Message 1 of 52 (540738) 12-28-2009 10:20 AM

If I evolved the ability to breath under water that would not lead to all other humans dying out.

To me species look complete and not on the verge of any kind of speciation. Plus it must have taken millions of very gradual mutations to create us. So we can't have gone from monkey to human overnight which makes it essential that intermediates hang around for a long time.

Message 3 of 52 (540800) 12-29-2009 7:58 AM

Reply to: Message 1 by AndrewPD 12-28-2009 10:20 AM

You'll be happy to learn that you do not have any concern with evolution, rather your problem lies with mistaking creolution for the real thing.

They are. Evolution is the change in the frequency of hereditary traits from generation to generation. Each generation is a breeding population of fully formed individuals, individuals that are members of a "complete" species by the fact that species is defined as a breeding population.

Evolution does not occur IN or TO individuals, it occurs in populations by the process of gradual replacement of hereditary traits over generations, and the selection of traits to best fit the ecology that the breeding population is inhabiting.

Anyone who told you that evolution occurs in individuals either did not understand evolution themselves or they were lying.

Exactly, it actually took millions of years to go from ape-like to modern man. Of course apes are still apes ... no matter what they evolve into.

Which they did. As populations of breeding animals, that evolving from ape-like to modern man.

Which they did. As populations of breeding animals evolving from ape-like to modern man.

Which they did. As populations of breeding animals evolving from ape-like to modern man.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/hominids.html

(B) is Australopithecus africanus, represented by STS 5, a 2.6 My old fossil. Australopithecus africanus is already bi-pedal and has many features seen in humans, with the basic skeleton only needing some tweaks in relative lengths and overall size, and leaving the skull for the area least derived along the path that human evolution has taken.

(M) is Homo sapiens sapiens, represented by Cro-Magnon I, a 30,000 y old fossil, and we also have skeletons and skulls from 160,000 years ago that are anatomically modern, but which are not quite developed enough to be classified as Homo sapiens sapiens, so they are designated Homo sapiens idaltu:

http://www.berkeley.edu/.../releases/2003/06/11_idaltu.shtml

(N) is a modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

In between you can see the intermediates that existed for many generations at a time in the process of evolution from ape-like to human.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : clrty

Message 4 of 52 (540802) 12-29-2009 9:25 AM

I think you've somewhat missed the point. A species has lots of adaptions/features like fingers, toes, liver, kidney, digestive system sexual organs. None of these can be produced in one mutation (over night).

So to get to this stage yould have to be able to survive as a human with half an eye, half a liver, stubby fingers. Yet deformed/ill humans find it hard to survive long enough to procreate)

If a creature with shorter fingers, less conscious awareness and a different digestive system could survive what would lead to its eradication?

An amoeba can survive but not half man half monkey.

On a David Attenborough programme on evolution they managed to give two living examples of the thing you'd expect to see. A bird with claws on it's wings and the Duck billed platypus.

I can't read to much into deformed and reconstructed skulls personally. If a species goes extinct like the dodo it doesn't tend to leave ancestors.

In the example I gave of breathing in water I wasn't talking about individual evolution but pointing out that developing a "beneficial trait" doesn't make previous adaptions less beneficial and so shouldn't lead to the previous traits disappearing.

Message 5 of 52 (540804) 12-29-2009 9:49 AM

Reply to: Message 1 by AndrewPD 12-28-2009 10:20 AM

As RAZD has already said, it's populations that evolve, not individuals. You can't evolve the ability to breathe underwater - a population of which you're a part eventually could, in theory, though you'd be long dead before the feat was accomplished. As you said - it takes a long time to make major changes.

But, to the more general question of why there aren't still populations living in the ancestral ways of modern populations - there are!

Before our ancestors successfully made the transition to the land, they would have been lobe-finned fish, with lungs, that probably lived in shallow, poorly oxygenated water. Some of these fish evolved into the tetrapods that make up all of today's land vertebrates (as well as a bunch of aquatic verebrates). But not all of them. Some of them are still out there today, happily getting along as lobe-finned fish with lungs in shallow waters - often places that dry out often. These are the appropriately-named lungfish. They aren't the same as our fishy ancestors, because they've been evolving over the last 400 million years too, but just as some populations of humans taking to the water wouldn't require the land humans to be wiped out, nor did some lungfish taking to the land require the original lungfisgh to be wiped out.

The natural world's full of this sort of intermediate. Ancestral mammals evolved away from laying eggs to laying live young, but some of those laying eggs didn't - the ancestors of echidnas and platypuses carried on laying eggs and never evolved nipples. Wasps evolved to be social insects, living in vast hives - but not all of them. Plenty of wasps still live the solitary lives of their ancestors.

Of course, we shouldn't expect to find animals living as every animal has ever lived, for the simple fact that most things become extinct. There are colossal global catastrophes like the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs (and pterosaurs, and mosasaurs, and ammonites and all sorts of other animals); or the much more devastating extinction 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian.

And there are smaller, more local reasons for creatures to go extinct. We can see all sorts of species on the verge of extinction today; for varying reasons usually to do with the environment around them changing in some way. All the great apes today are believed to be endangered. If they went extinct within the next 200 years, then the family tree of apes would, in an infinitesimally short period of time on geological scales, go from this:

to this:

It's easy to see why we can't find a living creature representing each intermediate stage in an evoltuionary sequence.

Message 6 of 52 (540810) 12-29-2009 10:32 AM

Reply to: Message 4 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:25 AM

You've misunderstood how evolution is proposed to work. Nobody who understands the Theory of Evolution thinks that an individual would have half an organ.

Take a look at australopithecus:

Its one of our ancestors and its fully formed. It doesn't have half of anything.

Although, sometimes we do find things that seem to be half-way done. Like this turtle:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27929375/

But still, it is a fully formed and fully functional individual.

Message 7 of 52 (540812) 12-29-2009 10:40 AM

Reply to: Message 4 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:25 AM

This is a common Creationist mistake. So common that it's really frustrating to have to answer it yet again.

There is no such thing as "half an eye".

There is a functional eye. Period. There are ALL SORTS of eyes in the animal kingdom. We don't have the best one, not by a long shot.

There are worms which have "eye spots" which are nothing more than patches of skin which detect "light yes" or "light no". That's a HUGE advantage over worms that didn't have that.

There are worms which have pitted eye spots. That tells them: "Light yes, in this direction". Again, a huge advantage over the ones who can only tell day from night.

There are worms with multiple pitted spots. "Light this side, not that"

There are organisms with membrane covered pitted spots to they don't get silt in them.

There are organisms with deeply pitted spots, giving them a better sense of direction from the light.

There are organisms with more sensitive spots which can distinguish movement of things between them and the light (basic sight).

There are organisms which can see colors from the light.

There are organisms who's membrane is curved, giving them focus.

There are organisms who have a second membrane to control how much light comes in.

At EACH and EVERY stage of development, the organism with that particular eye is FULLY FUNCTIONAL and has a HUGE advantage over other organisms without it.

Well "monkeys" are lower primates. "apes" are higher primates.

So, in a very real way, chimps, gorillas, orangs and bonobos _ARE_ "half man, half monkey".

I think what you mean is, why is it that none of the ancestors of modern man have survived. (the creatures between the us and our common ancestor with the chimp).

The answer is simple: People are mean.

There were times in our history where there were multiple types of pre-human alive at the same time. Neanderthal and Cro-Mag co-existed for 10,000s of thousands of years. Flores was alive even longer than that (though isolated).

The problem is that modern humans don't like to share. We show up, other species go bye-bye - especially other predators.

What about a species like the giant ground sloth? You'll admit that it's extinct, right? You'll also admit that we have multiple species of sloth still alive today.

Given your concept of life, how is that possible?

Ditto for several dozen species of proto-elephant and the alternate branches (mammoth, mastadon, etc)

That depends on what you do with the new trait.

If you develop the ability to breath air in addition to the ability to breath water (many amphibians have both), you can access new areas where you can find food without competition and escape from predators.

If you live in a pond full of predators and competition for food and you manage to get out and explore the forest where you have free reign, why would you ever go back to the pond if you didn't have to?

If you aren't using a trait, it doesn't tend to stick around because it is using up resources which can be used elsewhere.

Surely you are aware of cave fish, newts, crawdads, which have lost their sight because they live in complete darkness.

They found a niche where they could survive. That niche didn't require sight. They evolved to use those resources elsewhere and therefore lost sight.

Message 8 of 52 (540825) 12-29-2009 11:48 AM

Reply to: Message 4 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:25 AM

Stubby fingers, perhaps. But your primate ancestors did not have "half a liver" or "half an eye".

Have you really never seen a monkey?

Then all those fossils are what? Chopped liver?

And everything else that lives or has ever lived, but that's a large subject.

My great-grandparents are all dead, and yet they have left descendants. Me, for example.

There's this thing called "natural selection", you should really learn about it.

They are less beneficial by comparison.

You may find a biology textbook useful at this point. We shouldn't have to spoonfeed you the basics.

Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Message 9 of 52 (540845) 12-29-2009 1:44 PM

Reply to: Message 1 by AndrewPD 12-28-2009 10:20 AM

Thanks Nuggin for breaking down so many examples of "half-an-eye" (which as you pointed out, is really just "an eye").

Maggots are photophobic and seek to avoid light. In the presence of a light source they will sway their heads back and forth giving them the ability to compare light on one side to light on the other, in the hope of heading for darker places. This works fantastically for horror movies where a decaying corpse is illuminated and the maggots all burst into action.

In addition to the salient point that individuals do not evolve, populations do, I think it is also important to consider the vast numbers of unique species along the tree of life that have not survived, and of these only a very tiny proportion has left behind any fossil evidence for us to examine.

Before you ask "what good is half an eye" you need to ask yourself how you define "an eye". As other posters have mentioned, there really is no such thing as "half an eye". You either have the ability to detect light, or you don't. The difference between a minor ability (such as that of the maggot's eye) and a dramatic ability (such as that of a human's eye) is represented by a continuum of varying degrees of sophistication in between. For any particular location in that continuum, chances are you will find an extant creature with that sort of eye.

Edited by Briterican, : Typo in topic subtitle - meh.

Message 10 of 52 (540849) 12-29-2009 1:59 PM

Reply to: Message 4 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:25 AM

If you are looking at a modern Chimp skull and a modern Human skull, which one would you say is deformed?

Have you actually studied any skulls?

What basis do you use to judge whether skulls are normal or deformed or if fragmentary skulls have been incorrectly reconstructed?

Their ancestors lived before they did. An individual organism that reproduces leaves descendants. Your parents are your ancestors, your children are your descendants.

Species all have ancestral species, but they may or may not have descendant species, depending on whether or not a sub-population became reproductively isolated long enough to become a new species.

The TOE is completely compatible with an ancestral species and a descendant species continuing to ext at the same time.

You can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

Message 11 of 52 (540886) 12-29-2009 9:33 PM

quote:

---

My great-grandparents are all dead, and yet they have left ancestors. Me, for example.

---

Your grand parents skeletons will look like yours.

I don't see why a skeleton on or gene make-up that is simply similar to ours means we are related. As I mentioned with the Dodo. It didn't leave improved ancestors.
Extinct animals fail and hence don't leave ancestors. Such as the soon to be extinct Panda.

quote:

---

There is no such thing as "half an eye".

---

The examples of eyes given are Fully functioning eyes suitable for the organism.
But what can you take from the human eye as it is and it still function. There are complex and simpler computers that doesn't that they are related except conceptually.

My point is that humans are created apparently by millions of mutations so at some stage we would have had less functional, knees, backs, language etc. What kind of mutation could lead to our knee with out us being initially crippled.

But I don't want to get into irreducible mechanisms particularly.
But as I mentioned by refering to "complete species", recreations of transitional species like elephants with half a trunk look half formed intuitively. Only something like a Duck billed platypus gives that illusion of transition.

I have absolutely no problem with being related to apes or pigs or an amoeba. But I am not going to form my sense of identity based on who I am allegedly descended from. I don't consider current Germans facist etc.

I have noticed that there's another thread on this so i'll read up on it. But there appears to be no intermediated between humans and mokeys and Goriillas. I don't see why every intermediate stage would fail.

Message 12 of 52 (540888) 12-29-2009 10:16 PM

Reply to: Message 11 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:33 PM

But lets look at things realistically--at every stage of evolution the populations, and all individuals therein, had functioning knees. Those knees changed over time, but at each species level, and for each individual and each population, the knee was fully functional. It is a common error of creationists to think of organisms being half formed or crippled. They weren't.

"Intuitively" is not a meaningful term. An elephant with a trunk half as long was fully formed and fully functional. Perhaps a longer trunk was better, but it is a mistake to think of earlier forms as "half formed."

Science provides evidence of relationships, but your sense of identity is something only you can develop. But wouldn't it be more sensible to base your sense of identity on reality rather than fiction? Perhaps you should try to reconcile the two.

There are a lot of intermediates between monkeys, gorillas, and humans.

Many of them are on the direct line between an original ancestor, an early ape/monkey, and modern monkeys, gorillas, and humans. These species did not fail--they evolved into new species and successfully transitioned into modern monkeys, gorillas, and humans.

Another way to phrase this: these populations persisted through millions of years, but they changed as they went. Can you call this a failure for any one of those species? I wouldn't call it that.

Others species split off from those direct lines and did become extinct. They should not be confused with intermediate or transitional species. You could call them failures because they died out, but that has nothing to do with those species whose lines were successful and are still flourishing.

Message 13 of 52 (540890) 12-29-2009 10:30 PM

Just a brief point before I go to bed. Would you consider a giraffe with a shorter neck, neanderthal man, prehistoric horse etc as aesthetically pleasing as the current variation?

One problem I have with intermediates is that they are rarely/never aesthetically pleasing thats partly what I mean by half formed.

Message 14 of 52 (540893) 12-29-2009 10:45 PM

Reply to: Message 11 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 9:33 PM

Welcome to EvC!

You’ve lost your perspective. Working backwards by removing traits and organs won’t help you find it.

If you’re going to work our evolutionary history backwards, you have to do it from a gestalt point of view: i.e. you have to work the entire body backwards, not just the eye or the knee.

Back when our ancestors didn’t have knees, they were fish.
Back when our ancestors didn’t have eyes, they were probably worm-like proto-fish.

Let’s talk knees. Knees probably evolved alongside the rest of the leg, not as a sudden addition that made the leg work better than before. Back when the knee first emerged, it wasn’t a knee, but just one of several pieces of bone in the limb that was used to maneuver a fin. As the knee (along with the other parts of the limb) was altered gradually through various mutations, the utility and function of the limb changed. And, as the function changed, the structures that best matched that function became dominant in the population via natural selection.

Evolution isn’t like Legos, where you just insert new blocks to create the next portion of the masterpiece. You have to understand that all the pieces are themselves changing and adapting, not only to optimize their own operations, but also to optimize their ability to function with one another. So, the evolution of the knee is highly interdependent on the evolution of the other leg bones; the evolution of the retina is highly interdependent on the evolution of the lens and iris; and the evolution of the lung is highly dependent on the evolution of the windpipe and bloodstream.

Most successful mutations are modifications of already existing traits, not sudden arrivals of brand new structures. Never in the history of evolution is a kneecap hypothesized to have popped out of nowhere: rather, a blob of modestly-specialized cells was modified into a structural member that gradually developed into a mineralized support structure, and was sculpted over time into a moving part in a fish's fin, and eventually took on the role of supporting the tibia-femur joint.

You cannot get an accurate picture of evolution by simply removing pieces and asking how the rest could have possibly functioned without it, because evolution does not predict that the leg ever did function as a leg without the knee.

Do you understand this?

-----

And here’s how the future of this conversation is going to go:

Evolutionists: Chimpanzees fit between humans and gorillas.

Andrew: There is no intermediate between chimpanzees and humans.

Evolutionists: Bonobos fit between humans and chimpanzees.

Andrew: There is no intermediate between bonobos and humans.

etc.

How small does the gap have to be before you will stop demanding that it be filled by something else?

-----

And yet, the evidence suggests that all the intermediates between bonobos and modern humans did fail.
Do you doubt that Australopithecus and Homo habilis are extinct?
Are you going to reject evolution because Australopithecus and Homo habilis are extinct?
Does that really make sense to you?

Edited by Bluejay, : I must have accidentally deleted "are extinct."

Darwin loves you.

Message 15 of 52 (540894) 12-29-2009 10:48 PM

Reply to: Message 13 by AndrewPD 12-29-2009 10:30 PM

Please use the "reply" button at the bottom right corner of the message you're responding to instead of the "gen reply" button at the bottom of the screen: that helps everyone else track the conversation better.

To quote a portion of the message you're responding to, use the following codes:

[ qs = person's name ] copy and paste text here [/ qs ]

Remove the spacing, and it looks like this:

Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.

Darwin loves you.