitality than the parent. Geneticists tell us that each mutation weakens the organism. Never is its offspring stronger than the damaged parent. Soon the family line ends.

22 - No evidence of species change. Mutations are not producing new species, yet we should see it occurring. In a later major article in this series (Fossils and Strata), we will learn that there is no evidence of new species production in the past. (We can know this, because we should be able to find the halfway species in between, yet they have never existed.)

23 - Gene uniqueness forbids species change. Because there are millions of factors in every DNA code, it forbids the possibility of wholesale change by mutations.
More info on this at http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut02.htm
 
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Siliconaut

Not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell
Your point 1 is false. Mutations are the rule, not the exception.
Point 2 is meaningless. Mutations *are* random, selection is not.
3 is an outright lie. See resistance against HIV, for example, or ambidextrosity.
4 is simply natural selection working, weeding out the unfit. Thans for proving my point.

The rest of your points are either based on the first four or outright and repeatedly disproven falsehoods, so their wrong premises make them wrong a priori.

Why bother copy-pasting articles you obviously didn't even read through, much less understood their logical fallacies? Please stick to the matter at hand and try bringing up arguments that haven't been debunked a hundred times already. :)
 
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troodon

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Rohatu Bhangaa said:
Troodon: Thank you for engaging my questions intelligently
I try ;)

1) I understand and partially agree with your suggestion on the feather example (I cant help but think that down warming feathers and primary flight feathers differ so dramatically that we would find the same problem we began with)
The fundamentals aren't really too different. The composition of down and flight feathers, as you might guess, are the same. Really the only difference is in the aerodynamics (ie: flight feathers are asymmetrical). However (and I just double-checked this just to be sure) asymmetry is only necessary to generate lift; something that is not necessary if flight began in a gliding scenario. From here you can have natural selection begin to select more asymetrical feathers which allow birds to develop powered flight. It's really pretty simple
but realize that this was an example, and that explaining feathers does not explain the root of my question: the usefulness of intermediate forms.
Well, a larger point I was trying to (and failed to) make with my answer to your feathers question was that intermediate forms can have unsuspecting uses. For example, the fingers of some fossilized birds (I'm thinking of Confuciusornis specifically) are in a stage inbetween the fully independant, functional fingers of Archaeopteryx and the fused hands of all modern birds. The hands, which look very much like those of a hoatzin chick, are theorized (yes we don't know for sure) to have been used to climb up and hang on to trees just like its modern counterpart. So here we have a perfect example of fully functional fingers used for capturing prey (the decendants of Archaeopteryx and possibly Archaeopteryx itself) going through an intermediate phase where they are used for grip on trees until the final stage where the hand serves only as a place for the wings to fasten to. Was that clear?

3) According to Darwinian evolution, based on natural selection through a series of gradual changes, speciation does not occur in one generation. However, I am under the impression that punctuated evolution requires such changes do happen - MUST happen - in one generation.
You're missunderstanding punctuated equilibrium. Even under this model, speciation does not occur in one generation. It happens extremely rapidly but this is on a geological timescale. Meaning that though the change may seem abrupt and immediate, it actually took thousands to tens of thousands of years. After these periods of change you will then reach the stagnant part of evolution where the species is sufficiently suited to its environment and change occurs much more slowly.

Isn't that the "hopeful monster" theory?
That term's new to me.
By chance, one creature is born with a fully functional trait (i.e. a lizard gives birth to a gliding lizard).
The trait does not need to be fully functional. There are lizards today that jump from tree to tree without any gliding mechanism. Give them an instinct to hold out their arms, slightly longer fingers, and just a little bit of extra skin and you're well on your way to making a glider really quick.

If punctuated evolution has already been abandoned in favor of a newer flavor, how does THAT work?
It hasn't, it works

Short of divine intervention, how could evolution perpetuate itself?
A steady supply of mutations and natural selection.

Edit: Ugh, misspelled Confuciusornis.
 
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worship4ever

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Siliconaut, geez, your last post didn't say anything. I can sum it up into, "its a lie" or "the others fall into the first couple numbers." You didn't explain anything except, its all a lie, nice evidence. And for the copy and paste comment. Yea, i sure do read everything i post, but to save time and energy on YOU guys i post what's most important from the article, but i can send you the entire thing too and explain it.
 
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Siliconaut

Not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell
@w4e: Just putting as much energy into it as you do. :)

I did answer all your points, and I even went so far to explain the why. If you can't grasp logic when it jumps up and bites you in the knee, I feel like I can't help.

Your post was bunk, and I told you why. Do I need to reiterate? ;)
 
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Pete Harcoff

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from the statistic of there bein a 1/10,000,000 chance of a mutation, depending on how many replications mitios counts as (1 or 3, though only 2 are relevent in females) you either have 1/5,000,000 or one in 1/1,111,111 thats either 1000 people or 4000 people world wide that have a mutation reletive to there parents genes, so it is indeed a very slow process.
 
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Siliconaut

Not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell
@Isaac: I suggest reading the first link, under "Appendix I - mutation rates".
In the 28 January 1999 issue of Nature, in the article "High genomic deleterious mutation rates in hominids" Walker and Kneightey estimate that the mutation rate in the effective genome is a bit higher, 4.2 mutations per individual, of which 1.6 are deleterious.
The lowest figure given (not in my quote) would be an average of 1.6 muations.
 
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