How long does it take to evolve?

Sheesh.
I am here to investigate the truth for no one but myself. I have heard presentations from both sides of the coin, and I am trying to be intellectually honest by putting my own, independent thoughts out and seeing whether they hold water from advocates of both sides.
Lying? I started with a question, which if answered, would shed light on the subject, at least as I perceive it. ( I know there is much I don't know about this subject. I thought I could use this site some intellectual feedback from people that know more about it than me. ) Perhaps I should have started with that intro rather than giving the impression that I am already sold on e/v. If I were trying to preach, I would understand your disgust. But that is not my intention at all.I didn't get my answer. So I am just thinking out loud how I perceive it.
If I am wrong, if you have the patience to show me where, I, ME, MYSELF, ONLY ME, would like to understand where I went wrong. I am not trying to convert , preach, or any of that. If you have better things to do, I can't say I really blame anyone. But why the disgust?
Am I being dishonest for wanting to understand something?I am interested in honest dialogue. If this site is reserved for people that have already come to the conclusion that evolution is fact, I guess I don't belong here.

I really appreciate your taking the time to actually read my question- seems like you have some interesting things to say. I just wanted to respond with a quick thank you. now I am going to try and absorb your comments.

Once again, I appreciate your taking the time (no pun intended).The paper deals with an observation of stages of species and figuring out how long it took using various dating methods. ie, it took this amount of years to get from point a to point b.
I , on the other hand , am trying to look at the micro-level changes, and to reverse engineer how many changes had to occur to get from point a to point b. Then, we will try and estimate how long each change ought to take on average.Then, my dream is to compare the amount of time it took in the findings of the pnas paper and compare that to the expected timing based on the changes that took place, and see if it matches.

Don't worry about it, I came here asking a question about evolution and was also accused of being a closet creationist - which was a bit puzzling as I'm a raging atheist.People here are case hardened.... They're an agressively argumentative bunch, self selected and evolved for obstreperousness. Just ignore it and carry on. Unless that is you are actually a stalking horse for creationism, in which case you can fuck off. ;-)

Good, you read it. The reason I went for "mouse to elephant" was that I recall some statement several years ago about how many genetic changes it would take, and an integrated time scale for increasing generation time with increasing size, to determine how long it would take if that happened at each generation (no stalling), and the result was significantly less than the time that had passed. Either Gould or Miller iirc, I'll see if I can find it.Enjoy

Welcome home. Pull up a stump and set a spell.Unfortunately for Creationists, evolution really is a fact. That much has been settled for over a century. It's not really a subject that is debatable but rather reality.You can reasonably ask questions about how stuff happened but all honest debate about whether or not evolution happened ended over a century ago. Those who tell you the subject is still a question, that there are two reasonable positions, Evolutionist or Creationist, are simply lying to you.Your initial question had a few serious flaws, the first and biggest was the idea that evolution would get to "human" as though "human" was some goal. It's not.Humans are not more evolved than snails; humans are only special because we happen to be humans.Humans were never a goal. Evolution has no goal, and once past the very first living things, not even a direction. When the only living things were single cell critters then the only possible direction was towards more complex critters. But once there were critters that were more than just one cell evolving into a new single cell or into an even more complex critter would be equally valid.There really aren't two sides to the coin anymore. There is only evolution.As an extremely devout Christian, raised in a Christian family, educated in Christian schools (that taught evolution by the way), I wish there was some possible way that the Creationist propaganda might just possibly have some basis in reality; but that is just not the case.Look at the history in the US of the attempts to get Creationism or "Creation Science" (an oxymoron) taught in public schools and in EVERY case you will find Christian churches speaking out in opposition to Creationism or "Creation Science".This is not too new. Since Creationism reared it's head again in the US those of us who are Christians and do see what is going on have been working to hopefully finally get the nonsense that is Creationism exposed for the Carny Side Show it is in reality.Back in the 1980s when there was an attempt to get Creationism adopted as an alternative "theory" (and there is no such thing as a Theory of Creation) in Georgia, Bishop Sims of Atlanta issued a Pastoral letter (something which is then read to the congregations of every parish in the Diocese) on the subject that began:

quote:

---

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

​

Legislation is pending before the Georgia State Legislature which calls for the public financing and teaching of Scientific Creationism as a counter-understanding to Evolution, wherever the evolutionary view is taught in the public schools.

​

Scientific Creationism understands the cosmos and the world to have originated as the Bible describes the process in the opening chapters of Genesis.

​

The 74th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta, in formal action on January 31, 1981, acted without a dissenting vote to oppose by resolution any action by the Georgia Legislature to impose the teaching of Scientific Creationism on the public school system. A copy of the resolution is attached to this Pastoral.

---

Full Text of his Pastoral LetterWe are now over a quarter century past those days. Since then we have learned much and EVERY single new development, every single new discovery, every single new technology, every single new technique has support the Theory of Evolution as well as the Fact that evolution did happen.

Apparently not.You asked what seemed like an honest question --- how long would it take?Then, having got some answers to that question, you started pretending that we were talking about a different question --- what's the probability that it would happen?You know that these are two different questions.If you are interested in honest dialogue, then please engage in it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well the other side of the question is how much time is available.If you are talking to Young Earth Creationists (YECs) the age of the earth is somewhere between 5,000 years and 12,000 years depending on the opinions of the people involved ... with the "Usher" date being perhaps the most popular.If you are talking to evolutionist/scientists, then you are dealing with the 4.55 billion year age of earth. How do we know and how do we validate what we know? A good starting point is Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1.Enjoy.

Hi, Lamden.Welcome to EvC!I want to point out that I have a lot of skepticism toward any attempts to assign hard numbers to these things. In my opinion, not only is it a difficult answer to get, but it's also a rather meaningless answer to get.Evolution isn't an entirely linear process. At any given time, there are many lineages living, reproducing and mutating simultaneously, and there are many ways in which those separate lineages can intermix their genetic material. So, you effectively have multiple "generations" happening at the same time. So, we'll need a parameter to describe how many lineages are likely to have been going at once throughout Earth's history. We'll also need a parameter to describe what proportion of the accumulated mutation load of a given lineage is likely to be transferred into another lineage. Then, we'll also need some parameter to describe how many of those lineages will go extinct, irrevocably removing their accumulated mutation loads from the equation.To me, the game of parameterizing a model like this feels like sitting in front of a huge panel covered in dials, and arbitrarily dialing up and down until the numbers look reasonable to me. It's probable that any number I might fancy could be achieved by a variety of different combinations of the dials.So, even if this thread resulted in some number that we could take home, it would not satisfy me in the least. As much as I would love to have you convinced of the reality of evolution, I see no point in encouraging you to accept it because of some silly numbers game that we could only fail if we grew bored of constantly turning dials.

Lamden, you presented us with a false dilemma, not a very honest technique. You wrote: That's very dishonest. If you really are interested in honest debate; you should drop obvious untruths such as those.

If stretched out, the DNA of the plant Paris japonica would stretch more than 328 feet — taller than Big Ben — while the genome from a human cell would stretch just 6.5 feet.Now, that's a lot of evolution going on there. But guess what, the evolution of Paris japonica from those oldest fossils discovered (prokaryotes from around 3.8 billion years ago), also took around 3.8 billion years. Can you calculate the mutation rate?Can you see that your questions don't make any sense?

You've been shown to be wrong a few times. Providing a false dichotomy is one of them.

Lamden wrote: 64 250 521 billion trillion point mutations. But doing the sums, it works out that there was plenty of time as mutations such as genetic capture were not included in the point mutation calculations. After considering all those other 'kinds' of mutations we know of at the moment; it all works perfectly with 3.758 billion years to spare! Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

What was the most primitive form of life and when did it appear?What was the earliest "human being" and when did it appear?Lamden's question, with multiple undefined terms and assumptions, is the kind of question usually followed by a creationist "Gotcha!" to any honest attempt at a reply: any numerical answer is vulnerable to the critiques outlined in this thread; refusal to speculate can be met with charges of "then you have no case."If he has looked into the debate with creationists at all, and he suggests that he has, then he should be familiar with this adversarial context and honestly admit both the question's unanswerable nature and the good reasons for wariness.

Yip. From my point of view Lamden is a dishonest creationist because he/she told untruths about the basics. Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.