Why do people call it the "Theory of Evolution"?

MarkT said:

That would depend on your definition of gigantic. People still die of infections. I would say vaccines and antibiotics were useful discoveries but it doesn't change my opinion of medicine in general. What have they done recently?

People live longer because they are better fed and have clean water, not because they use drugs.

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Actually, antibiotics are also one of the reasons for the greatest increases in life expectancy. People do still die from infections, but not nearly as many as before antibiotics were introduced.

MarkT said:

Sorry. In depth analysis assuming something a priori, what is that?

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I don't know. It can't be evolution because you added a priori assumption. And it can't be creationism if anything is analyzed in-depth.

How can you analyze something with out any prior knowledge?

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How can you not? What choice do you have?

Similar looking things have similar genetic sequences. Why? Because genes determine the physical appearance of things, the way things look. It's circular reasoning to say genetics confirm what is seen. And then creating a whole system of analysis. What is that?

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I would call that a gross misrepresentation. Genes determine the way things are, not just how they look. But more than that, genes can also identify ancestry by several different methods. Do you know what a paternity test is? How could that work if what you say is true?

†(ÎXØ¥Ê)† said:

Aron-Ra, you seem to have alot of information regarding evolution. I was just wondering if you could give me a simple summary of when life began as we know it (first micro-organisms) or a molecular form of life - to how we are today, as simple as can be, dont worry about backing it up with scientific references or anything just from what you know, I'd like to see how you say we came to be,
I mean if you dont mind, and if it isnt too time consuming thanks.

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I did already write a highly-abbreviated explanation of that a few years ago. If you're interested, you can read that. Otherwise, I think this works better as a discussion than a lecture. Thanks for asking though.

Follow the thread on the systematic classification of life, and post any questions, challenges, points of contention, or whatever you have there.

MarkT said:

Some useful discoveries have been made in the past. I will give the credit to the men who made the discoveries, not to science.

And not to the wannabes on this forum.

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Could you expand on this a bit? I take it you are hostile to both science and medicine? And what does the insult have to do with anything?

If you are an ape right now, then was your mother not also an ape?

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Maybe your mother.

I can list many differences between gorillas, seven different species of them. I can show differences between chimpanzees and bonobos too. I can even show differences between different groups of people. But that doesn't mean that one group of people aren't people, right? Nor does it mean that one group of apes aren't apes either. So what you have to do is come of with a description of all the characteristics that describe people, without using any description for one culture that would exclude another. Then you do the same thing with apes. If you describe every character that is common to all apes, excluding none, extant or extinct, then you will describe people at the same time whether you wanted to or not.

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You want accountability? I thought I was doing the attacking. You're supposed to be defending.

Ok. I can account for the form/body resemblance. 98% genetic similarity would account for that; the form or shape, morphology.

But even though we're 98% similar in form, we have no ape/monkey-like characters.

I guess you'll have to account for that.

I'll help you.

There seems to be an unwritten law (the law of speciation) that all living creatures reproduce after their own kind. Or so the Bible tells us.

And so far the apes and monkeys are true to form. Every species of ape and monkey has ape/monkey-like characters. You can see it in the monkey kind. You can see it in the gibbons and the lemurs and apes and chimps. Every species of the monkey kind. They all have monkey-like characters.

Monkey hands, monkey arms, monkey legs, monkey heads, monkey feet.

But humans don't have a single monkey-like character.

And humans are supposed to be related to monkeys?

Darwins' finches had bird-like characters. Dogs have dog-like characters. Cats have cat-like characters.

They all seem to follow the law.

There has never been an instance in the history of the universe where an animal hasn't brought forth/reproduced after its' own kind. Dinosaurs reproduced after their own kind. All Fish do. All birds do. All mammals do.

But humans didn't. How come?

And we don't speciate, at least it doesn't look like we have since recorded history, unless you want to count the racial groups as species.

So how did we end up with no monkey-like characters. Why didn't we reproduce after the monkey kind if that is our kind?

We have no new characters, so we can't be transitional and no monkey-like characters. Not one of our characters is monkey/ape-like.

If humans are apes, then we would have monkey-like characters. But we don't. We don't look like monkeys at all.

Why? Because we don't belong to the monkey kind.

Our family is human kind. And that accounts for the vast difference between apes and humans.

Now according to the gene pool concept, we can see some apes are on their last leg.

Subspecies of an ancient kind, they've lost viability through speciation and like the Dodo bird, they will eventually go extinct.

But humans aren't monkeys so we're OK.

So what makes it so easy to accept the ridiculous changes from rotweiller to a Chihuahua, but not the relatively slight change from a rotweiller to a bear?

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Could be because they are a different kind.

MarkT said:

How do you explain 30 families of frog then? Why aren't they considered species ie. they come out of a single gene pool.

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Because there are 3,438 species of frogs. The 30 families group similar species together. Any yes they all came from an original ancestor with one gene pool. But today there are 3,438 different frog gene pools.

I'll bet you can tell they are frogs just by looking at them. So in my opinion, they belong to one family.

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Would you call this a frog?

All frogs do share common characteristics. That is what makes them frogs. But they are larger than one family. There are about 30 families altogether in the order Anura, or Salientia.

What you're saying about humans is not a fact.

Anyone can see humans are not apes. Apes belong to the monkey kind. That is apparent.

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Aron-Ra has covered this.

The difference between apes and humans is far greater in my view. What you call non essential or minor are evidence they don't all come from the same gene pool.

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Those are evidence they no longer share the same gene pool. But their ancestor did.

How you classify them is an entirely different matter. It's an arbitrary thing. Artificial.

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Biological taxonomy is not arbitrary. It used to be. Prior to the work of Linnaeus, every botanist and zoologist devised his own classification system. The point of the Linnaean system was to be truly systematic in classification. And the cladistic system used today aims to classify species according to their relationships.

I can sort books, for example, by the author, title, subject, etc.

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But we can't sort animals that way. If you use morphologic characteristics, you get only one possible classification system. You don't get one for teeth, a different one for noses and a different one again for eyes.

All of the characteristics lead to the same classification.

Furthermore, when you add in genetic information, you still get the same classification.

That's rather like finding not only that you get the same classification of books whether you sort by title, author or publisher, but you still get the same classification if you sort by the font used.

A nested hierarchy is a very special kind of classification. Most things cannot be classified in a nested hierarchy to begin with. And to get the same nested hierarchy from a totally different system of classification (genes instead of morphology) is quite astounding.

See. You can call them families because frogs speciate at a faster rate but the definition of family has now changed.

It's now a step in the hierarchy of the system of classifying things that is being used.

So these examples are "families" because they contain species.

However, my definition of family remains "the gene pool" the animal comes from.

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I don't know of any evidence that frogs speciate at a faster rate. Of course families are groups of species. All taxonomic terms above species refer to groups of species. But that also means they originally derived from a "common gene pool" ----the gene pool of their common ancestor.

Well you're using the scientific terms that came out of the system you're using. Again, it's a matter of different rates of speciation which is confusing the picture.

I would suspect mammals are more complicated. Therefore I would not use "kind" to refer to mammals.

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Speciation rates tend to vary more with environmental conditions than with type of animal. Mammals speciated very rapidly in the early Cenozoic, but not so rapidly before or after. As for mammals being more complicated than frogs, you are only guessing. You need to actually study the animals before you can make that conclusion. The scientific terms you object to are based on detailed study.

For example, here are a description of one of those frog families: the dendrobatids (Dendrobatidae)


Have you ever studied tadpole beaks? Can you tell by looking which frogs are poisonous and which not?

It's also a matter of interpretation.

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Classification is a matter of observation. That is why creationists of the 18th and 19th century were able to classify plants and animals based on morphology, yet still come up with the same hierarchy as 21st century taxonomists get basing their classification on DNA sequences (which implies common ancestry).

So it does come down to what we think.

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It comes down to what we have studied. Otherwise what we think has no foundation in reality. You can dream up whatever ideas you want, but it's nothing but imagination if it doesn't accord with actual observation.

No. What I meant was, if I wanted to know what science said, I wouldn't be arguing here. I would be reading books and journals etc.

The reason we're here is to discuss this reality, what science says, to see if there is any truth in it.

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You are contradicting yourself. You cannot discuss what science says or pass any judgement on whether it is true unless you do read those books and journals. You have to know what science says, and what nature says, in order to judge the truth of scientific statements.

You have to defend your belief.

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No you don't. You can believe whatever you please.

But when you say your belief is a true reflection of reality, then you have to defend that statement.

I don't have to have the answers. My argument is not that I have the answers. My argument is that science doesn't have the answers. Science has not proven descent by modification.

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You can't argue that science doesn't know the answers when you haven't even checked them out.

No. Not the way I'm using it. A kind would include several, maybe many families. When I use the word, I'm guessing, because I don't have a clear definition of "kind".

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Then why use the word at all?

Like I said, there are many ways to sort things. Like how living creatures move, what they eat, whether they walk on all fours or not, whether they have wings etc.

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So would bats, birds and insects all be one kind because they all have wings? Or would swallows and ostriches be different kinds because one flies and one doesn't. Would penguins, whales and salmon all be one kind because they all swim?

You have to do some thinking about which characteristics are meaningful for classification purposes and which are not.

So sorting by morpholgy is only one way.

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But the things you mentioned above---what they eat, how they move, are not morphological characteristics. Nor is morphology the only possible basis of classification. So is physiology, and so is gene sequencing.

But the way of classifying things should not be informing you. A classification system can not by definition tell us how things are related.

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The Linnaean system doesn't because it wasn't designed too. But the cladistic system is based on relationships.

This system you're using isn't balanced. It's not being truthful.

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That's an unsupported assumption on your part. You don't know the system, so you can't say it is unbalanced or untruthful until you take time to study it.

As I said, mammals are less likely to speciate, with the exception of birds, I guess, because they can range further, than frogs and insects.

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Scroll down to the geographic distribution of frogs.

As for insects, there are 750,000 species which represents 75% of all animal species. And there are very few places where you do not find insects.

Therefore you can't see the hierarchy that probably exists as you can with frogs and insects. Mammals have fewer offspring, take longer to breed, have fewer places to hide unless they live in a jungle.

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What makes you think that? Mammals are also grouped in orders: Rodents, Ungulates, Carnivores, Bats, Primates, etc. and each of these are divided into families, genera and species just like frogs and insects are. Yes, there are fewer of them, but the same hierarchy applies.

So the family is the original parent population that species come from.

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For example, all descendants of this parent population belong to the same family?

Could you expand on this a bit? I take it you are hostile to both science and medicine? And what does the insult have to do with anything?

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No. I was refering to some of the science groupies. The ones that argue for evolution as if the theory and the evidence originated with them.

MarkT said:

No. I was refering to some of the science groupies. The ones that argue for evolution as if the theory and the evidence originated with them.

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Maybe you should consider that a great number of the 'science' groupies are working in a scientific discipline?

MarkT said:

But humans don't have a single monkey-like character.

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With all the effort Answers in Genesis goes to in order to show that our similarity to apes doesn't prove human evolution, you'd think they'd have been quick to point out the lack of similarities instead if they thought there was any way they could get away with it.

Try this. Look at your hands. See your thumbs? Apes have those, too. Note how your hand appears three-dimensional? That's binocular vision you're experiencing. Again, apes.

You're an omnivore. So're the great apes. Hair covers your body. That's apes again-- they don't have fur, but hair. You have a well-developed brain and complex familial relationships, just like apes. The computer in front of you? It's a tool. Apes make and use tools, too.

Shall I go on, or have I proven my point?

Dal M. said:

With all the effort Answers in Genesis goes to in order to show that our similarity to apes doesn't prove human evolution, you'd think they'd have been quick to point out the lack of similarities instead if they thought there was any way they could get away with it.

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That is uncanny.

Dal M

With all the effort Answers in Genesis goes to in order to show that our similarity to apes doesn't prove human evolution, you'd think they'd have been quick to point out the lack of similarities instead if they thought there was any way they could get away with it.

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I haven't told them yet. Maybe I'll go over there and tell them. How would you like that? A seminal idea is hard to ignore.

Try this. Look at your hands. See your thumbs? Apes have those, too. Note how your hand appears three-dimensional? That's binocular vision you're experiencing. Again, apes.

You're an omnivore. So're the great apes. Hair covers your body. That's apes again-- they don't have fur, but hair. You have a well-developed brain and complex familial relationships, just like apes. The computer in front of you? It's a tool. Apes make and use tools, too.

Shall I go on, or have I proven my point?

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No. But remember. You read it here first. Mark T's answer/rebuttal to the argument that man is an ape.

If you are an ape right now, then was your mother not also an ape?

Maybe your mother.

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Apparently, you don't know what an ape is. But if either of us is an ape, (and we both are) then both of our mothers were apes too.

You want accountability? I thought I was doing the attacking. You're supposed to be defending.

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I wasn't attacking, and whatever you're doing isn't threatening in any way. So I don't think you're attacking.

Ok. I can account for the form/body resemblance. 98% genetic similarity would account for that; the form or shape, morphology.

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I don't think you can account for that, and I haven't even seen you try yet.

But even though we're 98% similar in form, we have no ape/monkey-like characters.
I guess you'll have to account for that.

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I did. Did you [deliberately?] forget what I said before about our pentadactyl digits with fingerprints and flat keratinous nails, two pectoral mammae, inability to synthesize vitimin C, and all that? Every part of our physiognamy is an ape/monkey-like character.

I'll help you.

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No thanks. You're the one who needs help.

There seems to be an unwritten law (the law of speciation) that all living creatures reproduce after their own kind. Or so the Bible tells us.

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I thought you said it was "unwritten"? But what you're talking about is clades, an evolutionary concept which you're having real trouble with. But I'll try to help. The Bible lists only one of those "kinds", the "cattle kind". However, as I have already shown you, the "cattle kind" (Family; Bovidae) includes many many different species that can't produce the same "kind" as the others in the same group. However, goats, sheep, cows of all kinds, wild and domestic, ibex, kudu, wildebeest, water buffalo, bison, yak, etc. -They're all cattle. But they're not all the same kind.

And so far the apes and monkeys are true to form. Every species of ape and monkey has ape/monkey-like characters. You can see it in the monkey kind.

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Which translates into "Haplorhini", a taxonomic suborder of primates, which includes apes, which includes humans.

You can see it in the gibbons and the lemurs and apes and chimps. Every species of the monkey kind. They all have monkey-like characters.

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And so do we.

Monkey hands, monkey arms, monkey legs, monkey heads, monkey feet.

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All present in people too.

But humans don't have a single monkey-like character.

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Yes we do. The enclosed orbitals in our skulls are a monkey trait. Our down-turned nostrils are a Catarrhine (Old World monkey) trait, as are our fingernails. Our fingerprints are an ape trait, as is our inability to synthesize vitamin C. Our relatively-sparse fur is a hominid (Great ape) trait. Even our bi-pedal gait is an ape trait, one we share with a host of apes from the fossil record.

And humans are supposed to be related to monkeys?

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Technically, we are monkeys. Humans are Catarrhines, which is a specific infraorder of Old World monkeys. More specifically, humans are nested in a branch of ancient monkeys called Propliopithecids.

Darwins' finches had bird-like characters.

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Yes they did. They were also a dozen different species, and not the same "kind" as each other anymore.

Dogs have dog-like characters.

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And so do bears and seals, and even some of the larger weasels. That's because they're all related.

Cats have cat-like characters.

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And so do some (but not all) civets. That's because they're related too.

They all seem to follow the law.

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And so do we.

There has never been an instance in the history of the universe where an animal hasn't brought forth/reproduced after its' own kind.

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Well, there have been several that we know of, and a few we've been able to document for certain. Some of these, we even did ourselves intentionally via artificial selection. Have you ever noticed how there aren't any aurochs anymore?

Dinosaurs reproduced after their own kind.

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And begat birds.

All Fish do.

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Even those who begat the first amphibians.

All birds do.

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There were five major divisions of birds once. Now there are only two. And they are definitely very different "kinds".

All mammals do.

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There were six major divisions of mammals once. Now there are only three. And they are each definitely very different kinds too. One of those three accounts for the vast majority of all mammals including people. Tell me, do you have any mammal characters?

But humans didn't. How come?

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Did you develop in a placenta? That's a trait specific only to Eutherian mammals, you know.

And we don't speciate, at least it doesn't look like we have since recorded history, unless you want to count the racial groups as species.

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I don't. When a single species is divided into two or more isolated groups, they continue to diversify, growing apart from each other. This is why we have different racial groups. In order to be considered different species, each group must have some trait common to every member of its own group which is not present in any member of the sister group. This is not currently the case with any existing human racial groups though it may seem that way sometimes. In addition, those sister groups must have grown far enough apart that they either will not or cannot interbreed anymore. So there haven't been any other species of humans since at least 12,000 years ago.

The skull you identified as a human was from a race called Homo erectus, (also known as Pithecanthropus) which has been identified as the father race of Homo sapiens, neanderthals and hobbits (Homo floresiensis). So humans have speciated a few times before.

So how did we end up with no monkey-like characters. Why didn't we reproduce
after the monkey kind if that is our kind?

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We did.

We have no new characters, so we can't be transitional and no monkey-like
characters. Not one of our characters is monkey/ape-like.

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All of our characters are monkey/ape-like, except the new ones.

If humans are apes, then we would have monkey-like characters. But we don't.
We don't look like monkeys at all.

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Ross Perot does.

Why? Because we don't belong to the monkey kind.

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Yes we do.

Our family is human kind. And that accounts for the vast difference between apes and humans.

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There is no "vast difference" any more than there is a "vast difference between humans and mammals. Can there be a difference between humans and mammals if humans are mammals?

Now according to the gene pool concept, we can see some apes are on their last leg.

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And that's really our fault. We're rotton siblings.

Subspecies of an ancient kind, they've lost viability through speciation and like the Dodo bird, they will eventually go extinct.

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The dodo went extinct because they couldn't speciate. You've got the whole process backwards.

But humans aren't monkeys so we're OK.

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Yes we are.

So what makes it so easy to accept the ridiculous changes from rotweiller to a Chihuahua, but not the relatively slight change from a rotweiller to a bear?

Could be because they are a different kind

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Nope. There's no such thing as a "kind". If there was, you creationists would have defined it by now. But rotweillers, chihuahuas and bears are all placental mammals, all Carnivora, all Canoidea, and all decended from Amphicyonids, the "Bear-dogs" of the Miocene.

No one really wants to be associated with their older relatives anymore.

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Sorry Aron that argument will never fly again. It's as dead as a Dodo.

Genetics can account for the form of a living creature but it's "kind" determines it's relationship to everything/other animals.

Even if humans grew wings, they would still be a "kind" of human. Their wings would predictably be human-like and not-bird like.

Genetics is morpholgy or to put it another way, an animals shape or form is expressed by it's genome.

We have no ape/monkey-like characters, unlike all the true species of the monkey kind, simply because we are/came from, a different kind, the human "kind".

MarkT said:

Genetics is morpholgy

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Wow. It really isn't.

Genetics contributes to phenotype but genetics is not morphology.

Genetics is... well, genetics.

h2

MarkT said:

You read it here first. Mark T's answer/rebuttal to the argument that man is an ape.

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Your "rebuttal" consists of the word "no."

I knew I should've started small. Tell me: do you have opposable thumbs?

MarkT said:

Sorry Aron that argument will never fly again. It's as dead as a Dodo.

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The thing creationists never understand is that simply asserting something doesn't make it so.

Genetics can account for the form of a living creature but it's "kind" determines it's relationship to everything/other animals.

Even if humans grew wings, they would still be a "kind" of human. Their wings would predictably be human-like and not-bird like.

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That is exactly correct! Gosh, you're so close to getting this, you have no idea! But hold that thought.

Genetics is morpholgy or to put it another way, an animals shape or form is expressed by it's genome.

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The form is expressed in the genome, but genetics is not morphology. Genetics also indicate ancestry. And there's a heckuva whole lot more to it than that.

We have no ape/monkey-like characters, unlike all the true species of the monkey kind, simply because we are/came from, a different kind, the human "kind".

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And the human kind (clade) is part of the "ape kind" which is part of the "monkey kind". Why do you keep snipping and deleting all the ape/monkey-like characters I keep listing? And then pretending you never saw them? Do you think we're all so stupid that we don't notice you doing that? Do you think that if you ignore them they'll go away? Do you think deliberate attempts at obfuscation or deception could possibly help your case, even if we didn't all know you were just lying about those characters you're forced to ignore?

Explain your grasping hands with opposable thumbs, fingerprints, and fingernails. Account for your Catarrhine nostrils, enclosed skeletal orbits, your caecum, body hair, pectoral nipples, pendulous genitals, your propensity for tool use, and your greatly enlarged brain, (built on a simpler "reptile" brain) and explain your inability to synthesize vitamin C, your susceptibility to viruses and toxins that only effect primates, your bi-pedal gait, your brachiation and occipital arc of your shoulders, and your dentition. The combination of cuspids, bicuspids, reduced-canines, and four five-pointed molars with a Y-shaped crevasse are all characters unique to hominids, the great apes. These are all ape/monkey-like characters you pretend not to have.

In fact, I challenge you to name one single character that all monkeys have, without exception, but that humans do not have. You may have some difficulty with this. Other creationists certainly have.

"I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character...by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. I wish somebody would indicate one to me. But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I would have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so."
--Carolus Linnaeus; the "father of taxonomy", 1788

There are many examples of the monkey kind but only one example of human kind.

Every species of the monkey kind has monkey-like characters.

You can modify something genetically, warp it, dwarf it, twist it's shape, but it will still come out true to it's kind.

A tomato will remain a tomato.

If you're searching for the ancestor, you have to follow the kind, not morphology.

Sorting by morpholgy is therefore misleading.

At least you have to start with the kind and then you can use genetic markers.

You can add and insert genes but then you would end up with new characters but as Aron pointed out humans have no new characters.

Look at your hands Aron.

You don't have monkey hands! Every other species of the monkey kind has monkey hands.

Can't you see?

Your argument is done! Finished! Kaput!