What’s your problem?

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Okay. I use the word "stronger" to mean more adept, or more capable......whether that means physically stronger, faster, or having a stronger immune system, "stronger", the way use it, covers all these bases.

Don’t forget the sickle cell anemia example. Although sickle cell anemia is detrimental in and of itself it made the individual resistant to malaria. So this trait enabled the individual to survive and have offspring resistant to malaria. Since malaria is such a strong selecting factor the populations where malaria is common have high instances of sickle cell anemia. This is because the resistance causes more reproductive success. So “stronger” doesn’t quite fit this scenario.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

I want to take a moment to recap a little since we have moved on to discussing about what a “beneficial” mutation entails and why describing beneficial mutations as “stronger” isn’t entirely accurate.

If mutations are random, then how do entire populations just so happen to have the same exact "random" mutations that cause them all to evolve into the same creature?

Okay. An organism randomly mutates a gene, then passes it on, and has say, two different offspring. Now, considering that mutations are random, those two offspring would mutate random genes of their own, in keeping with evolution theory. The genes by the second generation offspring are passed on to the third generation, but have different genes from thier cousins.

So.......

How is it possible for entire populations to mutate the same genes and evolve into new creatures?


That's a biggie that makes evolution unbelievable.

Have we come to an understanding about how beneficial genes are proliferated throughout a population via sexual reproduction and how detrimental ones eventually breed out? Do you understand that it doesn’t happen fast enough to cause one family of individuals to speciate within a population and that it requires long term isolation in order for a population to speciate?

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

I disagree with EmpiricalAgnostic's point here. While there will be safety in numbers, you have to remember that there will still be selection occurring.

You are absolutely right. The safety in numbers comment was in response to a comment about some people being weak and fat within a population. I didn’t mean to imply that it could negate all selection pressures.

 

[LittleNipper]

I want to take a moment to recap a little since we have moved on to discussing about what a “beneficial” mutation entails and why describing beneficial mutations as “stronger” isn’t entirely accurate.


Have we come to an understanding about how beneficial genes are proliferated throughout a population via sexual reproduction and how detrimental ones eventually breed out? Do you understand that it doesn’t happen fast enough to cause one family of individuals to speciate within a population and that it requires long term isolation in order for a population to speciate?

Ok, so take a male and female fruitfly and expose some to radiation, etc. and make develope a new species that has nothing to do with fruitflies. That is the ONLY way to prove eveolution. If you cannot do that selectively, it never happen in the wild. End of theory.

 

[Jet Black]

Ok, so take a male and female fruitfly and expose some to radiation, etc. and make develope a new species that has nothing to do with fruitflies. That is the ONLY way to prove eveolution. If you cannot do that selectively, it never happen in the wild. End of theory.

that's just a strawman of evolution: First of all you are expecting saltationary change, which is not what happens in evolution. Secondly you are going for this off trick of "nothing to do with fruitflies" I'll show you how stupid this is.

Lets say that evolution did use saltationary changes, and exposing these fruitflies to ratiation did generate some odd thing, say like a spider. Even then it would still have something to do with fruitflies because its parents would be fruitflies! So even in your own strawman scenario, your demands are impossible. If what you demand actually happened, that would disprove evolution.

Evolution works on the basis of accumulated gradual inheritable changes, with new species deriving the characteristics of their ancestors and remaining with the nested hierarchy formed by this ancestry.

Has nobody ever told you any of this before? It suprises me that you can post in this forum so much and still not even get basic principles like this right.

 

[Garnett]

Ok, so take a male and female fruitfly and expose some to radiation, etc. and make develope a new species that has nothing to do with fruitflies. That is the ONLY way to prove eveolution. If you cannot do that selectively, it never happen in the wild. End of theory.

Are we allowed 10,000 years?

 

[Jet Black]

Are we allowed 10,000 years?

10,000 years for evolution to do something that it is not supposed to do?

 

[OdwinOddball]

Ok, so take a male and female fruitfly and expose some to radiation, etc. and make develope a new species that has nothing to do with fruitflies. That is the ONLY way to prove eveolution. If you cannot do that selectively, it never happen in the wild. End of theory.

If this is how you beleive evolution to work, and that this will prove evolution, your knowledge of evolution is less than zero.

Evolution is NOT the X-Men. You don't expose an organism to radiation and suddenly get an Incredicble Hulk. What you will get is a sick and dieing organism.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Ok, so take a male and female fruitfly and expose some to radiation, etc. and make develope a new species that has nothing to do with fruitflies.

I think marvel comics has given you a skewed idea of mutations born a la radiation. Bombarding a fruitfly with radiation will most likely kill it not make an incredible hulk fruit fly.

Besides, and I know you’ve been told this before, the TofE does not assert that the fruit fly’s descendants will be anything other than a fruit fly. (Just like we are still apes)

This always brings us back to the same old question you never, EVER, answer. What EXACTLY makes one “kind” of organism different than another “kind”. In biology they define it as a species and it has a solid definition. Because speciation has been observed you like to create your own term “kind”. When you move the goalposts by using the word “kind” then you must actually place the goalpost somewhere by defining exactly what constitutes a “kind”. If you can do that I will discuss this matter seriously with you.

 

[h2whoa]

Part of the hang up for creationists seems to be that they have this weird idea that one species suddenly magically changes into something completely different when it isn't like that at all.

Imagine you have written out a square of 40,000 full-stops. You pass this on to somebody else to copy out exactly. However on one of their full-stops their pen smudges a little bit so now it looks more like a comma. They then pass this on to somebody else to copy out. They copy it out exactly, including the new comma, only this time their pen leaves a little smudge on another full-stop. Again they pass it on to someone else and the whole process continues like this for thousands of generations.

By the end of all these thousands of replications, the square of 40,000 full-stops has been altered to a square of 40,000 commas. It wasn't one sudden change. It was an accumulation of de novo alterations combined with replication of existing alterations.

Now imagine that once you have a square of 40,000 commas the process continues. The next person to copy the square accidentally doesn't fill in the dot of a comma so it looks like a very small lowercase "g". Next replication this g is duplicated and another one is accidentally generated.

Again, this continues until you have 40,000 gs.

The process continues. At this end of this cycle, all the gs have gradually been replaced by 9s.

Now this is a very simplistic overview. But the important thing is that each generation represented only a tiny change. Nonetheless, within 160,000 replications you have gone from a sqaure of . to a sqaure of , to a square of g to a sqaure of 9.

 

[TexasSky]

I understand that your misunderstandings about the Theory of Evolution has valid reasons for not believing in it. The problem is that your version of evolution isn’t accurate. It’s not necessarily your fault though. It seems to be a common tactic of anti-evolutionists.

When you started off this paragraph I was going to compliment you on your politness, and effort not to be insulting, then I got to the last two lines quoted above.

The fact is, IF anti-evolutionists have inaccurate understandings of evolution it is NOT the fault of creation scientists, it is the fault of science teachers.

I didn't learn what I learned from creationists. I learned in science classrooms in school and in college. I learned it at museums and from textbooks and from library research available when I was a student.

If the information is now considered flawed, or changed, or inaccurate - so be it.

You put the cart before the horse when you refer to the reasons we raise the questions we raise.

The vast majority of people who do not accept evolution did not go, "I need to find out how to justify my personal religious beliefs." Many of us started out questioning what we saw as contradictions in what we were being taught in our science classes, and then those same questions were picked up by others.

I was actually pro-evolution UNTIL my science classes started contradicting one another. I actually started out trying to convince people that evolution didn't conflict with the idea that there was a creator. The more I dug, the more questions I had.

The more questions I got, the more I realized there were no rational answers. I got answers like, "Well, yes, people are confused by that, we're still looking for an answer." I got, "Well, sometimes the theory has to change, that's what science is about." I got, "Okay, well, yes, we know that part of this theory doesn't work, but the rest of it does, so its just that we don't understand this part well enough yet."

I didn't get answers. I got excuses.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I was actually pro-evolution UNTIL my science classes started contradicting one another. I actually started out trying to convince people that evolution didn't conflict with the idea that there was a creator. The more I dug, the more questions I had.

The more questions I got, the more I realized there were no rational answers. I got answers like, "Well, yes, people are confused by that, we're still looking for an answer." I got, "Well, sometimes the theory has to change, that's what science is about." I got, "Okay, well, yes, we know that part of this theory doesn't work, but the rest of it does, so its just that we don't understand this part well enough yet."

I didn't get answers. I got excuses.


good, then recapitulate those specific problems and we can look at the evidence along with you to see what is going on. but talk specific scientific issues.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

When you started off this paragraph I was going to compliment you on your politness, and effort not to be insulting, then I got to the last two lines quoted above.

The problem with a medium such as this is that people tend to read anything they don’t like and project malice into it. I was not trying to insult anyone. What I stated was a cold fact. Rarely (and I mean maybe once… maybe) have I seen any participant against the TofE have a proper understanding of it. I’m not saying that to be insulting, it’s just a fact at this point.

The fact is, IF anti-evolutionists have inaccurate understandings of evolution it is NOT the fault of creation scientists, it is the fault of science teachers.

While I’m sure not every instructor teaches the theory flawlessly, it is a far cry from the “If we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys around” understanding that creationists always seem to have. LittleNipper just posted a shining example a few posts back.

I didn't learn what I learned from creationists. I learned in science classrooms in school and in college. I learned it at museums and from textbooks and from library research available when I was a student.

If the information is now considered flawed, or changed, or inaccurate - so be it.

You put the cart before the horse when you refer to the reasons we raise the questions we raise.

I invite questions (when they aren’t disingenuous). It is the anti-evolutionist that makes assertions about the TofE based on objections to their own misunderstandings that I despise.

The vast majority of people who do not accept evolution did not go, "I need to find out how to justify my personal religious beliefs." Many of us started out questioning what we saw as contradictions in what we were being taught in our science classes, and then those same questions were picked up by others.

I was actually pro-evolution UNTIL my science classes started contradicting one another. I actually started out trying to convince people that evolution didn't conflict with the idea that there was a creator. The more I dug, the more questions I had.

The more questions I got, the more I realized there were no rational answers. I got answers like, "Well, yes, people are confused by that, we're still looking for an answer." I got, "Well, sometimes the theory has to change, that's what science is about." I got, "Okay, well, yes, we know that part of this theory doesn't work, but the rest of it does, so its just that we don't understand this part well enough yet."

I didn't get answers. I got excuses.

But all I’ve seen from you so far is vague references to bad education and unanswerable questions. Why don’t you offer one of them up for discussion? That is what this thread is about after all.

 

[LittleNipper]

that's just a strawman of evolution: First of all you are expecting saltationary change, which is not what happens in evolution. Secondly you are going for this off trick of "nothing to do with fruitflies" I'll show you how stupid this is.

Lets say that evolution did use saltationary changes, and exposing these fruitflies to ratiation did generate some odd thing, say like a spider. Even then it would still have something to do with fruitflies because its parents would be fruitflies! So even in your own strawman scenario, your demands are impossible. If what you demand actually happened, that would disprove evolution.

Evolution works on the basis of accumulated gradual inheritable changes, with new species deriving the characteristics of their ancestors and remaining with the nested hierarchy formed by this ancestry.

Has nobody ever told you any of this before? It suprises me that you can post in this forum so much and still not even get basic principles like this right.

Well my dear, It may be a strawman, but no one has been able to knock it down. You actually expect people to believe that in far less then 2 billion years man evolved NATURALLY and with no outside assistance (speaking of straw men). And yet no one has been able to promote it unnaturally worth diddley in 4000 years. Well, I'm sorry but there isn't enough hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, months in a year nor years in a billion to establish even a fruitfly.----- much less humanity.... And if you can change a fruitfly into anything living other then a fruitfly----man it would make world news-------and you know it would.

 

[Loudmouth]

Well my dear, It may be a strawman, but no one has been able to knock it down. You actually expect people to believe that in far less then 2 billion years man evolved NATURALLY and with no outside assistance (speaking of straw men).

Firstly, do you even know what a strawman argument is? It is when someone reformulates their opponents theory so that it is more easily refuted. In other words, misrepresenting your opponents views. The evolution of vertebrates in 2 billion years is not a strawman, it is the position of science.

Secondly, if you contend that there are other mechanisms involved in the production of biodiversity other than those that have been observed (mutation, selection, and speciation) then it is up to you to evidence them. Without evidence there is no reason to consider them.

Well, I'm sorry but there isn't enough hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, months in a year nor years in a billion to establish even a fruitfly.----- much less humanity.... And if you can change a fruitfly into anything living other then a fruitfly----man it would make world news-------and you know it would.

And yet you have a problem with a primate evolving into a primate.

 

[LittleNipper]

Are we allowed 10,000 years?

Even if you could accomplish such a feat in 10,000 years with purpose-------do you really imagine that NATURALLY this would account for all the variety of species that exist today and those that went extinct within the last few centuries? Think about it....

 

[Baggins]

. And if you can change a fruitfly into anything living other then a fruitfly----man it would make world news-------and you know it would.

I certainly would, it would disprove the theory of evolution for a start, as a fruit fly will only ever evolve into a different species of fruit fly

 

[LittleNipper]

If this is how you beleive evolution to work, and that this will prove evolution, your knowledge of evolution is less than zero.

Evolution is NOT the X-Men. You don't expose an organism to radiation and suddenly get an Incredicble Hulk. What you will get is a sick and dieing organism.

If you don't see the ultimate stupidity in your accusation then perhaps you have no clue with reguard to evolution. Evolution is supposed to be the result of environmental influences and natural selective breeding. You design the experiment. African violets are still African violets in any case.

 

[LittleNipper]

If this is how you beleive evolution to work, and that this will prove evolution, your knowledge of evolution is less than zero.

Evolution is NOT the X-Men. You don't expose an organism to radiation and suddenly get an Incredicble Hulk. What you will get is a sick and dieing organism.

If you don't see the ultimate stupidity in your accusation then perhaps you have no clue with reguard to evolution yourself. Evolution is supposed to be the result of environmental influences and natural selective breeding. You design the experiment. African violets are still African violets in any case.

 

[LittleNipper]

I certainly would, it would disprove the theory of evolution for a start, as a fruit fly will only ever evolve into a different species of fruit fly

Well, if that be the case,.then you've proven evolution entirely wrong. Monkeys will always only beget monkeys and humans will always only beget humans and there were no , nor can there ever be any missing links or intermediate species.... Dinosaurs did not become birds over time or not. Every specie is as it was established with unlimited variety and the difference being the FALL of Adam and some species have simply gone extinct.