What’s your problem?

[shinbits]

I can understand the skepticism, certainly. It is difficult to fathom the perpetuation of a cycle steeped in a process with a chance of "success" so low. It's never good to cow to what boils down to an argument from incredulity, though. It should evoke suspicion and reason to investigate further, but such healthy skepticism is not the same thing as evidence against.

Well, thank you for your understanding. And through this thread, I think my basic understanding of evolution has been improved. I thank people like you for a refreshingly civil crevo thread.


I don't think I have anymore to say. I'll won't post anymore, unless you have a question you'd like to ask me, or something you want me to respond to.


Peace and God bless you all.

 

[Dannager]

Well, thank you for your understanding. And through this thread, I think my basic understanding of evolution has been improved. I thank people like you for a refreshingly civil crevo thread.


I don't think I have anymore to say. I'll won't post anymore, unless you have a question you'd like to ask me, or something you want me to respond to.


Peace and God bless you all.

I'm glad it helped, and regardless of what you come to discover it is outcomes like this that make it all worthwhile.

 

[LittleNipper]

I have never claimed that evolution only happens when God is excluded. In fact, I hold the opposite position. Evolution only happens when God is not excluded.

And I'm telling you, as a Christian, that GOD has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is losely founded on the premise that GOD created sin. There was NO death before sin entered into the world through Adam. If that is a Biblical truth, then there was no survival of the fittest before ADAM and animals were not dying prior to ADAM and eating each other. This is the Biblical reality. People who say they are Christian and accept the theory of EVOLUTION are at odds with EVERYTHING the Bible has to say. I'm not saying those people are not Christians, but Christians can be wrong and evolution and survival of the fittest prior to sin, etc, etc, etc., ain't Biblical and the Bible is the only written revelation GOD HIMSELF provided----again according to everything the BIBLE has to say.

 

[shinbits]

Natural selection is NOT random. If you have two eagles born into a population, one with good eyesight and one with poor eyesight, which one is more likely to survive and reproduce? The one with poor eyesight will die and never pass on that trait. Do you understand how the two work together now?

There are some things wrong with this statement, and one is that you are making an assumption.

First, you have to consider that the eagle born with good eyesight can still die, while the one with poor eyesight lives, and passes on it's genes. In order for evolution to work, you must assume the inverse happens.

Second, who an organism chooses to mate with is completely random. Here's why:

1) If the eagle born with poor eyesight is a female, the male really won't care; males are generally not as selective in the animal kingdom as females. The male generally just chooses whichever female is willing to mate, which is random, depending on who becomes available.

2) Other random factors include whether or not the organism choosing a mate is a catch itself. If an organism isn't very healty, it's choices are limited to another unhealthy organisms of the same species.

3) Another random factor, is whether or not the top choices actually live. They have a higher likelyhood of surviving, but can just as easily die at the hands of a skilled predator. The odds may be higher that they live, but you're still betting on random odds.

4) Then you have to consider all the random ways a healthy creature can die: predation, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and catching a disease, a list of natural disasters such as floods, famine, a long list of harsh whether possibilities like hurricanes, snow, extreme heat or cold..............there are far to many random occurances to consider.


Natural selection is a completely random process, of passing off randomly occuring genes.

"The healthier ones have a higher chance of surving all those factors you named."

True. But this would be like trying to pic a pure red marble in a mixed bag of other marbles of different colors, patterns, and color combinations. Health on an organism can increase it's chances of having it's genes passed on; but that's like just adding more red marbles to the mixed bag---your chances of getting the red one increase, but it's still random chance to pick the red one.


Natural selection is completely random, and is another reason why evolution is hard to believe.​

 

[caravelair]

Natural selection is completely random,

no it is not. we can directly observe this. if it was completely random, mutations would never get fixed in a population. the fact that this happens proves you wrong.

and is another reason why evolution is hard to believe.

oh come now, we all know the only reason people find evolution hard to believe is religious bias.

 

[Dannager]

There are some things wrong with this statement, and one is that you are making an assumption.

Woah, wait up. I think you still may be missing something. Let's take a look at all of this.

First, you have to consider that the eagle born with good eyesight can still die, while the one with poor eyesight lives, and passes on it's genes. In order for evolution to work, you must assume the inverse happens.

Evolution operates under the conclusion that given a population in which a given mutation arises enough times, eventually the mutation will be passed on by one of the organisms. In individual cases the mutated organism may perish before passing on its genes but on the whole such mutated organisms with a given beneficial mutation will be more likely to survive.

Second, who an organism chooses to mate with is completely random. Here's why:

This isn't true. Sexual selection, an observed process, determines a large number of mating patterns. Read up on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection. I'm surprised you haven't already been introduced to the concept.

1) If the eagle born with poor eyesight is a female, the male really won't care; males are generally not as selective in the animal kingdom as females. The male generally just chooses whichever female is willing to mate, which is random, depending on who becomes available.

Often it isn't a matter of what mates a male chooses out of those to choose from. Many times it boils down to which mates have survived to be chosen from. If a creature dies before it has a chance to be chosen as a mate it will not pass on its genes. Likewise, if a creature lives long enough to be chosen as a mate, it will likely pass on its genes. Beneficial mutations can make the difference. This is completely separate from sexual selection, which can further influence this process.

2) Other random factors include whether or not the organism choosing a mate is a catch itself. If an organism isn't very healty, it's choices are limited to another unhealthy organisms of the same species.

Certainly, but remember that unhealthy organisms have a lower life expectancy. Even if the organism survives to produce one set of offspring, if it dies before it has a chance to foster a second set of offspring while other healthy organisms survive to produce a second (or even third) set, its genes are less likely to survive.

3) Another random factor, is whether or not the top choices actually live. They have a higher likelyhood of surviving, but can just as easily die at the hands of a skilled predator. The odds may be higher that they live, but you're still betting on random odds.

You're still relying on odds. The decision may be random, but it is more probable that favorable mutations will survive. Evolution is all about probability. To call it purely random gives the impression that it is ruled by pure chaos, not roughly determinable probability or in fact any sort of odds favoring.

4) Then you have to consider all the random ways a healthy creature can die: predation, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and catching a disease, a list of natural disasters such as floods, famine, a long list of harsh whether possibilities like hurricanes, snow, extreme heat or cold..............there are far to many random occurances to consider.

You don't need to consider them, though. You just need to realize that an unhealthy organism (one with adverse mutations) must contend with all the same dangers, but with the added detriment of suffering from a debilitating mutation. The organism with the beneficial mutation is more likely to survive and pass on its genes than the organism with the detrimental mutation. Extrapolate that to an entire population and you start to get returns.

Natural selection is a completely random process, of passing off randomly occuring genes.

But the randomly occuring genes are passed off in a non-random manner - one that can be predicted with varying degrees of certainty. The randomness of mutation and what you call the "randomness" of natural selection are not the same thing.

True. But this would be like trying to pic a pure red marble in a mixed bag of other marbles of different colors, patterns, and color combinations. Health on an organism can increase it's chances of having it's genes passed on; but that's like just adding more red marbles to the mixed bag---your chances of getting the red one increase, but it's still random chance to pick the red one.

But favored by probability. What your argument boils down to is probability, is it not?​

Natural selection is completely random, and is another reason why evolution is hard to believe.

Again, not completely random, not in the same way that mutation is completely random. The process of natural selection favors certain outcomes while the process of mutation does not.

 

[shinbits]

no it is not. we can directly observe this. if it was completely random, mutations would never get fixed in a population. the fact that this happens proves you wrong.

I see you left out the rest of my post which refutes your statement.

 

[caravelair]

I see you left out the rest of my post which refutes your statement.

the only thing the rest of your post does is demonstrate your lack of understanding.

it certainly does not refute my statement, because fixing of a mutation shows decidedly non-random evolution.

sure, an individual with a beneficial mutation may not survive that well. the point is, that it is more likely to, and that on average an individual with this trait will reproduce in greater numbers. it doesn't have to happen every time, and it won't, it just has to happen more often. and we don't have to guess that this will happen, we can observe this type of thing happening directly in real research in the lab and in the field.

do you seriously believe that traits cannot affect the likelyhood of something surviving? if a fish in a dark cave gets a mutation that makes it blind, it will not affect it's chances of survival. if an eagle, which relies on eyesight to find food, gets a mutation that makes it blind, then it is incredibly unlikely that it will ever pass on its genes. do you agree?

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

First, you have to consider that the eagle born with good eyesight can still die, while the one with poor eyesight lives, and passes on it's genes. In order for evolution to work, you must assume the inverse happens.

It’s not an assumption. Given two eagles, one with good eyesight and one with poor eyesight, the eagle without the disadvantage will be more likely to survive. I do understand what you are saying. Just because a person leads a healthy life and has great genes is no guarantee that they won’t be hit by a bus tomorrow. You have to look at the pig picture though. The eagle with the disadvantage of bad eyesight has to contend with the same pressures as the one with good eyesight. Which eagle is easier prey? Which eagle would have a harder time hunting prey to feed offspring? Any disadvantage makes it less likely to survive and have great reproductive success. After many generations the population will have far more eagles with good eyesight than bad.

Second, who an organism chooses to mate with is completely random. Here's why:

1) If the eagle born with poor eyesight is a female, the male really won't care; males are generally not as selective in the animal kingdom as females. The male generally just chooses whichever female is willing to mate, which is random, depending on who becomes available.

Animals have elaborate mating rituals and a pretty strict sexual selection practice. It is one of the selection pressures driving evolution.

2) Other random factors include whether or not the organism choosing a mate is a catch itself. If an organism isn't very healty, it's choices are limited to another unhealthy organisms of the same species.

I think you are thinking about humans a little too much here which, as we’ve discussed before, isn’t the best example of what it was like to live in the wild. In the wild unhealthy individuals don’t usually live long enough to reproduce. Even if they do the sexual selection process often excludes them.

3) Another random factor, is whether or not the top choices actually live. They have a higher likelyhood of surviving, but can just as easily die at the hands of a skilled predator. The odds may be higher that they live, but you're still betting on random odds.

You actually have the right idea here. All they need is a higher likelihood of surviving. This is enough to make the selection process NOT random. It’s why casinos owners are rich. Think about it.

4) Then you have to consider all the random ways a healthy creature can die: predation, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and catching a disease, a list of natural disasters such as floods, famine, a long list of harsh whether possibilities like hurricanes, snow, extreme heat or cold..............there are far to many random occurances to consider.

Like I said before, this may happen but overall the big picture favors the healthy and that’s all selection needs to be a nonrandom driving force for evolution.

Once you realize that natural selection is NOT random you should be able to put mutations (beneficial, neutral, and detrimental) together with selection and start to see the big picture as to how the beneficial traits get passed on and how the detrimental ones get weeded out. Continue this process for countless generations and you have evolution in a nutshell.

 

[shinbits]

Woah, wait up. I think you still may be missing something. Let's take a look at all of this.

okay.

Evolution operates under the conclusion that given a population in which a given mutation arises enough times, eventually the mutation will be passed on by one of the organisms.

This is an assumption of what might happen. You can never conclude what random thing will happen based on what random things have happened. I can observe a man win russion roulette twenty times in a row; but I can never conclude that he will ever win again.

In individual cases the mutated organism may perish before passing on its genes but on the whole such mutated organisms with a given beneficial mutation will be more likely to survive.

More chance, more assuming.

Often it isn't a matter of what mates a male chooses out of those to choose from. Many times it boils down to which mates have survived to be chosen from.

This is random, and for all the reasons I mentioned in my post.

If a creature dies before it has a chance to be chosen as a mate it will not pass on its genes. Likewise, if a creature lives long enough to be chosen as a mate, it will likely pass on its genes.

Which organism survives long enough to get to that point, is random, for all the reasons I mentioned in my post.

Beneficial mutations can make the difference. This is completely separate from sexual selection, which can further influence this process.

Beneficial mutations happen randomly.

remember that unhealthy organisms have a lower life expectancy. Even if the organism survives to produce one set of offspring, if it dies before it has a chance to foster a second set of offspring while other healthy organisms survive to produce a second (or even third) set, its genes are less likely to survive.

True. But there is no reason to assume it will never have a second set of offspring, or even a third; and there's no reason to assume that ALL of it's offsring won't grow up to be healthy, and each have healthy offspring of thier own.

On this note, my mom was very sickly, all her life, and died when I was fourteen. Both me and my sister are very healthy people. I've always been hardcore into sports, and I excercise and jog. My sister just took a test for an officer, and did well on the physical part of it. We're still waiting to see if she get's into the program, though.

But the point is, that a person or creature can be sick and still have healthy children/offspring.​

You're still relying on odds. The decision may be random, but it is more probable that favorable mutations will survive. Evolution is all about probability. To call it purely random gives the impression that it is ruled by pure chaos, not roughly determinable probability or in fact any sort of odds favoring.

Gambling is all about probability. You can be generally very good at Black Jack or poker, but you still rely greatly on odds.

Sam Farha, who came in second place out of 2600 people in the '04 World Series of Poker, and has a reputation of being very skilled at reading bluffs, was eliminated early the next year by admittedly new and unskilled players. There was an occasion where he called someone's bluff with who had nothing, but lost at the final turn of the cards (the River) to a pair of eights, when Sam had pocket sixes. The rookie got lucky, Sam got unlucky.

The point? Skill is great, just as health and natural ability is great when it comes to an organism's odds of reproducing; but when luck is such a huge factor, that makes natural selection random.
But the randomly occuring genes are passed off in a non-random manner - one that can be predicted with varying degrees of certainty. The randomness of mutation and what you call the "randomness" of natural selection are not the same thing.​

What your argument boils down to is probability, is it not?

Not quite.....my argument is that natural selection is a completely random process, since it relies on probability.​

 

[caravelair]

Not quite.....my argument is that natural selection is a completely random process, since it relies on probability.[/LEFT]

this makes no sense. how does probability imply randomness? if one thing is more probable than another, then that is not random, by definition.

if an eagle lays 4 eggs, and 2 turn out to be blind, and 2 not, which do you think are going to pass on their genes? how could you possibly claim that they are all equally likely to do so?

 

[shinbits]

if an eagle lays 4 eggs, and 2 turn out to be blind, and 2 not, which do you think are going to pass on their genes? how could you possibly claim that they are all equally likely to do so?

You had to make an extreme example in order to make that work. What you've laid out is a rare case. Under normal circumstances, things are just left to chance and luck.

That is what runs the theory of evolution.

 

[gluadys]

Yeah, I know. But what you don't know about past car crashes---unless it was documented---is the circumstances of how or when or who was involved. The mutations that supposedly happened in the past were not documented. So there'd be no way to know that these mutations, if they did happen, occured in a way that set in motion an evolutionary process that resulted in a population becoming a new species.

Exactly. But the theory of evolution only requires that mutations happen and happened. It does not specify which mutations happened or will happen.

In the same way, an insurance firm knows with a high degree of accuracy how many of its clients will have accidents this fiscal year and how much they are likely to have to pay out. But it cannot predict which clients or the specific amounts payable to each individually.

The theory of evolution does not predict (or even retrodict) the historical pathway of evolution. It does not predict that plants or insects or vertebrates must appear. Evolution could have gone in different directions entirely, and it would still be evolution.

But given that plants and insects and vertebrates did appear, scientists can explore what mutations permitted them to appear and what environmental conditions facilitated their appearance.

And in many cases it can test whether these mutations did occur and when they occurred and what the environmental conditions were when they occurred.

 

[shinbits]

do you seriously believe that traits cannot affect the likelyhood of something surviving? if a fish in a dark cave gets a mutation that makes it blind, it will not affect it's chances of survival. if an eagle, which relies on eyesight to find food, gets a mutation that makes it blind, then it is incredibly unlikely that it will ever pass on its genes. do you agree?

Again, you have to make an extreme case to make this theory make sense. In that extreme case where an animal suddenly gets blind, it will die before an animal that's not blind.

Seeing how most creatures in the animal kingdom are born healthy, this is what makes your theory questionable. Humans are an exeption, but all the polution and processed foods, radiation, drug use, like nicotiene, alcholol and cigarettes, and manny other things like this cause humans to get sickly much more often. But as for the rest of nature, organisms are born pretty much healthy.

 

[Baggins]

You had to make an extreme example in order to make that work. What you've laid out is a rare case. Under normal circumstances, things are just left to chance and luck.

That is what runs the theory of evolution.

I've just read an whole page of posts that point out why this statement is false ( page 29 ).

Why don't you go back and re-read that page, there are a number of posts on it that point out that natural selection isn't a random process and that it affects populations.

It doesn't matter how many 'super-eagles' are unfortunate enough to get run over by buses that blidsided them before they could breed, because over time in a population of eagles the benficial genes will become fixed.

Think in terms of populations rather than individuals and you may have better luck in grasping this point

 

[shinbits]

Exactly. But the theory of evolution only requires that mutations happen and happened. It does not specify which mutations happened or will happen.

No. Evolution needs mutations to have happened in a certain way as to result in more evolved creatures. That's where wild assumptions come in.

 

[gluadys]

And I'm telling you, as a Christian, that GOD has nothing to do with evolution.

And I am telling you, as a Chrstian, that I disagree with your opinion.

Evolution is losely founded on the premise that GOD created sin. .

This is not true. Evolution makes no comment about sin.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Again, you have to make an extreme case to make this theory make sense. In that extreme case where an animal suddenly gets blind, it will die before an animal that's not blind.

Extreme examples are being used to help you grasp the concept at work here. Now that you see and understand that a blind eagle will not pass on it’s genes as effectively as an eagle with good eyesight you can now consider which would be more successful in passing on it’s genes, an eagle with good eyesight or an eagle that is almost blind? How about an eagle with good eyesight an one with very poor eyesight? How about one with good eyesight and one with poor? How about one with good eyesight and one with mediocre? You see, it’s a sliding scale of reproductive success. After many generations the best eyesight will proliferate throughout the population while the worst will get filtered out. Understand now?

 

[shinbits]

I've just read an whole page of posts that point out why this statement is false ( page 29 ).

Why don't you go back and re-read that page, there are a number of posts on it that point out that natural selection isn't a random process and that it affects populations.

Copy and paste specifically what you're talking about. I'm not an evolutionists.

I wont assume which points you're talking about.

It doesn't matter how many 'super-eagles' are unfortunate enough to get run over by buses that blidsided them before they could breed, because over time in a population of eagles the benficial genes will become fixed.

This is another huge assumption; that animals that are born more fit produce children just as fit or better. Healthy animals can produce sick young, and vice-versa. This is another factor that makes evolution more improbable.

The belief that weaker animals die out enough times in order to result in a population becoming new types pf creatures is unfounded and hard to believe.

 

[shinbits]

Extreme examples are being used to help you grasp the concept at work here.

I fully understand the concepts being talked about; I just disagree, and with good reason.

And extreme examples seem to be the only case in which this theory is valid. With normal cases, it is just a random shot in the dark.