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Author Topic:   Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win.
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 436 of 2887 (812402)
06-16-2017 11:19 AM
Reply to: Message 434 by aristotle
06-16-2017 10:45 AM


If they're Darwinian-evolutionists then they don't know much about species, as he couldn't even define the term.
Says the person using "information" as if it was a well defined term used in biology.
If they don't even know exactly what a species is, how can they tell when there are different ones?
Curiously organisms could care less what we call them, what they "care about" is survival and breeding. If they can't breed with another individual, then they don't. You can see this at the top where there is a gap between P.frugivorus and P.jarrovii. The other names are arbitrary speciation tags the scientists use to distinguish which populations they are discussing.
That's why breeding populations are more important than any name we put on them.
That link gives hardly any information about the differences between the supposed species, in the picture of all the varying ones, the all look pretty much the same.
Other than a continual trend in sizes of the breeding population. That is what shows anagenesis, the accumulation of evolutionary change over many generations:
(2) The process of lineal change within species is sometimes called phyletic speciation, or anagenesis.
This is also sometimes called arbitrary speciation in that the place to draw the line between linearly evolved genealogical populations is subjective, and because the definition of species in general is tentative and sometimes arbitrary.
At the top we clearly see a second process that results in multiple species and increases the diversity of life.
(3) The process of divergent speciation, or cladogenesis, involves the division of a parent population into two or more reproductively isolated daughter populations, which then are free to (micro) evolve independently of each other.
The reduction or loss of interbreeding (gene flow, sharing of mutations) between the sub-populations results in different evolutionary responses within the separated sub-populations, each then responds independently to their different ecological challenges and opportunities, and this leads to divergence of hereditary traits between the subpopulations and the frequency of their distributions within the sub-populations.
And any changes that did appear in those single-cell organisms cannot be compared to higher animals, which are far more complex.
What are "higher" animals? Seriously - what makes some animals "higher" other than personal bias?
Again, this is a difference in degree(if that) and not a different type of change: genetic change is genetic change, regardless of the individual involved.
Enjoy

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This message is a reply to:
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 Message 438 by CRR, posted 08-18-2017 6:52 PM RAZD has replied

  
CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 437 of 2887 (817630)
08-18-2017 6:45 PM
Reply to: Message 433 by RAZD
06-16-2017 8:58 AM


You can also see more here (scroll down to figure 4.2), which also includes copelemur as well as pelycodus.
As I have pointed out before the variations shown in that diagram are way less than the variations in dogs which are all regarded as one species. This is poor evidence of speciation.
That would be Drs. Tony Arnold (Ph.D., Harvard) and Bill Parker (Ph.D., Chicago)
Again, as previously pointed out, those are simply divisions of convenience and not real speciation events. All that can be said is that the fossils appear to vary gradually over time.

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 Message 433 by RAZD, posted 06-16-2017 8:58 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

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CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 438 of 2887 (817632)
08-18-2017 6:52 PM
Reply to: Message 436 by RAZD
06-16-2017 11:19 AM


What are "higher" animals?
Probably the same thing as Darwin meant.
quote:
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 439 by RAZD, posted 08-20-2017 9:12 AM CRR has replied
 Message 445 by Pressie, posted 08-30-2017 7:54 AM CRR has not replied
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 439 of 2887 (817781)
08-20-2017 9:12 AM
Reply to: Message 438 by CRR
08-18-2017 6:52 PM


Probably the same thing as Darwin meant.
Doesn't really answer the question does it? What makes one animal "higher" than another -- is it standing on a mountain?
In your words.
Curiously I though Victorian attitudes were just a bit passe ...
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 438 by CRR, posted 08-18-2017 6:52 PM CRR has replied

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 Message 440 by CRR, posted 08-30-2017 12:31 AM RAZD has replied

  
CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 440 of 2887 (818524)
08-30-2017 12:31 AM
Reply to: Message 439 by RAZD
08-20-2017 9:12 AM


Higher Animals
Animals of relatively advanced or developed characteristics, such as mammals and other vertebrates. [Oxford dictionary]
... although the actual level of complexity is very hard to define or measure accurately in biology, with properties such as gene content, the number of cell types or morphology all being used to assess an organism's complexity. [Wikipedia]
Higher animals have specialised tissues and organs that contribute to the proper functioning of the whole animal [CRR]

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 444 by RAZD, posted 08-30-2017 7:08 AM CRR has not replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 441 of 2887 (818526)
08-30-2017 12:55 AM
Reply to: Message 440 by CRR
08-30-2017 12:31 AM


Re: Higher Animals
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Over?
The appleation, "higher animal", dates back to around the turn of the century, which is to say around 1900. Like, with Mark Twain.
Are you fucking kidding us???

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 Message 442 by CRR, posted 08-30-2017 1:00 AM dwise1 has replied

  
CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 442 of 2887 (818527)
08-30-2017 1:00 AM
Reply to: Message 441 by dwise1
08-30-2017 12:55 AM


Re: Higher Animals
Earlier, like Charles Darwin, and probably before.
Mind the language.

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dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 443 of 2887 (818529)
08-30-2017 1:22 AM
Reply to: Message 442 by CRR
08-30-2017 1:00 AM


Re: Higher Animals
You creationists are always niggling about over the language.
Do you really believe that you can redefine reality out of existence like a fucking lawyer?
Scientists create definitions in order to describe what they observe and to describe differences that they see and which they think to be important.
Creationists play stupid lawyer games of redefining reality into whatever lie they want to propagate.
We need to figure out just what we are talking about. The exact opposite of what any creationist would want.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(2)
Message 444 of 2887 (818535)
08-30-2017 7:08 AM
Reply to: Message 440 by CRR
08-30-2017 12:31 AM


Re: Higher Animals
Higher animals have specialised tissues and organs that contribute to the proper functioning of the whole animal [CRR]
Which is higher, a cow or a pig? Aren't trees higher animals?
quote:
Trees, not ladders
Several times in the past, biologists have committed themselves to the erroneous idea that life can be organized on a ladder of lower to higher organisms. This idea lies at the heart of Aristotle's Great Chain of Being (see right).
Aristotle's vision
of a Great Chain
of Being, above.
We now know
that this idea
is incorrect.
Similarly, it's easy to misinterpret phylogenies as implying that some organisms are more "advanced" than others; however, phylogenies don't imply this at all.
In this highly simplified phylogeny, a speciation event occurred resulting in two lineages. One led to the mosses of today; the other led to the fern, pine, and rose. Since that speciation event, both lineages have had an equal amount of time to evolve. So, although mosses branch off early on the tree of life and share many features with the ancestor of all land plants, living moss species are not ancestral to other land plants. Nor are they more primitive. Mosses are the cousins of other land plants.
So when reading a phylogeny, it is important to keep three things in mind:
  1. Evolution produces a pattern of relationships among lineages that is tree-like, not ladder-like.
  2. Just because we tend to read phylogenies from left to right, there is no correlation with level of "advancement."
  3. For any speciation event on a phylogeny, the choice of which lineage goes to the right and which goes to the left is arbitrary. The following phylogenies are equivalent:
Biologists often put the clade they are most interested in (whether that is bats, bedbugs, or bacteria) on the right side of the phylogeny.
Misconceptions about humans
The points described above cause the most problems when it comes to human evolution. The phylogeny of living species most closely related to us looks like this:
It is important to remember that:
  1. Humans are not "higher" or "more evolved" than other living lineages. Since our lineages split, humans and chimpanzees have each evolved traits unique to their own lineages.
Credits
In modern biology there is no distinction of "higher" and "lower" organisms.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : No reason given.
Edited by RAZD, : format

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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to share.


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Pressie
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Posts: 2103
From: Pretoria, SA
Joined: 06-18-2010


Message 445 of 2887 (818537)
08-30-2017 7:54 AM
Reply to: Message 438 by CRR
08-18-2017 6:52 PM


What you wrote down there is why I think that some unicellular organisms are higher than humans.
You left the parts out where Darwin clarified what he meant by higher animals.
Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

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Taq
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Posts: 9972
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.5


(1)
Message 446 of 2887 (818561)
08-30-2017 11:00 AM
Reply to: Message 438 by CRR
08-18-2017 6:52 PM


CRR writes:
Probably the same thing as Darwin meant.
That is a hold over from Victorian and earlier times where the worth of a species was determined by how closely it was related to humans. You can see the same biases in the names for Linnaean taxons, such as Eutherians (i.e. true crown group) and Primates (i.e. first rank, prime). Scientists have since identified this bias and have tried to rid scientific language of those terms, although they are still used to a lesser degree to this day.
At the end of the day, all modern organisms are equally distant from the universal common ancestor, so all organisms are equally evolved.

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Taq
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Posts: 9972
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.5


Message 447 of 2887 (818563)
08-30-2017 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 434 by aristotle
06-16-2017 10:45 AM


Aristotle writes:
If they're Darwinian-evolutionists then they don't know much about species, as he couldn't even define the term.
If evolution is true then there shouldn't be an objective and non-arbitrary division between populations. The very fact that we can't objectively and non-arbitrarily define an absolute line between species is evidence for evolution.
And any changes that did appear in those single-cell organisms cannot be compared to higher animals, which are far more complex.
Why?

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Taq
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Posts: 9972
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.5


Message 448 of 2887 (818564)
08-30-2017 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 437 by CRR
08-18-2017 6:45 PM


CRR writes:
As I have pointed out before the variations shown in that diagram are way less than the variations in dogs which are all regarded as one species. This is poor evidence of speciation.
The morphological differences between dog breeds is larger than the differences between humans and chimps, and yet you consider humans and chimps to be separate species.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 437 by CRR, posted 08-18-2017 6:45 PM CRR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 450 by CRR, posted 08-30-2017 5:57 PM Taq has replied

  
CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 449 of 2887 (818580)
08-30-2017 5:54 PM
Reply to: Message 443 by dwise1
08-30-2017 1:22 AM


what are we talking about
We need to figure out just what we are talking about.
Feel free to contribute to the threads about defining "evolution" and "theory of evolution".

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CRR
Member (Idle past 2242 days)
Posts: 579
From: Australia
Joined: 10-19-2016


Message 450 of 2887 (818581)
08-30-2017 5:57 PM
Reply to: Message 448 by Taq
08-30-2017 11:09 AM


Taq writes:
and yet you consider humans and chimps to be separate species.
They ARE separate species. They are also separate kinds.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 448 by Taq, posted 08-30-2017 11:09 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
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