Is Evolution a Religion?

[Robert the Pilegrim]

No I asked if you have seen animal cells turning into human cells.

Human cells are animal cells.

Nobody I am aware of has seen or expects to see cells of one species turn into cells of another species.

 

[chaoschristian]

No I asked if you have seen animal cells turning into human cells.

Thankyou

And again, your question is non-sensical.

Human cells are animal cells.

You need to qualify your question and be more specific.

But here, I'll save you the trouble:

Q: "Have you ever seen monkey cells turn into human cells?"

A: Evolutionary theory does not describe or predict this phenomenon as the question is stated.

 

[Willtor]

No I asked if you have seen animal cells turning into human cells.

Thankyou

No. I have never seen an animal (non-human) cell turn into a human cell.

 

[gluadys]

Right back at ya

Ok, please tell me. Why do you believe in evolution?

Evidence. Evolution explains the relationships among species in a way that makes sense. It explains all sorts of biological facts from why we need a new flu shot each year to why kangaroos are native only to Australia, to why the DNA code is common to all species from bacteria to mushrooms and paramecia to elephants.

Can you share your testimony on what your spirit has?

I don't understand this question. What do you mean by "what your spirit has"?

 

[gluadys]

Fruit flies. Someone said they proved evolution happened. When i asked why I was 'infantile'.

Please tell me about fruit flies.

Fruit flies are used in all sorts of biological experimentation. Only a few major ones get into biology textbooks.

The fruit fly experiments that get into text books are of two sorts.

One sort focuses on the causes and effects of mutations. Early in the 20th century, it was found that you could cause mutations by bombarding living things with radiation. It was from these experiments that scientists got things like fruit flies with different coloured eyes, double sets of wings, or no wings, or with antenna where the eyes should be. Today with genetic engineering, they can be more subtle. And they can also trace with some precision the impact of specific mutations and so find out which genes control which aspects of development.

Such experiments tell them a lot about how genes work to produce physical and behavioral characteristics. And about how mutations act to change those characteristics.

Another sort focuses on speciation (also known as macro-evolution). There are many different species of fruit flies. They do not interbreed with each other, but no one questions that they all probably came from a single ancestral group of fruit flies. How does a single ancestral population get split up into separate species?

One way scientists study this is to take a group of fruit flies that are all of the same species (often from the same parent) and divide them into separate groups. Then each group is given a different environment to adapt to. In a famous 1987 experiment, eight groups were made and each was housed in an environment of different temperatures, humidity, and food supply. Although they were fruit flies some were given a diet of mostly meat or mostly bread.

After 5 years and hundreds of generations, they began introducing the separate colonies to each other to see if they would and could interbreed. (They had also maintained the original population so they could try and back-cross to it as well.)

They found that the separate groups did not interbreed and if on the odd occasion they did, they offspring did not thrive. They also analyzed the DNA for genetic differences. In the case of the "meat" flies, they found a full 3% difference from the ancestral DNA. That is more than the difference between humans and chimpanzees.

This type of experiment confirms that speciation (or macro-evolution) does happen and gives some insight as to why and how it happens.

That changes in physical characteristics are caused by changes in genes, and that different environmental situations lead to different adaptations that can lead to speciation are both confirmations of the basic premises of evolution.

Similar experiments are often done with other species as well, with much the same results. And in other cases the same process can be seen happening in nature.

 

[gluadys]

Why do you use insults to answer a question?

Have you seen animal cells turning into human cells yes or no?

Human cells are animal cells.

 

[Dannager]

Have you seen animal cells turning into human cells?

Im not asking anything about evolution, just this question above.

Human cells are animal cells.

 

[lismore]

Hi

Thanks for taking the time to give me some info. Very good of you.

One sort focuses on the causes and effects of mutations. Early in the 20th century, it was found that you could cause mutations by bombarding living things with radiation. It was from these experiments that scientists got things like fruit flies with different coloured eyes, double sets of wings, or no wings, or with antenna where the eyes should be..
.

Are some of these mutations good and some bad?

Another sort focuses on speciation (also known as macro-evolution). There are many different species of fruit flies. They do not interbreed with each other, but no one questions that they all probably came from a single ancestral group of fruit flies. How does a single ancestral population get split up into separate species?
.

Did the flies ever change or are they expected to change into a new species e.e something that is not a fly.

Thanks

 

[artybloke]

Are some of these mutations good and some bad?

In one sense, neither. Any mutation is in itself neither good nor bad. If it means that the fly will survive better with four wings rather than two, then, it will be beneficial. If it doesn't survive to reproduce it will be harmful. There are two factors in evolution: mutation and natural selection. Mutation is something that happens all the time; but the mutation won't take unless it is advantageous for survival of the species (not of the individual fly.) This is natural selection: the effect of the environment on the species.

Did the flies ever change or are they expected to change into a new species e.e something that is not a fly.

A fly can't change from a fly to something that isn't a fly in one generation. It might change into a slightly different kind of fly that can't mate with its origin (speciation) after several generations: I suggest you also read up about nested heirarchies. Flies won't turn into spiders because they are on a different branch of the evolutionary tree, though at some point they might have have had a common ancestor. But once the branch is split into two branches, species can't jump from one branch to another.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Any mutation is in itself neither good nor bad. If it means that the fly will survive better with four wings rather than two, then, it will be beneficial. []

but the mutation won't take unless it is advantageous for survival of the species (not of the individual fly.) This is natural selection: the effect of the environment on the species.

Well, strictly speaking a neutral mutation (e.g. the destruction of the vitamin C producing gene in an environment high in vitamin C) can also survive, though at lower probability.

 

[lismore]

In one sense, neither. Any mutation is in itself neither good nor bad. If it means that the fly will survive better with four wings rather than two, then, it will be beneficial. If it doesn't survive to reproduce it will be harmful.
.

Four winged flies, blind flies and flies that cant fly. Can the four winged flies fly better? The other two dont sound so good.

In

A fly can't change from a fly to something that isn't a fly in one generation. It might change into a slightly different kind of fly that can't mate with its origin (speciation) after several generations.

Do you believe the theory of puncuated equilibrium. The lack of transitional forms in the fossil records means the evolution occurred quickly?


http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/Punctuated_equilibrium.asp


Could you not keep breeding your flies and radiating them until you see wether they evolve or not? Even if it takes years?

 

[The Lady Kate]

Could you not keep breeding your flies and radiating them until you see wether they evolve or not? Even if it takes years?

That's where the 4-winged and no winged flies came from. And only in a matter of years. But mutation is only half of the picture. How these mutated creatures deal with their environment is the other half... and a lab environment doesn't offer a lot of pressure to evolve.

 

[gluadys]

Hi

Thanks for taking the time to give me some info. Very good of you.

Are some of these mutations good and some bad?

Well that has been covered very well already. In and of themselves mutations are not good or bad. They have to be good, bad or neither in relation to an environment. And since environments can vary, the only way to answer the question is to see how the mutation affects the survival of its carriers in relation to those who don't show the mutation in a particular environment.

The other thing to keep in mind is the object of the experiment. No one does experiments to determine if evolution happens. That is too big a scope for an experiment. Each experiment tests out one aspect of the process of evolution. In this case, two objectives were met.

1. It was determined that certain agents (e.g. radiation) affect the genetic sequence of the test subjects.

2. It was determined that the changes in the genetic sequences produced physical and inheritable changes in the offspring of the flies exposed to radiation.

Mutation is only the beginning step in the process of evolution. Most mutation, we know, has no effect on an individual, much less a population. Most mutation that does have an effect on an individual is not inheritable, and so does not affect the population. There are a tiny fraction of mutations which affect the germ cells of sexually reproducing species. Changes in germ cells do not affect the adult in which they happen. But they may affect its children. And they are inheritable. It is these inheritable mutations which can affect a population in the right circumstances.

Did the flies ever change or are they expected to change into a new species e.e something that is not a fly.

Thanks

Yes, the flies changed. I told you that. A 3% change from the parent species in just 7 years. And remember that a fruit fly generation is very short, a matter of a few weeks, so you are looking at more than a dozen generations per year and maybe around a 100 generations over the run of the experiment. That's equivalent to about 2,000-2500 years in human history. To get a 3% divergence in that brief a time is amazing. We have been separated from the chimpanzee lineage for about 5 million years and there is only a 2% divergence in our genomes.

Something that is "not a fly" would not be just a new species. "fly" is the common term used for Diptera, a whole order of insects of which there are 120,000 known species. "fruit fly" refers to a whole family of Diptera, known as Drosophilidae and the species used in this experiment (Drosophila melanogaster) is one of hundreds of species in one of six subgenera of the genus Drosophila, which is only one of over two dozen genera in the family.

In short the "fly" branch has already divided and sub-divided many times, and there are hundreds of thousands of twigs on the smallest sub-branches. And once a branch of any size has divided into sub-branches, there is no going off to a different branch.

Long ago, flies came from something that was not yet a fly. But once flies exist, the only thing they can become are a different sort of fly. Not quite so long ago, fruit flies came from a fly that was not a fruit fly yet, but once fruit flies exist, the only thing they can become is a different sort of fruit fly. Maybe even one that doesn't eat fruit any more, but meat or bread instead. These meat-eating and bread-eating flies came from fruit-eating flies, but in the future they can only become a different sort of meat-eating or bread-eating fruit flies.

That is the nature of evolution. Children can only be a variation on what their parents and grand-parents and long ago ancestors were. Eventually they can be very different from their ancestors, but they will still be a twig grown from that branch and no other.

I second the suggestion to read up on the nested hierarchy.

 

[artybloke]

Do you believe the theory of puncuated equilibrium. The lack of transitional forms in the fossil records means the evolution occurred quickly?

I don't know enough about punctuated evolution to have an opinion. All species are transitional.

Four winged flies, blind flies and flies that cant fly. Can the four winged flies fly better? The other two dont sound so good.

If a blind fly was born in a cave, it might have a positive advantage to one that could see (like certain salamanders.) I can't think of an environment off-hand where a fly that can't fly would have an advantage, but I'm sure there is one imaginable.

 

[gluadys]

Do you believe the theory of puncuated equilibrium. The lack of transitional forms in the fossil records means the evolution occurred quickly?


http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/Punctuated_equilibrium.asp

You are misreading the text. Punctuated equilibrium does not pre-suppose a lack of transitional forms. It pre-supposes that the transitional forms are not widely distributed, because the evolution took place quickly in a small population, which then spread out into a wider area.

In the areas into which the small population spread out, you see only the original form and the later form with no transitionals between them. But if you find the area to which the population was first confined you will find the transitional forms all close together.

So it is not as if there were no transitional forms at all, but that, since they are not widely distributed, it is harder to find them.

Could you not keep breeding your flies and radiating them until you see wether they evolve or not? Even if it takes years?

A 3% divergence over 7 years is evolution and rapid evolution at that. Even for fruit flies.

 

[shinbits]

You know, there was this thread called "How Much Evolution Were Hitler And Stalin Taught?"

In this thread, someone wanted proof that evolution, though it's completely different today, had racist and sexist beginings.

I posted the link with the sexist aspects first. Immediately after, someone said, "Okay, get your sexist Bible verses ready!"

Now, if that person was really interested in truth, that comment wouldn't have been made.
Instead, that person should've said, "Thank you for posting this, I didn't know that."

But instead, the person got defensive. Why?

Because evolution isn't just a belief; it's an ingrained way of life that many evolutionist don't want to part from, under any circumstances; It's a way of life with the same passion as a religion.

Evolution is in fact, an unofficial religion.

 

[LogicChristian]

You know, there was this thread called "How Much Evolution Were Hitler And Stalin Taught?"

In this thread, someone wanted proof that evolution, though it's completely different today, had racist and sexist beginings.

I posted the link with the sexist aspects first. Immediately after, someone said, "Okay, get your sexist Bible verses ready!"

Hitler and Stalin misused quite a bit of science. Also, those weren't the "beginnings" of evolution, considering origin of the species had been written in 1859.

Why wouldn't someone pull out the sexist comments in the Bible? Are you unwilling to listen to them?

But instead, the person got defensive. Why?

Funny story, once I showed someone the truth about speciation, and then instead of saying "Thank you for posting this, I didn't know" that person got extremely defensive, to the point of calling me dishonest in public because he didn't understand the information being presented.

Funny story, eh shinbits?

BTW, if evolution is an unofficial religion, why do so many people of conventional faiths study it? Heck, my primate ecology and social behavior prof, who first wrote up angiosperm coevolution theory, is Jewish.

Evolution isn't a religion because somebody can ask questions about it, find things that don't quite make sense, and edit portions of it accordingly after publishing research, experimentation, and observation. That looks more like science than religion.

 

[chaoschristian]

You know, there was this thread called "How Much Evolution Were Hitler And Stalin Taught?"

In this thread, someone wanted proof that evolution, though it's completely different today, had racist and sexist beginings.

I posted the link with the sexist aspects first. Immediately after, someone said, "Okay, get your sexist Bible verses ready!"

Now, if that person was really interested in truth, that comment wouldn't have been made.
Instead, that person should've said, "Thank you for posting this, I didn't know that."

But instead, the person got defensive. Why?

Because evolution isn't just a belief; it's an ingrained way of life that many evolutionist don't want to part from, under any circumstances; It's a way of life with the same passion as a religion.

Evolution is in fact, an unofficial religion.

And using your logic and analysis, one could make a strong case that creationism, especially YEC, is a seperate 'unofficial' religion apart and distinct from orthodox Christianity.

But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?

 

[artybloke]

You know, there was this thread called "How Much Evolution Were Hitler And Stalin Taught?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

You have hereby been Godwinned.

 

[shernren]

Link's broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum