Do evolutionists really understand the complexity of things?

[rjs330]

Right. Evolution does not "decide" anything, it just evolves. But your statement about changing into something "specific" is interesting. Species are not pre-existing categories into which creatures evolve. They are just what happens as a consequence of adaptation to the environment.


Yet here you are arguing that evolution driven by natural laws is impossible.

I argue that by scripture. God could have, but he didn't. I think I said that didn't I?

 

[SteveB28]

I argue that by scripture. God could have, but he didn't. I think I said that didn't I?

....according to claims made by other men like you....

 

[OldWiseGuy]

He's trying to answer it. I don't know why he is bothering--I tried answering, too, and you blew me off--but maybe you could interact a little rather than expecting it on a plate.
The concept of random variation and natural selection answers what you are asking if you would pay attention and ask follow up questions that were more than rhetorical. Do you really want to know how it works, or just prove to yourself that it can't?

Which came first; the chicken or the egg?
The egg. Egg-laying creatures were ancestors to the chicken.

So "I'm afraid it's turtles all the way down, old Chap", is the answer?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Preposterous! Yes offspring are different than parents. It's a built in part of creation so we are not all clones.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Regardless of why the mechanism works the way it works, there IS a mechanism that produces this variation in newborns. And that mechanism is mutation.
Next comes natural selection. After all, mutations have the potential to influence fitness. Every newborn has a bunch of mutations. This is not debateable. It's fact. Observable, verifiable fact.

It's an amazing part of God's design. Look around you. Every tree every stone every grain of sand is unique. The complexity all screams design

No, "complexity" does not scream anything.
Complexity, by itself, isn't evidence of anything other then complexity. Just observing something to be complex does not, in any way, even only hint at its origins or how the complexity came about. At all.

It does not scream that all there is just happened by accident from a common ancestor.

Nobody, except creationists, says that evolution is "just an accident".

And common ancestry of living things is a genetic fact, by the way.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

A little condescending. If course parents pass DNA to offspring. Reproduction is another amazing process that speaks of the complexity of life and how impossible it is to have happened by chance. Another reason to believe in intelligent design.

Your intellectual lazyness is true the roof.

Your entire argument to claim "design", seems to be no more or less then "it's complex and I don't understand it, therefor go".

I shouldn't have to explain why such a stance is
1. intellectually lazy
2. fallacious

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Evolution from one thing to another is either chance or design.

False dichotomy.

Natural selection is a natural (and inevitable) process that is not mere "chance".

Since DNA,,molecules and all the microscopic things that exist do not have brains they cannot make decisions.

Nore do they need to.

They cannot decide that they want to evolve into something they are not already therefore it is chance

It always amazes me that people who clearly don't understand how evolution works, think they are qualified to argue against it.

Again, "natural selection" - have ever even heared about it? it sounds like you haven't.

Like I have said before, God could have decided to create by evolution by setting the laws of nature in place to do so. That too would have been intelligent design. BUT the bible says he didn't.

It doesn't matter what the bible says, if the facts of reality say otherwise..

 

[rjs330]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Regardless of why the mechanism works the way it works, there IS a mechanism that produces this variation in newborns. And that mechanism is mutation.
Next comes natural selection. After all, mutations have the potential to influence fitness. Every newborn has a bunch of mutations. This is not debateable. It's fact. Observable, verifiable fact.



No, "complexity" does not scream anything.
Complexity, by itself, isn't evidence of anything other then complexity. Just observing something to be complex does not, in any way, even only hint at its origins or how the complexity came about. At all.




Nobody, except creationists, says that evolution is "just an accident".

And common ancestry of living things is a genetic fact, by the way.

Humans are still humans, orangutans are still orangutans spiders are still spiders. And common ancestry is not a fact. It can't be proven. Its an assumption. The complexity does scream intelligent design because Its impossible for this universe to exist in its complex form to allow life to exist the way it does and continue to perpetuate that life without being designed to do so.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Romans 1:18‭-‬21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/rom.1.18-21.ESV

 

[Loudmouth]

Evolution from one thing to another is either chance or design.

There is a third possibility: Evolution.

Since DNA,,molecules and all the microscopic things that exist do not have brains they cannot make decisions. They cannot decide that they want to evolve into something they are not already therefore it is chance.

What would stop a population of imperfect replicators from evolving? How would less fit individuals consistently outcompete more fit individuals?

Only things with intelligence can choose to change into something specific.

Why would evolution require a population to change into something specific?

Like I have said before, God could have decided to create by evolution by setting the laws of nature in place to do so. That too would have been intelligent design.

No, it wouldn't. ID/creationism strongly states that the biodiversity we see could not have been produced by natural processes.

 

[Loudmouth]

Humans are still humans, orangutans are still orangutans spiders are still spiders.

Humans and orangutans are still primates, as was their common ancestor. Humans, orangutans, and spiders are all still bilaterians, as was was their common ancestor.

And common ancestry is not a fact. It can't be proven.

"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 × 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
http://www.pnas.org/content/96/18/10254.full

We share over 200,000 ERVs with chimps. That proves common ancestry.

The complexity does scream intelligent design because Its impossible for this universe to exist in its complex form to allow life to exist the way it does and continue to perpetuate that life without being designed to do so.

Where did you demonstrate that it is impossible for this universe to exist without being designed so?

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Romans 1:18‭-‬21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/rom.1.18-21.ESV

All claims backed by zero evidence.

 

[Loudmouth]

I argue that by scripture. God could have, but he didn't. I think I said that didn't I?

Stories in books don't make facts go away.

 

[rjs330]

False dichotomy.

Natural selection is a natural (and inevitable) process that is not mere "chance".



Nore do they need to.



It always amazes me that people who clearly don't understand how evolution works, think they are qualified to argue against it.

Again, "natural selection" - have ever even heared about it? it sounds like you haven't.



It doesn't matter what the bible says, if the facts of reality say otherwise..

Natural selection is the mantra of the evolutionist. You love to take the idea that natural selection such as a moth changing color to survive somehow equates to everything therefore came from one thing without any design or necessity to do so. Why would a single thing whatever that was need to evolve? What conditions were there at that time that caused the first molecule or whatever to begin to evolve into something else. What was the necessity of evolving into a spider or a bird or a lizard or a monkey. The micro evolution of a single creature such as a rabbit to have a different coat color for survival is built in design. It's based on necessity. Yet you cannot not ever will be able to prove that a single cell will evolve into anything other than it was to begin with. And no amount of experimentation has ever been able to show otherwise.

There is no proof of any natural selection creating something completely new from something it wasn't already.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Humans are still humans, orangutans are still orangutans spiders are still spiders.

And humans will remain humans, orangutans will remain orangutans and spiders will remains spiders.

Evolution is a vertical process. Speciation results in sub-species.
Cats don't turn into dogs.

You know what humans also still are?
Primates, Mammals, tetrapods, eukaryotes,....

And common ancestry is not a fact.

It is. A genetic fact.

It can't be proven

It can. Just like your dad can be proven to be your biological dad.
We can compare DNA and objectively infer kindship and ancestry.

Its an assumption

It's not.

The complexity does scream intelligent design because Its impossible for this universe to exist in its complex form to allow life to exist the way it does and continue to perpetuate that life without being designed to do so.

How did you conclude that this was "impossible" without a supernatural being designing it all?
What is your evidence for this claim?

How can your conclusion be tested?

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Romans 1:18‭-‬21 ESV
http://bible.com/59/rom.1.18-21.ESV

When you are done preaching and are ready to provide some evidence for your claims, I'll be all ears.

 

[Loudmouth]

Natural selection is the mantra of the evolutionist. You love to take the idea that natural selection such as a moth changing color to survive somehow equates to everything therefore came from one thing without any design or necessity to do so. Why would a single thing whatever that was need to evolve? What conditions were there at that time that caused the first molecule or whatever to begin to evolve into something else.

There are two conditions:

1. Produce offspring that have mutations.

2. Limited amounts of food.

With just those two conditions the inevitable and unavoidable consequence is evolution. Individuals with mutations that allow them to outcompete others in the population will tend to have more offspring. Those beneficial mutations will become more common in the population. This is just a fact, and an observed fact.

What was the necessity of evolving into a spider or a bird or a lizard or a monkey.

Do you still not know how evolution works? Species don't evolve horizontally. Not a single lizard or monkey has a spider as their ancestor. Species evolve vertically.

Also, you haven't shown that the species we see today are a necessary outcome of evolution. As Stephen Jay Gould was fond of saying, if we rewound the tape of evolution and restarted it, we wouldn't see the same outcome.

The micro evolution of a single creature such as a rabbit to have a different coat color for survival is built in design.

EVIDENCE?????

Yet you cannot not ever will be able to prove that a single cell will evolve into anything other than it was to begin with.

"Boraas (1983) reported the induction of multicellularity in a strain of Chlorella pyrenoidosa (since reclassified as C. vulgaris) by predation. He was growing the unicellular green alga in the first stage of a two stage continuous culture system as for food for a flagellate predator, Ochromonas sp., that was growing in the second stage. Due to the failure of a pump, flagellates washed back into the first stage. Within five days a colonial form of the Chlorella appeared. It rapidly came to dominate the culture. The colony size ranged from 4 cells to 32 cells. Eventually it stabilized at 8 cells. This colonial form has persisted in culture for about a decade. The new form has been keyed out using a number of algal taxonomic keys. They key out now as being in the genus Coelosphaerium, which is in a different family from Chlorella."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

There is no proof of any natural selection creating something completely new from something it wasn't already.

I just disproved that claim.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Natural selection is the mantra of the evolutionist.

Natural selection is an important, if not THE most important part, of the evolutionary process. You can call it a "mantra" if you wish, but if you are simply going to ignore the role of natural selection the evolutionary model, then that will only result in strawman arguments.

So the question before you is, are you going to be intellectually honest and try to build a rational case against what the model of evolution really is all about, or do you prefer to take the intellectually dishonest and irational stance of simply holding up a bronze age book and pit it against a strawman version of evolution?

Your answer is important, because if it is the latter, then the conversation with you ends. Since at that point, whatever you have to say about the topic is just a waste of time and energy for both you as well as the people you engage with.

You love to take the idea that natural selection such as a moth changing color to survive somehow equates to everything therefore came from one thing without any design or necessity to do so.

Another strawman.

Natural selection is merely that the most fit for the environment will be more likely to survive and spread their genes.

Do you disagree with that?
Do you think that the least naturally skilled hunter has equal probability of success as the most naturally skilled hunter to catch a prey?

Why would a single thing whatever that was need to evolve?

There is no "need". Or at least not that I'm aware of. I see no reason to entertain that option either.

Life just happens to be an imperfect replicator. Reproduction with variation/mutation + natural selection simply inevitably results in evolving replicators.

What "need"?

What conditions were there at that time that caused the first molecule or whatever to begin to evolve into something else.

I don't know and I don't see how it matters either.
We don't need to know where first life came from in order to study how existing life behaves and what processes it is subject to.

What was the necessity of evolving into a spider or a bird or a lizard or a monkey.

In terms of "cosmic necessity" (which is what I think you are implying), there is no such thing. Or at least, there doesn't seem to be.

As for in an evolutionary context... well... you (as a species) either adapt to an ever changing environment or die.

So why does it "need" to evolve? Well, because if it doesn't, it'll eventually go extinct.

The micro evolution of a single creature such as a rabbit to have a different coat color for survival is built in design.

Evidence for this claim?

It's based on necessity.

Nope, it's just natural selection. When you live at the north pole and are a bear, you'll be better of with a white fur then with a brown one.

It is not a coincidence that bears in the woods are brownish, while bears at the north pole are white. That's natural selection for ya.

Yet you cannot not ever will be able to prove that a single cell will evolve into anything other than it was to begin with.

It seems like you missed the last half a century of scientific advancement. Since that time, we discovered this thing called DNA, which allows us to prove exactly that which you claim is impossible to prove.

You should catch up.

And no amount of experimentation has ever been able to show otherwise.

Wait, are you saying that there are no experiments repeating 3.8 billion years of evolution? Who would have thought, ey?

There is no proof of any natural selection creating something completely new from something it wasn't already.

First, natural selection selects, it doesn't create anything.
Second, that is just plain false.

Let's take an obvious one: nylonese. The ability to metabolise nylon. Nylon is an artificial material that did not exist at one point.

There are bacteria that evolved the capability of metabolising this material.
No, they weren't able to metabolise this before that. The material didn't even exist.

A similar thing happened under lab conditions.
The ancestral population could physically not produce a given substance. And then it could. The very mutation that made it possible was even identified.

And no, without that mutation, it is physically impossible to do so.
This metabolism pathway was NOT "already there".

Furthermore, it seems you also have quite some trouble distinguishing between the facts of evolution on the one hand and the theory of evolution on the other.

Common ancestry is a genetic fact.
The theory of evolution is a model of explanation that explains the facts of evolution. The mechanism. Reproduction + variation + natural selection. That is the mechanism. The explanation of the facts.

 

[Mobezom]

Let's clear some things up:

Evolution does not say that there exists any sort of "foresight" or "intent". Organisms evolve in the local direction of the maximal increase in propagation. If that results in a bird eventually, well, that wasn't the intent. That's just what happened.

Evolution is neither random nor directed by a being. There is a combination of two forces: random mutations, and then selection (natural, sexual, etc.). The mutations are random. The selection is not. Selection is basically "that which survives, reproduces" - "good" genes are spread throughout a population, while "bad" genes. It cannot be stressed enough that "good" and "bad" are relative to the organism and the environment. Thick fur is good for a polar bear, but bad for a desert mammal. "Good" is in essence "this mutation helps its carrier have more babies," whether it helps the organism survive more (eat, and don't get eaten) or reproduce more (less time to sexual maturity, for instance).

 

[Kylie]

There is no proof of any natural selection creating something completely new from something it wasn't already.

Because natural selection doesn't make changes like that.

Natural selection works with what is there, making only small changes, things that can happen when only a small part of the DNA molecule is changed. Any large changes will probably be harmful. But very small changes will have a much better chance of being not immediately fatal.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Because natural selection doesn't make changes like that.

Natural selection works with what is there, making only small changes, things that can happen when only a small part of the DNA molecule is changed. Any large changes will probably be harmful. But very small changes will have a much better chance of being not immediately fatal.

What was the starting point of evolution?

What did it work on and where did the organism come from that it began to work on?

How many 'choices' did evolution 'select' from?

If we have over 50 mutations within us how do they manifest?

Do they compete with each other?

How do we know when and if a 'selection' is made?

 

[Speedwell]

What was the starting point of evolution?

A population of self-replicating life forms.

What did it work on and where did the organism come from that it began to work on?

It worked on randomly distributed (think "bell curve") variation exhibited by the individuals in the population. Where that first population came from is not known.

How many 'choices' did evolution 'select' from?

All the varied individuals of the population.

If we have over 50 mutations within us how do they manifest?

As random variation.

Do they compete with each other?

They interact with each other.

How do we know when and if a 'selection' is made?

Some individuals reproduce more successfully than others.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

What was the starting point of evolution?

What did it work on and where did the organism come from that it began to work on?

It would have started with the first replicators. These would be relatively simple chain (polymer) molecules, probably RNA or a related poymer, that could copy themselves. There are several competing hypotheses for how and where they could have originated - for a readable potted history of the search for life's origins, leading to the current best hypotheses, see How Life Began.

How many 'choices' did evolution 'select' from?

Once a molecule that could copy itself, however unreliably, had appeared, there would very quickly be many millions of such molecules, using up the organic molecules around them to produce new copies. Copying errors and a tendency to attach additional units would result in a vast number of variations on the theme, some better at copying than others (e.g. faster, or more reliable), some more robust than others, and so-on. Computer simulations suggest that a sort of 'molecular ecosystem' would appear, with one variation tending to become dominant in numbers before being outcompeted by another variant. The selection pressures would vary depending on the environmental conditions and resources available, for example, in hot conditions, the more robust replicators would have an advantage, or in resource-limited conditions, smaller, more efficient replicators would predominate. That would be the earliest evolution - variations of molecules that could copy themselves being selected by the environmental conditions and the influence of other replicators (overcrowding, using up resources, etc).

If we have over 50 mutations within us how do they manifest?

Generally the effects are not significant enough to notice, but if you're unlucky, one might cause a disease like cystic fibrosis, or something less serious, like colour-blindness. We tend to notice the detrimental ones more than the beneficial ones.

Do they compete with each other?

Not sure what you mean - the effects of mutations can be cumulative, so a new mutation in an individual might have an effect that combines with an inherited mutation to produce a noticeable result. but the chances of the 50-odd random mutations each individual has interacting with each other are remote.

How do we know when and if a 'selection' is made?

An individual selection event might be anything that reduces your chance of passing on your genes to the next generation, (or, conversely, gives you an advantage in that respect); things like early death, producing few or no offspring, producing infertile offspring, and so-on. At the individual level these effects appear fairly random, but at a population level they are more obvious, especially when there are strong selection pressures (food shortages, diseases, etc).

 

[OldWiseGuy]

"A population of self-replicating life forms."
"Where that first population came from is not known."

Was evolution an internal or external force acting on these life forms?