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explain fruit and vegetables by N. selection

huggybear

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i am interested to hear evolutionists explain via natural selection things like

avocados
apples
oranges
peaches
apricots
bananas
chillis
broccoli
grain
potatoes
carrots
beans
snow peas
onion
tomatoes
coconuts
garlic
olives
pineapples
corn


herbs and spices
and the list goes on

if all life is the result of survival of the fittest and mutation by necessity ,how do you explain all these things ? what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados to survive? and the tomato and so on, the point i am trying to prove is that you simply cannot account for all life on earth by natural selection,

no evo trolls are to post on this thread and no answers that lack any good sense and or reasoning
 

TheGnome

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Fruit contains seeds, and seeds are necessary for new plants to grow. Vegetables are referred to plants that are eaten. Farmers have been using artificial selection to make both fruits and vegetables more attractive and delicious.
 
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Nathan45

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what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados to survive?

If it didn't grow good avocados, humans wouldn't have planted it.

You should know that all domesticated plants were bred over hundreds or thousands of years from wild plants...

For a wild plant, a piece of fruit is simply a collection of seeds with enough fruit content in it to make the furries want to spread the seeds around... since plants are not gifted with locomotion, some types rely on animals ( who are going to eat plants, anyway ) to spread their seeds around.

The banana is often touted as "the perfect fruit" in creationists circles, yet here's a picture of a wild banana:

Wikipedia said:

Fruits of wild-type bananas have numerous large, hard seeds.

Basically, all domesticated fruit started out as disgusting seed filled things... in the natural environment fruit needs to have enough fruit content to make the furries want to eat it and spread the seeds around, any other fruit content is superflous..

However, it turns out that humans are wholely capable of determining which plants live and which die... so it changes from natural selection to artifical selection... so we bred plants over thousands of years, and only replant the seeds of the plants that bear the best fruit...

Basically, the food crops we have today are because Humans have been breeding plants for thousands of years. Plants are selected to suit humans. Otherwise they wouldn't have been planted.

Luke 3:9
Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire
 
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RealityCheck

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if all life is the result of survival of the fittest and mutation by necessity ,how do you explain all these things ? what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados to survive? and the tomato and so on, the point i am trying to prove is that you simply cannot account for all life on earth by natural selection,


Well, even discounting the hundreds or thousands of years of artificial selection that have gone into the current form of such fruits and vegetables that we actually eat, those plants still had to come from some unmanipulated source plant.

But the question is not complete. It would appear that the question "what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados to survive" is really asking "what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados that are edible by humans to survive"

First, of course, it's already been pointed out that the avocados that we eat are the result of artificial selection. But beyond that, as I say, some farmer somewhere had to try a wild avocado (or its forebearer) and figure out they were at least edible to try improving on them.

The wild avocado, however, doesn't grow so that it can be edible for humans. It grows in order to promote its own continued generation of more avocado plant. Why is it edible? It just is. Why is hemlock inedible? It just is.

Or rather - an avocado is edible not because it wantsto be, but because our bodies and specifically our digestive systems can make use of some of the components of the avocado, and it won't kill us (at least most of us, though I've never heard of anyone being allergic to avocado). Hemlock is not edible for precisely the opposite reason - it's poisonous to us. You can eat it - heck, you can pretty much eat anything you think you can get past your mouth - it just is a very poor idea to do so.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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if all life is the result of survival of the fittest and mutation by necessity ,how do you explain all these things ? what is it about the avocado tree that it needed to grow avocados to survive? and the tomato and so on, the point i am trying to prove is that you simply cannot account for all life on earth by natural selection,
They're elaborate lures to ensure seeds are trasported far and wide, thereby stopping any competition between mother and daughter plants.
 
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Blayz

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A good place to start looking concerning human directed evolution of plants is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broccoli

"That domesticated cabbage was eventually bred into widely varying forms, including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts, all of which remain the same species."

Also what is "mutation by necessity"? Please try to avoid strawman definitions.
 
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Bombila

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Different kinds of plants use different seed distribution strategies. Some, like dandelions or maple seeds, are distributed by wind. Most berries and many fruit have hard seeds, so a bird can eat them, and later, somewhere far from the mother plant, drop them with a convenient little fertilizing booster pack. Others use the 'stick to your fur' method of moving away from home.

It's easy to see why many fruit bearing plants would become more edible for animals. Most animals have a 'sweet tooth' (cats being an interesting exception), because sugars deliver quick energy. The sweeter a fruit is, the more likely an animal will eat it and therefore carry the seed. So eventually, plants bearing sweeter fruit will have an advantage, as they will be eaten more often, and there will be more of them than of their not so sweet neighbours.

Same goes for oily seeds. Most nuts have high fat content, so animals like to eat them for that reason. Nuts are usually collected by small animals and birds who eat some and store some. They don't eat all the nuts they've stored or buried (they forget where they are, or die before getting back to the nuts), so some of them will survive and thrive.

This is absolutely basic natural selection.
 
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huggybear

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Actually, almost all of the foods you listed are products of artificial selection, having been cultivated by humans over many centuries. So your argument is moot.
i said no answers that dont make sense, what you are saying is ridiculous, yes species are bred and developed but that doesnt explain the species itself does it?
 
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huggybear

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If it didn't grow good avocados, humans wouldn't have planted it.

You should know that all domesticated plants were bred over hundreds or thousands of years from wild plants...

For a wild plant, a piece of fruit is simply a collection of seeds with enough fruit content in it to make the furries want to spread the seeds around... since plants are not gifted with locomotion, some types rely on animals ( who are going to eat plants, anyway ) to spread their seeds around.

The banana is often touted as "the perfect fruit" in creationists circles, yet here's a picture of a wild banana:



Basically, all domesticated fruit started out as disgusting seed filled things... in the natural environment fruit needs to have enough fruit content to make the furries want to eat it and spread the seeds around, any other fruit content is superflous..

However, it turns out that humans are wholely capable of determining which plants live and which die... so it changes from natural selection to artifical selection... so we bred plants over thousands of years, and only replant the seeds of the plants that bear the best fruit...

Basically, the food crops we have today are because Humans have been breeding plants for thousands of years. Plants are selected to suit humans. Otherwise they wouldn't have been planted.

Luke 3:9


i understand about the way strains are bred and developed, that is not my question, but thanks for the article, my question is how the fruit came about in the first place ,as each system is seperate how did the plant know that nature needed it to produce fruit, if there is no intelligence involved in life, a plant does not need to produce fruit to survive on its own either there are thousands of non fruit bearing plants all over,

the way i see it (and a few billion others) is that it is impossible for all this diversity to come from a common ancestor,and without god, where does the new information come from to turn a single cell into a human or an avocado tree,? you say "it just did it because it needed it" but how? the theory of evolution and common descent is based mainly on a dogmatic idea ,it is what some people "think" must be true, but really is far from being proven and believed, do you really think that there would be so many people in the world who believe in an intelligent designer,if science really had proved it all came about naturally ?

i tell you that if it had 95 percent of them would forget about god, but they havnt and wont as they see that the theory of common descent is just a theory with no real evidence to back it up

thank god that most people in this world still dont believe it
 
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huggybear

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Did he just flat out ignore everything that was posted?

Yeah, I think he did.
no i didnt ignore what was said,as i said i understand speciation, my question could have been worded better ,that was, how does nature know that it needs to produce fruit to survive if each system is seperate?
and where does the information come from to do that?
 
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Psudopod

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i understand about the way strains are bred and developed, that is not my question, but thanks for the article, my question is how the fruit came about in the first place ,as each system is seperate how did the plant know that nature needed it to produce fruit, if there is no intelligence involved in life, a plant does not need to produce fruit to survive on its own either there are thousands of non fruit bearing plants all over,

Nothing in nature (outside of artifical selection maybe) needs to know anything. No plant chose to grow fruit; a plant can't think "hm I needs fruit!" If you think this is how evolution works it's no wonder you think it's crazy.

Each offspring is different from from it's parents, mostly in small, often untoniced ways. Most of those dfferences will have no effect on on the offspring's survival or reproductive success. Sometimes these changes will have an impact on the creature that leads to them being more likely to have offspring that grow up and reproduce themselves. And because they have offspring that reproduce, that change is carried on through the population. Multiple successful changes add up as time and generations pass. They are selected for, but not by any active choice.

In the case of plants, having your seeds fall away from the parent tree is benefical to parent and offspring. Having animals carry away the seeds is one way of doing that. If the seedpods from one plant taste better than the seedpods from another, more animals will carry away the seeds from the first tree, than the second, and thus the offspring of the first tree are more likely to be sucessful. There is no concious decision on the part of either tree.
 
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Split Rock

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no i didnt ignore what was said,as i said i understand speciation, my question could have been worded better ,that was, how does nature know that it needs to produce fruit to survive if each system is seperate?
and where does the information come from to do that?

Why do you people come here and argue against something you have no understanding of? Clearly you do not understand the very basic definition of evolution by natural selection, yet you argue against it here.

from wikipedia:
"Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, or the observable characteristics of an organism, such that individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes. The phenotype's genetic basis, genotype associated with the favorable phenotype, will increase in frequency over the following generations. Over time, this process can result in adaptations that specialize organisms for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species. In other words, natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution may take place in a population of a specific organism."


A more simple definition is descent with modification based on differential reproduction.

To learn the basics of evolution, I recommend this website: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
 
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RealityCheck

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the way i see it (and a few billion others) is that it is impossible for all this diversity to come from a common ancestor,and without god, where does the new information come from to turn a single cell into a human or an avocado tree,?

Again, dispense with the "know" idea. You're basing this argument on the idea that "nature needs to know new information in order to make changes."

That's not how it works.

you say "it just did it because it needed it" but how?

The descendants of any one ancestor are not identical - each has different traits. If none of those traits affect survival, all are equally likely to pass on their genes. If some traits help survival, those are more likely to continue being passed on, and if some hurt survival, those are less likely to be passed on. Any organism that carries genes that promote survival will be more likely to live longer and procreate more often, and those that carry genes that inhibit survival will be less likely to live longer and will procreate less. Over time, the trait that inhibits survival will generally disappear or, at the least, become an infrequently inherited trait.

THAT is how "natural selection" works. Nature doesn't consciously select anything. It happens naturally in the course of birth, life, survival, and death.

With fruit trees. Let's not even consider the artificial manipulation that humans have subjected fruit trees to in order to produce better fruit. Let's simply consider the wild banana that was pictured earlier. The fruit itself carries the seeds for future generations of banana trees. By itself, the fruit and seeds will simply, eventually, fall off the tree, rot in the ground, and potentially become a new tree. Problem is, if this happens with all the fruit, there will be a lot of closely clustered new growths near the original tree, and not all of those will survive. The competition for resources will be fierce (water, soil nutrients, sunlight, etc.) and it may be that none will survive because the original tree, being mature already, will overshadow the saplings and prevent them from growing (those banana trees have large leaves - and that's another survival trait, incidentally). If the tree continues to produce that kind of fruit, it won't pass on its genetics to any viable trees. So long as the fruit continues to fall just around the tree, future saplings will continue to deplete the soil of its nutrients, continue to compete with each other and the mature tree, etc. etc. That banana tree won't produce a huge population of future banana trees.

But say the fruit happens to be edible. Now, the tree doesn't know that the fruit is edible, nor does it consciously make the fruit edible, nor does any other entity consciously decide "let's make this fruit edible." But it is edible. Rodents and birds thrive on edible fruit. When one of them eats one of these wild bananas, it tends to eat both the fruit and the seeds. (It is important to note again the fruit is not designed to be edible by others. The fruit contains the nutrients needed for the seeds to start growing when they are deposited in the soil, in the absence of any other nutrients being available at the outset.) The bird or rodent doesn't stay put - they move. They keep eating more fruits and keep moving. Eventually they eliminate their waste somewhere, generally not right around the original tree. The fruit is digestible, the seeds are not. They generally pass through undigested, and the waste plus seeds generally are deposited in soil somewhere. Now the seeds can grow in a new area. They've been spread out. This tends to be more beneficial in terms of the new trees' survival into maturity, to the point where they can produce similar fruits, and so it goes, on and on.

This is the same way that natural selection works with animals. One can look at cheetahs and antelopes, for example. The key trait here is speed. Antelopes that are faster than others will outrun the cheetahs, leaving the slower ones behind, and the faster antelopes survive longer to pass on their "faster" genes. Cheetahs that are faster will more likley catch the faster antelopes, and be more likely to eat enough to survive longer and pass on their "faster" genes. Cheetahs weed out the slower antelopes, which has the effect of promoting faster generations of antelopes later. Faster antelopes weed out the slower cheetahs, who are less able to eat enough to survive. No one is directing this consciously, any more than you need to consciously regulate your heart or digestion. It simply happens.
 
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