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

MarkT said:

I didn't think it was that difficult to understand. Did you understand the car analogy?

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It's not difficult to understand. But you are not being coherent. You are contradicting yourself. Yes, I understood the car analogy. I just snipped it to save space.

I told you by the outward appearance. Do you know what an outward appearance is?

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Yes. It is what you can see (head, tail, eyes, hands/feet, internal organs) as opposed to what is ordinarily invisible (gene sequences) though they can now be seen with the appropriate equipment, too. In genetics, outward appearance is called the phenotype, and the genetic sequences are called the genotype. The phenotype is a partial expression of the genotype. But there are lots of possibilities in the genotype which are not expressed in the phenotype or outward appearance.

Most people would call the outward appearance the "form".

Yes. They would look like the parent group in appearance. They wouldn't necessarily have the same form. Some characters could be missing. A tail, for example.

Form refers to the genetic makeup. You could have similar genes but appear outwardly different. That's proven by comparing humans and chimps. We don't look like monkeys even though we're 98% similar genetically.

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Here is where you contradict yourself. In the first paragraph you say new species would "look like" the parent group in appearance. I assume you mean "outward appearance". You say they could differ in "form". And as an example, you say the new species might not have a tail. This is an alteration in outward appearance. So "form" here refers to outward appearance, to the presence or absence of a visible characteristic.

But then you begin the second paragraph by saying "form" refers to "genetic makeup". So which is it? Genetic makeup or visible characteristics like a tail?

The human/chimp comparison proves nothing. We are 98% similar in genetic makeup and that is confirmed by the similarity of outward appearance. Put longer darker hair on a human body, or shave a chimp, and there is not more than 2% difference in outward appearance. So whether form is genetic makeup or outward appearance, it would seem that chimps and humans are the same kind.

Saying we have a similar form is saying we have the same characters but they could be configured differently or expressed differently.

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Which is exactly what we see in the human/chimp comparison---the same characters configured a little differently.

It would depend on the kind.

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So how do you tell what kind they are and whether or not they are different kinds?

This is my thinking on the subject. Do you understand that?

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I don't think even you understand your thinking.

W Jay Schroeder said:

Mark, I think they do not want to think to much about it, do you. You explained it fine to me. this small genetic difference isnt so small is it, as you have shown. You can not look at a monkey gorilla or chimp and think it a human.

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But no one is saying that, Jay. We all recognize that gorillas, humans, and chimps are different species. But they are all in the same family, while monkeys are a different family.

Like i have stated all animals share charictoristic but never move out of there classes, because they will have one that is never or never was and never will belong to the other class.

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No, monkeys, gorillas, chimps and humans do all belong to the same class. We belong to the class called mammals---along with a lot of other mammals like bears, horses, armadillos, etc. We all belong to the same order (called Primates) along with gibbons, lemurs and tarsiers.

And Humans are in there own class because of this. yes we have mammal traits but we go beyond it with characteristics that others will never have.

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We belong in our own species, but we do not belong in a separate class of our own, because we have mammalian traits that put us in the mammal class.

MarkT said:

This may be the key to understanding what I mean.

The outward appearance is the image of the kind of animal it is. There's a spiritual implication in this statement.

The outward appearance is the image of the inside; the breath of life or the spirit of the creature.

The inside, what we can't see, is the life.

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Have you ever read Plato, Mark? He had much the same concept. He said the outward appearance of anything was an imperfect expression of its interior essence or "form". So, a horse can have individual characteristics which distinguish it from other horses, but all horses express the same image of the "inside" which shows they are all the same kind of thing: a horse.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Plato called that "inside" that life or spirit, the "form" of the creature. Other philosophers call it the "idea" or the "essence" of the creature. ("Essence" means "being".) Is that what you mean by "kind"?

The outside, what we can see, is how we know what kind of life it is.

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But how do we tell from the outside what the inside, the spirit, is? How do we tell if two different species are the same kind of life, since that is a matter of what we can't see. All we have to go by is what we can see. How do we get from what we can see to what kind a species is inside and whether or not it is the same kind as another species?

So I think the image of the animal is what they should be looking at to see how things are related.

The form is the general structure. The same general structures exist but they differ in shape and expression.

What is expressed, what is seen, depends on the kind, the "manufacturer" in my analogy, which is the life of creature.

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But we can only see what is expressed. How can we tell from that what the interior "life" of the creature is? How do we get from what is seen to what is unseen?

So the life of the creature manufactures what is seen.

Anyways If you start with created families created according to their kind and you apply the concept of a gene pool to each family, it looks a whole lot like what we actually see.

It's kinda like starting at the beginning and looking forward while they are starting at the end and looking backwards.

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How do you start at the beginning, if you don't know what the beginning is? All we can see are the end points (today's living species).

Their view is telelogical in a sense. Sorta like Aristotle's "the cause of fire is the heat of it".

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I see you need to brush up on your philosophical terms too. The evolutionary view is NOT teleological. It is your view which is teleological (goal-oriented).

Most people would call the outward appearance the "form".

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So what? I made a car analogy that explained the difference.

Here is where you contradict yourself. In the first paragraph you say new species would "look like" the parent group in appearance. I assume you mean "outward appearance". You say they could differ in "form". And as an example, you say the new species might not have a tail. This is an alteration in outward appearance. So "form" here refers to outward appearance, to the presence or absence of a visible characteristic.

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I said they wouldn't necessarily have to have the same form, meaning you could have a species without a tail.

But the outward appearance would still be monkey-kind, for example.

The outward appearance of a species obviously includes it's form. Like I said. All things have a form.

Look at it this way. I'm introducing a spiritual term that separates us from the ape family.

Kind.

The outward appearance of a living creature is the expression of the kind of animal it is. It is the image of the life inside.

Do you have any spiritual understanding?

Living things have forms and general structures called characters.

You can't just list the characters we have in common and ignore the differences in appearance. We have the same characters, differently shaped and sized, with a different appearance, hairless and with nothing in common with monkeys.

How can you ignore the fact we don't look like monkeys?

The human/chimp comparison proves nothing.

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It's consistent with my explanation. My explanation is consistent with what we can see. We don't look like monkeys. That's a fact. My explanation supports the theory of creation.

Keeping with the auto theme:- when a GM car rolls out of a Ford factory I will consider evolution a possibility

Plato called that "inside" that life or spirit, the "form" of the creature. Other philosophers call it the "idea" or the "essence" of the creature. ("Essence" means "being".) Is that what you mean by "kind"?

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Essentially. Only I'm giving it more meaning.

MarkT said:

Essentially. Only I'm giving it more meaning.

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OK. The question remains---and you haven't answered it yet---how do we tell from outward appearance what this invisible, spiritual kind is? How do we determine from what is visible which species are of the same kind?


You asked earlier how I can ignore the differences between monkeys and humans. The answer is, I don't. The differences say they are different species.

But you have already agreed that a kind can include more than one species.

Any two species have differences. The question is, when do those differences add up to different kinds?

We are not totally different from monkeys. It is simply not true to say we have nothing in common with them. We have some things in common and some things that are different.

When it comes to chimpanzees (which are no more similar to monkeys than we are) we have a great deal in common with them and few differences.

Is there any way to tell a difference in kind other than by looking at outward appearance or genetic sequences?

How much difference adds up to a difference in kind?

A4C said:

Keeping with the auto theme:- when a GM car rolls out of a Ford factory I will consider evolution a possibility

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And keeping with the wild goalpost moving - when a tetrapod with 2 legs, 2 arms and 2 wings is found, I will consider Creationism a possibility.

theory:

A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena.


Thats one of the dictionary definitions, perhaps you should start reading more things then the bible for once, eh?

Gusten said:

Thats one of the dictionary definitions, perhaps you should start reading more things then the bible for once, eh?

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Welcome to the forum, but chill with the Bible bashing will you? There are a lot of TEs that post here and the least guests here like us can do is respect them by discussing science with the Creationists - not dispariage their religion.

USincognito said:

Welcome to the forum, but chill with the Bible bashing will you? There are a lot of TEs that post here and the least guests here like us can do is respect them by discussing science with the Creationists - not dispariage their religion.

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Hello Mr USincognito

I simple stated the truth. He or She clearly did not know the definition of "theory", yet started a topic about it, assuming it meant something different. Just because your religious, doesnt excuse your ignorance, does it?

Gusten said:

Hello Mr USincognito

I simple stated the truth. He or She clearly did not know the definition of "theory", yet started a topic about it, assuming it meant something different. Just because your religious, doesnt excuse your ignorance, does it?

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Call me US. And I would similarly ask, just because you're new, that does not excuse being an ungracious guest, does it?

(As an aside, get used to people pontificating endlessly about "theory" when they're using some laypersons, straw man version of it, and correcting them ad nauseum.)

Again, welcome to the forum.

Cassandra said:

the process of evolution has been repeated inside and outside of the lab. Would you be so kind as you explain (or point out was source/s) made you think it had not?

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What process? That genetic information changes in a population over time? What part has been "reapeated inside and outside of the lab"?

Science isn't goal oriented? Come on.

You're trying to determine the principal cause of things by looking at the effects. Your interpretation is teleological.

OK. The question remains---and you haven't answered it yet---how do we tell from outward appearance what this invisible, spiritual kind is? How do we determine from what is visible which species are of the same kind?


You asked earlier how I can ignore the differences between monkeys and humans. The answer is, I don't. The differences say they are different species.

But you have already agreed that a kind can include more than one species.

Any two species have differences. The question is, when do those differences add up to different kinds?

We are not totally different from monkeys. It is simply not true to say we have nothing in common with them. We have some things in common and some things that are different.

When it comes to chimpanzees (which are no more similar to monkeys than we are) we have a great deal in common with them and few differences.

Is there any way to tell a difference in kind other than by looking at outward appearance or genetic sequences?

How much difference adds up to a difference in kind?

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To see it from my point of view it's best to begin at the beginning. You have to imagine or hypothesize a kind, a sort, a large division like a phylum or a class of animals that were created and imagine a number of families within the kind.

Only you can't sort by morphology this time. You have to sort by the way things move ie. swim, fly, swarm, crawl, walk on all fours, walk on two feet and then you can sort by the appearance of the characters that allow them to move about.

But for the purpose of establishing bloodlines and relationships, you have to begin with the kind. You can't just sort by characters.

A kind is a distinct sort, a division, the original group that all members of it's kind belong to but it doesn't mean they are all related by blood. A kind is just a division.

The family would be the original parent population, I think.

But you can use kind and family interchangably. When I say "monkey-kind" I'm refering to the original parent population imagining there is just one. There could have been more than one family but it seems likely there was one. One original gene pool.

Probably two animals were created; a male and a female.

So each family is represented by two animals and there could even be interbreeding within the kind. You could have the bear family which has a dog-like appearance as a result and call it a dog. It would depend on the male; if it was a male dog or a male something else that bred with a female dog. But I'm just speculating. Bears and dogs are pretty distinct in the way they move and what they eat so it's probably they only share a similar character.

OK. The question remains---and you haven't answered it yet---how do we tell from outward appearance what this invisible, spiritual kind is? How do we determine from what is visible which species are of the same kind?

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The outward appearance is the reflection of the inward animal; the spirit or life of the thing. You have to imagine its' kind and then you can apply the principles of speciation.

And then you can figure the parent population represented 100% of the gene pool and characters are lost through speciation and natural selection. You start with 100% and lose characters and abilities. Animals fill a niche. Animals go extinct over time.

The species of a kind would have an outward appearance that tells us they belong to the kind. The way they walk is a give away. The shape of the feet, whether they have hooves or not.

All these things are related to genetics and form as well. However since we're made of the same stuff and we can eat and therefore assimilate other animals, it means we have things in common with animals; characters, similar genes.

When it comes to chimpanzees (which are no more similar to monkeys than we are) we have a great deal in common with them and few differences.

Is there any way to tell a difference in kind other than by looking at outward appearance or genetic sequences?

How much difference adds up to a difference in kind?

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But monkeys are related to chimps by blood. You can see it in their movements, in what they eat, in their faces, in their bodies, in their feet, in their habitat, in their ability to climb trees and hang onto branches, in the sounds they make.

They can't be related to humans who walk on two feet, who can think logically and rationally, who can invent and create, who don't have a thing about them that looks like it was inherited from the monkey-kind.

Also, I think the distinction that species (by definition) can't breed is a phony one. It seems too contrived. Obviously they don't or can't for some reason. I don't know why but I suspect it has more to do with mutation than speciation.

MarkT said:

Also, I think the distinction that species (by definition) can't breed is a phony one. It seems too contrived.

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how else would you define species? any other definition would be completely arbitrary.

Obviously they don't or can't for some reason. I don't know why but I suspect it has more to do with mutation than speciation.

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i'm sorry, i don't understand that. speciation is observed, what's the problem?

A4C said:

Keeping with the auto theme:- when a GM car rolls out of a Ford factory I will consider evolution a possibility

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I love it!!