Don't do that Jimmy...see how you twisted that to be something completely different? Whatever it takes, eh?
Not at all, I was merely responding to...
"And the question remains, when? I haven't heard any proof at all, but I know, that is somehow my fault."
I was suggesting that, yes, it is your fault.
Just for you and
Paul of Eugene OR, here is the comment that was supposed to be "weird", now tell me what your post had to do with that? Actually, I'd like to know how the comment was weird to begin with.
Sorry, I wasn't referring to the "weird" bit when I was responding to you, I'll leave that for Paul of Eugene OR to explain himself.
You all really need to wait till there is something to pounce on before you do so.
Explained to me? Not true. At least crack your eyelids enough to see whenever I ask the question, prove it, exactly what happens. Why would you do that to yourself, I mean say something that is splattered all, over this thread as untrue?
Would you like to summarize proof positive evolution is fact, and how that proof makes it fact? And I mean right here on this thread where it can be discussed, and so our time is not wasted with links that you believe prove it, and will likely be a waste of time for some of us.
Kenny, how many times has it been explained to you that demanding a magic snippet of "proof" for evolution is unreasonable?
"For the billion and one-th time: science does NOT deal in absolute proofs. They deal in
PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE." Obliquant.
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Let me attempt to break it down for you.
In the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin formulated the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, published in his book On the Origin of Species (1859)....
Evolution by natural selection is a process demonstrated by the observation that more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, along with three facts about populations:
1) traits vary among individuals with respect to morphology, physiology, and behaviour (phenotypic variation),
Do you agree with this?
2) different traits confer different rates of survival and reproduction (differential fitness)
Do you agree with this?
3) traits can be passed from generation to generation (heritability of fitness). Thus, in successive generations members of a population are replaced by progeny of parents better adapted to survive and reproduce in the biophysical environment in which natural selection takes place.
Are you with me so far? all these things have been observed, no assumptions, these are facts, I can provide examples if necessary.
Now, Darwin considered these three simple facts sufficient to explain the diversity of life on Earth, but can we be sure that this is the case?
For the last several hundred years we have been observing and recording the world around us, if Darwin was correct these observations should
confirm his explanation and can therefore be considered
evidence for evolution.
Here are just a few of those observations.....
We have evidence from the fossil record -
Evolution of the horse - Wikipedia
During the Eocene, an Eohippus species (most likely Eohippus angustidens) branched out into various new types of Equidae. Thousands of complete, fossilized skeletons of these animals have been found in the Eocene layers of North American strata.
In the early-to-middle Eocene, Eohippus smoothly transitioned into Orohippus through a gradual series of changes
In response to the changing environment, the then-living species of Equidae also began to change. In the late Eocene, they began developing tougher teeth and becoming slightly larger and leggier, allowing for faster running speeds in open areas, and thus for evading predators in nonwooded areas
In the early Oligocene, Mesohippus was one of the more widespread mammals in North America. It walked on three toes on each of its front and hind feet (the first and fifth toes remained, but were small and not used in walking). The third toe was stronger than the outer ones, and thus more weighted; the fourth front toe was diminished to a vestigial nub.
Mesohippus was slightly larger than Epihippus, about 610 mm (24 in) at the shoulder. Its back was less arched, and its face, snout, and neck were somewhat longer. It had significantly larger cerebral hemispheres, and had a small, shallow depression on its skull called a fossa, which in modern horses is quite detailed.
Miohippus was significantly larger than its predecessors, and its ankle joints had subtly changed. Its facial fossa was larger and deeper, and it also began to show a variable extra crest in its upper cheek teeth, a trait that became a characteristic feature of equine teeth.
Etc, etc until we find the modern horse fossils which date back about 3.5 million years.
Maybe you've got a more "logical" hypothesis as to why we see thousand of fossils that represent a gradual change from a little dog-like little creature to the horses we see today?
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We can observe speciation in action-
I know you creationists don't like the fact that we can observe speciation in the lab (bacterias are still bacterias! etc) so here's an example of natural selection in action.....
Speciation in real time
The Central European blackcap spends its summers in Germany and Austria and, until the 1960s, had spent its winters in balmy Spain. About 50 years ago, however, backyard bird feeding became popular in Britain. With a ready supply of food waiting for them in Britain, blackcaps that happened to carry genesthat caused them to migrate northwest, instead of southwest to Spain, were able to survive and return to their summer breeding grounds in central Europe. Over time, the proportion of the population carrying northwest-migrating genes has increased. Today, about 10% of the population winters in Britain instead of Spain.
This change in migration pattern has led to a shift in mate availability. The northwest route is shorter than the southwest route, so the northwest-migrating birds get back to Germany sooner each summer. Since blackcaps choose a mate for the season when they arrive at the breeding grounds, the birds tend to mate with others that follow the same migration route.
In December of 2009, researchers from Germany and Canada confirmed that these migration and mating shifts have led to subtle differences between the two parts of the population. The splinter group has evolved rounder wings and narrower, longer beaks than their southward-flying brethren. The researchers hypothesize that both of these traits evolved via natural selection. Pointier wings are favored in birds that must travel longer distances, and rounder wings, which increase maneuverability, are favored when distance is less of an issue — as it is for the northwest migrators. Changes in beak size may be related to the food available to each sub-population: fruit for birds wintering in Spain and seeds and suet from garden feeders for birds wintering in Britain. The northwest migrators' narrower, longer beaks may allow them to better take advantage of all the different sorts of foods they wind up eating in the course of a year. These differences have evolved in just 30 generations and could signify the beginning of a speciation event.
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Biogeographic Distribution - Modern biogeographic research combines information and ideas from many fields, from the physiological and ecological constraints on organismal dispersal to geological and climatological phenomena operating at global spatial scales and evolutionary time frames. (link)
An example....
The history of marsupials also provides an example of how the theories of evolution and continental drift can be combined to make predictions about what will be found in the fossil record. The earliest marsupial fossils are about 80 million years old and found in North America; by 40 million years ago fossils show that they could be found throughout South America, but there is no evidence of them in Australia, where they now predominate, until about 30 million years ago. The theory of evolution predicts that the Australian marsupials must be descended from the older ones found in the Americas. The theory of continental drift says that between 30 and 40 million years ago South America and Australia were still part of the Southern hemisphere super continent of Gondwana and that they were connected by land that is now part of Antarctica. Therefore combining the two theories scientists predicted that marsupials migrated from what is now South America across what is now Antarctica to what is now Australia between 40 and 30 million years ago. This hypothesis led paleontologists to Antarctica to look for marsupial fossils of the appropriate age. After years of searching they found, starting in 1982, fossils on Seymour Island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula of more than a dozen marsupial species that lived 35–40 million years ago.
link
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Genetic Evidence
"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)."
We share over 200,000 ERVs with chimps. That's 200,000 pieces of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt).
(From Loudmouth's post)
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Nested Hierarchies
Here is the test for macroevolution as described clear back in 1965 before we had any real DNA sequence data:
"It will be determined to what extent the phylogenetic tree, as derived from molecular data in complete independence from the results of organismal biology, coincides with the phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of organismal biology. If the two phylogenetic trees are mostly in agreement with respect to the topology of branching, the best available single proof of the reality of macro-evolution would be furnished. Indeed, only the theory of evolution, combined with the realization that events at any supramolecular level are consistent with molecular events, could reasonably account for such a congruence between lines of evidence obtained independently, namely amino acid sequences of homologous polypeptide chains on the one hand, and the finds of organismal taxonomy and paleontology on the other hand. Besides offering an intellectual satisfaction to some, the advertising of such evidence would of course amount to beating a dead horse. Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, when here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life."
Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling,
discussing the possibility of the twin nested hierarchy before the first molecular phylogenies had been made.
(1965) "Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence in Proteins." in
Evolving Genes and Proteins, p. 101.
In short, it was predicted 50 years ago that there should be a match between independent DNA based trees and morphological trees.
So does macroevolution pass that test? Yep, sure does:
"So, how well do phylogenetic trees from morphological studies match the trees made from independent molecular studies? There are over 10^38 different possible ways to arrange the 30 major taxa represented in
Figure 1 into a phylogenetic tree . . . In spite of these odds, the relationships given in Figure 1, as determined from morphological characters, are completely congruent with the relationships determined independently from cytochrome
cmolecular studies . . . Speaking quantitatively, independent morphological and molecular measurements such as these have determined the standard phylogenetic tree, as shown in
Figure 1, to better than 38 decimal places. This phenomenal corroboration of universal common descent is referred to as the "twin nested hierarchy". This term is something of a misnomer, however, since there are in reality multiple nested hierarchies, independently determined from many sources of data."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#independent_convergence
For 30 groups there are 100000000000000000000000000000000000000 possible ways to organize them into a tree. There is just 1 tree out of those billions and billions of possible trees that is a perfect match to the predictions made the theory of macroevolution. We see that exact tree.
(again, Loudmouth's excellent post).
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The Theory of Evolution gets practical results
Statistical power to detect disease variants can be increased by weighting candidates by their evidence of natural selection. To demonstrate that this theoretical idea works in practice, we performed an association study of 10 putative resistance variants in 471 severe malaria cases and 474 controls from the Luo in Kenya. We replicated associations at HBB (P=.0008) and CD36 (P=.03) but also showed that the same variants are unusually differentiated in frequency between the Luo and Yoruba (who historically have been exposed to malaria) and the Masai and Kikuyu (who have not been exposed). This empirically demonstrates that combining association analysis with evidence of natural selection can increase power to detect risk variants by orders of magnitude—up to P=.000018 for HBB and P=.00043 for CD36.
Combining Evidence of Natural Selection with Association Analysis Increases Power to Detect Malaria-Resistance Variants - ScienceDirect
Evidence of natural selection "increases the power to detect Malaria resistance variants".
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Everything I've posted above is
evidence.
I could have continued for several thousand pages with these examples but obviously that would be impractical.
Do you not agree that the examples above confirm that the Theory of Evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of species we see stretching back to first life.
Can there be a better explanation for us to consider?
