Has natural selection really been tested and verified?

Peg, we are obviously witnessing new human species, and new complex body parts evolving all the time in the human population-just look around, don't you see it happening? Haven't you noticed how easy it is for all your neighbors down the street with the six digit hands to get laid on Saturday nights? Plus what about all those people in Canberra developing those bomb sniffing glands on the tops of their heads-you don't think that is going to become quite useful in a few thousand years, when we are all crawling around in tunnels hiding from terrorists? Wake up, look at the world around you would ya?But of course, this is completely off topic, because asking for evidence of ..well, just because, ok! Got it?Now go read a biology book and stop asking questions!

Evolution is any heritable change to a lineage? That would make any sexual reproduction evolution.You should go read a biology book. Or go fly a kite. Or do practically anything other than posting here.

Man what a dimwit you are. You interpreted that entire post to be a parody of an argument an evolutionist would make. HahahaIt was an exaggeration of the exact issues that an evolutionist would NEVER address you complete fool! You don't even know how to make a proper insult you twit! At least you are UNINTENTIONALLY funny! ha ha ha...Edited by Bolder-dash, : internet problemEdited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.Edited by Bolder-dash, : internet issues

Yes, I agree. Only Dr A never employs a strategy of manners and decency. He makes it a habit of jumping into conversation he is not even involved in and throwing in his one line insults which never add to any discussions. I believe he has even been warned about this in other threads but he gets doing it anyway.

Ok, Percy, let me say this for the 5th(?) time, as perhaps one of the times you will actually hear it. I had ABSOLUTELY NO desire to talk of natural selection as it relates to some generic concept that means nothing in terms of evolution-I had every intention to discuss NS as it relates to EVOLUTION!Why do you continue to ignore this fact? This is moderation?Should I not be allowed to decide for my self what I was asking for, especially when I wrote very specifically what it was I was asking for three times? NS as it relates to EVOLUTION. Please read that sentence again-Natural Selection as it relates to Evolution. Please address why you continue to fail to see the connection between NS and EVOLUTIONARY Change, as opposed to whatever the heck you want to call NS which does not involve evolutionary change.I am completely flabbergasted that you continue to ignore this very obvious very deliberate point.Do I need to start another thread which says that when I am talking about how NS can work with evolution, I want to discuss the tools it uses to work with evolution, because I am interested in talking about how it works WITH evolution?This is like discussing with small children, hardly worthy of the intellectual powers of this website.

Gee, Percy, I guess if your contention is that every time two reproductive organisms have sex, and they produce an offspring, that this is evolution-I think you aren't going to have a lot of creationist who disagree with you.You have just convinced me-I know animals have sex, and I know they have offspring, so evolution must be true.Do you think that perhaps one reason the board is so dominated with evolutionists is because of the utterly contemptuous and condescending manner in which anyone who disagrees with you is treated?You claim to be a moderator and you come on here to tell me what I don't understand?

You know Peg, one of the reasons why evolutionist have been able to stifle the conversation, and argument in their favor regarding schools and other avenues for learning more about our existence, is by doing exactly what they do on this site. They attempt to belittle and characterize anyone who disagrees with their position as being whacky, uneducated, brain-washed religious zealots, or people with their heads in the sand. They do it here on this forum (which in actuality is a evolutionist website-which allows creationists to participate, and they do it regularly to you.Anytime they are challenged to defend anything, they throw out the same card time and time again, their ace in the hole-"Oh, you just don't understand science." If the people who disagree with them happen to also be scientists, the fact that they disagree with them automatically disqualifies their credentials, because by disagreeing with them, they are creationists, so their minds must be clouded. if you said someone's mind is clouded because they are atheist however,they will just go right back to the same circular argument.Percy has done it right here again, instead of moderating this thread, he is trying to claim I don't understand science because I disagree with the concept that sexual reproduction equates to evolution.So, to take your point, "don't bite back"-sorry I have to respectfully disagree to a point. Sometimes biting back a little is required. There have been fifty posts on this thread alone dedicated to people simply saying-Oh we are right, you don't understand what you are talking about, ended with a quip little insult at the end.I have read plenty of posts on this forum, and not all of these people are the geniuses they proclaim themselves to be (Dr.A). I am not intimidated by them. Don't always just let people walk all over you. In my opinion the intellectual community that also happens to see there are gaping holes in this theory could do with a bit more biting back at times.

hmm...very interesting point..if all RM somehow ceased, evolutionary change over time would still continue to happen through natural selection. I wonder what it would be occurring on, the previous RM perhaps??So, if that's the case, if RM never happened at all, evolution would still continue to occur through NS I guess. I mean the moderator said so, so it must be true. So, RM are in fact not necessary elements of evolution after all. And that makes parasomnium and huntard wrong then because they claim it is an essential element? Or is that only in the real world, not on the evolutionists web page world?

Cavediver,I believe you are a smart man in real life, probably liberal in your politics, probably socially conscious, probably even decent.Therefore it comes as a bit of a surprise to me that you would really believe that one can not be an intelligent thinker, and see there are some problems with your theory. You immediately dismiss such a large group of people, simply because they find some of the stretches of logic to be too elastic, be it in the denial of the uniformity of the universe, or the proposition that something can't come from nothing, or any other hundreds of reasons why. Your glib response which you probably meant as a joke (which you won't be admonished for being off topic on)is surprising, but also indicative of the reality of the community here. You all can't possibly believe that someone smart can possibly disagree with you, so you all are anchored into your positions, void of any need for mental consideration, in exactly the same way that you claim creationists are. That doesn't leave much room for anything constructive to be achieved on this forum at all.I certainly have lost interest.

Exactly how many posts in this thread can you read that refer to the topic?After you can answer that question, then perhaps you can tell me how worthwhile the forum is, and explain to me how its a debate, as opposed to a trial where the plaintive is also the judge, the jury , and the bailiff. Enjoy your flagellation. I think I will stick to sites that actually have a real moderator for now.Or even no moderator would be an improvement.

Simon Conway Morris...Oops, I win. Gee that didn't take long at all.Care to try your luck at another sport you are better equipped for? Arm wrestling?

Further debate would imply that you actually debated on this topic. I see no evidence of that.Of course your criteria for evidence is obviously much lower than mine.

Oh, you mean they are not allowed to have gone to church? So they have to believe that some things can't be accounted for by a materialistic account of the world and also be atheist?You got me there. I guess no one is going to meet that challenge. You are good.

Belief in a religion means that you believe that a non-materialistic force has an influence in the effects of the world (i.e. there is a connection between your brain, and the higher being). Neo-Darwinism states that all traits and forms of existence are derived through RM so it is impossible for things to arise from RM and have a connection to a higher being.-SO all those who claim to be religious and believe in Darwinism don't understand religion, and they should be required to justify their beliefs in the same way that Evolutionists require those who don't believe in the theory to justify theirs.To be a theistic-evolutionist must be the most thoughtless mindset that one can hope to achieve. At least atheists have a good reason to believe what they do.

Thank you for your reply.I believe that you and other have served to complicate the question unnecessarily. The quote was simply from a longer editors notes section. What he meant is basically irrelevant, because I was never asking what he meant, it was simply as a way of mentioning that this got me to thinking-what do we actually know about evolution and its testability. Its that simple. The ToE contains the principles (as others have stated) of RM, NS, and change over a vast amount of time. There was never any need to make the discussion more complicated than this.the reason that I asked to exclude bacteria is also fairly simple. Scientifically claims are rife with speculations about how one trait or another came to arrive in a population.They will claim that symmetrical men and women are best suited for their environment and have the most reproductive successThey will claim that face symmetry is more beautiful to us, because that indicates better health of the individual, and thus we would select for this over time (illogical) but this is the claim. they claim that the ideal shape of attractiveness for a woman is a certain ratio of hip size to wait size 9that can be measured quite accurately) because this size is most suitable for giving childbirth (which has been shown to also not be true, but none the less). ....In other words, NS has shaped our preferences and our attitudes, and our personalities in life, along with shaping all of the complex body parts we see.So now science has to show, that not only can NS (by the use of RM!) make complex body parts through a RM creating some small advantage of survivial in a population, and slowly becoming selected for, and then as it becomes a more common trait in the population, a further mutation down the bloodline could be added to that mutation (if you don't agree this is the claim the ToE, ie. Dawkins and so man others, makes for how complex body parts can be formed, please provide your own idea of how the theory claims this is possible) to eventually shape this form. Of course I am not saying that female finches sit around making a choice, I think it is you who is not getting it. I am saying that science claims subconscious choices have lead to all kinds of traits being selected for- like the plumage colors of male birds for instance. The point I made, which I don't think should be so hard to understand is that if birds were making subconscious choices of rating their partners health based on their plummage colors, at the same time they would also be making subconscious choices about their beak size, about their nest making skills, about their length of their wingspans, and every other bird trait you want to think of, because we are claiming that all of the traits we see on earth are created by NS.So frankly, for you or anyone else to say that its because I am not understanding the basics is frankly just bs. I am looking at the big picture, and saying, how much of this big picture does science actually know-how much can it really prove. Can we test in any way shape or form Dawkin's theoretical model of how an eye might have formed for instance (Nilsson and Pelger's attempts to show scientifically how it could have happened was laughable).Why was it necessary to complicate the discussion? The question started out very broad, to allow it to be narrowed over time. What do we know in this modern age of science, 200 years after the birth of Darwin, that shows how his big picture can all be put together to show how all the forms of life came to be how they are today. That I mentioned NS and didn't go into more details at the very beginning about RM and genetic drift, and every other details that goes into your theory, and how it all ties together is a complete smokescreen-because many discussions start off broad by necessity because its the beginning of the topic, not ten steps down the ladder of complexity. if you need to include every smaller point that you wanted to discuss in the very opening paragraph, that would be a very very long paragraph I would suggest.If that isn't possible to be talked abut on this site (that is, what scientifically proves NS actually works the way you claim it does), without all of your constant assertions that all us whacky creationists just don't know what we are talking about, then I don't know what is.I will say at this point though, that originally I came here actually wanting to learn something about what science can prove nowadays, but when I see the scarcity of people who are able to follow one simple logical step to the next (like understanding that just because I prefaced a question by talking about an article in Discovery magazine-that doesn't mean you need to know what context the magazine said this. It is me asking the question now, not Discovery magazine. Its like saying, I was walking down the street and I saw an ad for milk, and I got to thinking, is milk good for our bodies-and then someone saying, well, that depends, tells us what the ad said exactly....geez.), I frankly no longer hold out a lot of hope for having conversations with many people here who can have a logical conversations without bungling the meaning of every sentence and then accusing me of not knowing what I am talking about.