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Author Topic:   Evolution is True Because Life Needs It
Percy
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Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 8 of 188 (644470)
12-18-2011 8:44 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Invader Scooch
12-17-2011 2:36 AM


Hi Invader Scooch, welcome to EvC!
What struck me most about your post is that it contains no indication that you understand evolution yourself. I'm not saying you don't, but I can't tell from that post, and the view that the universe abhors stasis therefore life must change seems simplistic.
--Percy

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 Message 1 by Invader Scooch, posted 12-17-2011 2:36 AM Invader Scooch has replied

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 14 of 188 (645187)
12-24-2011 5:59 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Invader Scooch
12-21-2011 3:19 PM


Seeking Creationists
Invader Scooch writes:
While I do agree there is no one model for Creation, I still need a Creationist to reply. All the responses have generally been Evolution peoples.
That evolution is inevitable because change is an inherent property of the universe may not be of interest to the creationists currently active here. If you'd like to debate some creationists here are a few active threads I can suggest:
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 16 of 188 (646103)
01-03-2012 7:43 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by Portillo
01-03-2012 7:02 AM


Hi Portillo,
My original guestimation of this thread's owner was that he was a college student biding time either at college during finals or at home waiting for friends to come home, and that we wouldn't see him again after his wait was through. That we haven't seen him since December 21st makes this now seem more likely than not, so I'm going to diverge from the original topic.
Portillo writes:
Natural science asks what is the most plausible material mechanism of how we got here and the answer is the force that created variation within finches living on the Galapagos Islands. The flaw in the whole scenario is that the change and variation within a fundamentally stable species has been extrapolated to explain how you get finches and birds in the first place. How you get animals in the first place. Its a wild extrapolation and thats the answer they give you.
It's a wild extrapolation because your examination of the evidence indicates it isn't justified? Or because it contradicts your religious beliefs?
I expect your answer will be that your examination of the evidence drives your conclusions, so I would then ask what evidence you see that suggests small changes do not eventually accumulate into significant ones.
I will again anticipate your answer and guess that you will assert that new organs or body plans or limbs cannot form gradually because half an organ or limb is of no use, in which case I would ask why you think such a thing could ever happen, why you think harmful or useless characteristics like half an organ or limb would be selected by natural selection.
--Percy

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 Message 15 by Portillo, posted 01-03-2012 7:02 AM Portillo has replied

Replies to this message:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 21 of 188 (646121)
01-03-2012 9:54 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by mike the wiz
01-03-2012 9:30 AM


Re: Fun with Strawmen!
mike the wiz writes:
No - I am right, there is no evolutionary change between me and my parents.
Evolution is descent with modification followed by natural selection. In every reproductive event there are the inevitable copying errors in sperm and egg (mutations), and in sexual species like ourselves there is allele remixing. You are, of course, the same species as your parents because speciation requires many, many generations, but you have nucleotide sequences possessed by neither of your parents, and your genes have allele combinations possessed by neither of your parents. This is the micro-evolution that gradually over time accumulates into macro-evolution.
The evolutionary stasis that you mentioned several times does not exist. Morphological stasis for species that are able to maintain their populations within a relatively consistent environment is frequently observed, but change is inevitable in the underlying genes and DNA.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by mike the wiz, posted 01-03-2012 9:30 AM mike the wiz has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by mike the wiz, posted 01-03-2012 10:32 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(2)
Message 25 of 188 (646173)
01-03-2012 2:53 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by mike the wiz
01-03-2012 10:32 AM


Re: Fun with Strawmen!
Hi Mike,
I'm not trying to argue with you. I was just trying to point out an error. You said that there was no evolutionary change between you and your parents, and this is incorrect. Your DNA has nucleotide sequences possessed by neither of your parents, and your genes have allele combinations possessed by neither of your parents. You are not a clone of your parents.
These kinds of minor genetic changes that occur during reproduction are filtered by natural selection, and those that pass muster accumulate over time. It is the accumulation of small insignificant changes into large changes over many generations that science calls macroevolution.
This is just how science defines macroevolution. You don't have to believe it can occur, but please trust that I am giving you accurate information. You differ genetically in small ways from your parents. And it is the accumulation of these types of small changes over long time periods that science calls macroevolution.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by mike the wiz, posted 01-03-2012 10:32 AM mike the wiz has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by mike the wiz, posted 01-03-2012 3:07 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 34 of 188 (646263)
01-03-2012 9:05 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by mike the wiz
01-03-2012 3:07 PM


Re: Fun with Strawmen!
mike the wiz writes:
That's fair enough, but I fail to see why these superficial changes are regarded as evolutionary change.
The tiny genetic changes that occur during reproduction are evolutionary because they're hereditary, i.e., passed on to the next generation. Because these genetic changes are hereditary, they accumulate over time.
You used the term "superficial changes", but this isn't a good term for the small genetic differences that occur between parents and offspring. Depending on which nucleotides and where in the genome, a single tiny nucleotide swap can have an effect ranging from none at all to totally fatal.
All we can do is try to be accurate in our description of the nature of the genetic changes that occur from one generation to the next: there are a small number of copying errors, and in sexual species the alleles of the parents come together to form new allele pairs for the genes (there's other things that happen, but let's keep this simple). If we're trying to look forward then that's as accurate as we can be, and there's no way to know if the effect of these small genetic changes that occur during reproduction are going to be none, superficial, a little, a lot, or fatal.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 43 of 188 (646701)
01-06-2012 9:16 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by foreveryoung
01-05-2012 8:40 PM


foreveryoung writes:
Give me one delusion that is counterfactual.
From your previous message:
foreveryoung in Mesage 39 writes:
Perhaps snakes didn't talk through speech with sound waves. Ever considered that possibility? The spiritual realm was intermeshed with the physical realm at that time. Christians still communicate with God spiritually today, even though no audible speech is used.
From an even earlier message from you:
foreveryoung in Message 35 writes:
The essence of argumentation and debate is starting from evidence and using reasoning to come to a conclusion.
You should practice what you preach.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 50 of 188 (652656)
02-15-2012 10:17 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Portillo
02-15-2012 4:19 AM


Portillo writes:
Genetic mutations are mostly harmful. The beneficial ones are relatively minor changes with no evidence they can produce new species.
Actually, most mutations are neutral, but of those that have a non-neutral effect you are correct that they are mostly harmful. And you are also correct that beneficial mutations produce only minor changes. Across a single generation and in the absence of detailed genetic analysis I would argue that beneficial mutations produce such minor changes that they are undetectable.
But there is one big difference between harmful and beneficial mutations: over the course of generations, harmful mutations tend to be removed from a population, while beneficial ones tend to accumulate.
Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that you are correct that we have insufficient evidence to conclude that relatively minor changes can accumulate over time and transform one species into another. We'll just leave the issue of evidence for actual speciation aside for the time being.
So given that beneficial mutations accumulate, we would expect organisms to become increasingly well adapted to their environment. And given that environments are not constant but change over time, we would expect species to change in order to stay adapted to their environment. We would expect an evolving population would at some point have experienced sufficient change that its members would no longer be able to breed with members of the original population (which may or may not still exist). Once this occurs, we have a new species.
Can you give me an example of how small changes can turn a shrew into a human?
Well of course shrew's and humans share a common ancestor way way back, but I assume you understand that human's did not evolve from shrews.
I'm not really sure how to answer your question. A series of small steps can carry you from New York to San Francisco. A sculptor can transform a rock from a block into a statue by a series of small chisel strikes. An animator can transform an image of a shrew into an image of a human by a series of tiny changes, and in fact a number of movies have shown gradual transformations, for instance, humans into werewolves at the full moon.
So where is the difficulty in conceiving of small changes, caused by tiny beneficial mutations, accumulating over time to transform a shrew into a human (again, with the understanding that this isn't something that any evidence tells us has ever happened). I could think about this a bit and come up with a list of minor changes (each change representing hundreds of generations) whereby a shrew population could evolve into a human population, but I don't understand the need. Is there something about a slow transformation from shrew to human that seems impossible to you?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by Portillo, posted 02-15-2012 4:19 AM Portillo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 51 by Invader Scooch, posted 02-15-2012 4:50 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 52 by Portillo, posted 02-17-2012 9:52 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 56 of 188 (653093)
02-17-2012 10:49 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Portillo
02-17-2012 9:52 PM


Portillo writes:
From what I understand, tree shrews evolved into apes and apes into humans.
You've misunderstood something you've read. Tree shrews and humans share a common ancestor millions and millions of years ago. Maybe that common ancestor looked somewhat like a modern tree shrew, maybe not, we don't know for sure. We're not even sure whether tree shrews should be classified as primates or not.
But one thing we do know for sure: humans did not evolve from one of the modern species of tree shrew - they didn't exist millions of years ago.
That being said, it is a perfectly reasonable speculation that a very early ancestor of humans looked somewhat like a modern tree shrew, so let's move on to the rest of your message.
Is there something about a slow transformation from shrew to human that seems impossible to you?
Yes, because the evolution between shrews and humans has not been observed.
Processes that take far longer than human lifetimes and can't have eyewitnesses are to you impossible? We've never observed Pluto make a full revolution around the sun (it takes 248 years and was only discovered in 1930), so do you doubt it orbits the sun? We've never observed an electron, do you doubt they exist? We've never observed heaven, does that make it impossible?
You're again ignoring what people say. I said I could make a list of small changes, but to what point because we're very familiar with transformations, and I provided several examples of things being transformed in tiny steps, like long walking journeys, sculpting and animation. Panda actually did provide a list of small changes. What is it about the accumulation of small changes that seems impossible to you?
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 60 of 188 (653111)
02-18-2012 8:05 AM
Reply to: Message 58 by Portillo
02-17-2012 11:51 PM


Portillo writes:
Yes. Through wolves came domestic dogs and with natural selection, selective breeding, and artificial selection, we get a wide variety of dogs, both wild and domestic.
You understand that wolves became chihuahuas through a series of tiny changes. They became smaller, the fur became shorter and finer and the color changed, the tail curled, and after maybe 10,000 years the wolf on the left became a chihuahua on the right:
So obviously you accept that tiny changes can accumulate into larger changes, but somehow you're drawing a limit at how much change can accumulate and claiming that even after 60,000,000 years (that's 60,000 times more change than it took for a wolf to beome a chihuahua) that something that resembled a tree shrew could not become a human being:
So for you a little change is okay, a lot of change is impossible. Why?
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(4)
Message 107 of 188 (653537)
02-22-2012 11:21 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by Portillo
02-21-2012 11:25 PM


Re: Prompt for Portillo...
Portillo writes:
When the creationist Gregor Mendel discovered natural selection...
Gregor Mendel was not a creationist but a scientist and Augustinian friar, i.e., a Catholic. And he didn't discover natural selection. He discovered genes and inheritance.
The evolution of a large dog to a small dog is certainly change of a kind.
How do you know all dogs are the same kind? How do you know that each dog breed, and the wolf, is not a separate kind? If your answer is that they are all mutually interfertile then I guess we finally have a definition of kind.
All dogs, however, are one species and dont change into something fundamentally different. This isnt because you dont have enough time, its because you run out of variation.
Given mutation, how does one run out of variation?
One flaw is that artificial selection and selective breeding is a purposeful process with intelligence, skill and precision. Evolution is an unguided, purposeless and natural process. A step by step process, micromutation accumulated through natural selection, producing the diverse groups of animals from a cellular ancestor. Nature did its own creating, there was no intelligent agent.
Is it a fundamental flaw when chemists mix chemicals in the lab with purposeful intelligence to figure out how nature works? You would answer no, right? Was it a fundamental flaw when Mendel bred his pea plants himself with purposeful intelligence to figure out how nature works? You would answer no, right? Then why is it a fundamental flaw when breeders mix animals in the barn or the lab with purposeful intelligence to figure out how nature works?
Another flaw is that breeders can produce change only within boundaries.
Except that this isn't true. Breeders of long-lived species like dogs and cows can only produce a small amount of change, but breeders of short-lived species like fruit flies, mosquitoes and bacteria can produce a large amount of change through many generations and thereby new species.
Pigeons for example have been bred for 10,000 years, but they are still pigeons.
But pigeons are a family, not a species. What for you defines the pigeon kind? Is it being interfertile like dogs and wolves? There are over 300 different species of pigeon, and they definitely do not interbreed. And with so many species, are you sure no new species have emerged over the past 10,000 years?
This is why evolutionary biologists proclaim minor variation within species such as the peppered moths, as evidence for the grand macro evolutionary changes that happened in the past.
This is untrue. The peppered moth is presented as an example of natural selection in the wild, not of macroevolution. So is the finch's beak.
We dont observe life arising from non-life...
Tell you what, you present your scientific evidence for dust of the ground being transformed into a man, and we'll present our evidence for natural processes being responsible for everything ever observed. But not in this thread, it would be off-topic.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 123 of 188 (653891)
02-25-2012 9:21 AM
Reply to: Message 119 by Invader Scooch
02-25-2012 3:16 AM


Who are you responding to?
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 129 of 188 (657943)
04-01-2012 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 126 by Portillo
04-01-2012 1:39 AM


Portillo writes:
How do you know all dogs are the same kind? How do you know that each dog breed, and the wolf, is not a separate kind? If your answer is that they are all mutually interfertile then I guess we finally have a definition of kind.
Thats true, with few exceptions, animals can breed with each other if they are part of the same species. Thats why with the cat, you can get ligers and leopons. With the horse, you can get zonkeys and zorses. Change and variation within a fundamentally stable species.
I was wondering how creationists like yourself know when different species are members of the same kind, so I asked whether mutual fertility were the criteria. Your answer is a bit confusing. When you labeled ligers, leopons, zonkeys and zorses as "Change and variation within a fundamentally stable species" did you mean to say "a fundamentally stable *kind*?"
Living fossils are a perfect example. Coelacanths lived 300 million years ago and were thought to be extinct. When they were found in modern times, they were more or less exactly the same.
Except that modern coelacanths are not "more or less exactly the same" as coelacanths 300 million years ago. Coelacanth is an order, not a species, here's the full classification:
KingdomAnamilia
PhylumChordata
ClassOsteichthyes (bony fishes)
OrderCoelacanthini
FamilySarcopterygii
GenusLatimeria
Specieschalumnae
It is the order coelacanth that has survived for 300 million years, not the species. There is no such thing as a species of coelacanth. If you want to claim that the order coelacanthini is the same thing as a kind then you contradict your earlier claim that kind means mutually interfertile.
There is only one species of modern coelacanth, the Latimeria chalumnae. Fossil coelacanths are of different species, genera and families. We haven't even found any fossil coelacanths in the same genus as the modern coelacanth, see the section on the fossil record in the Widipedia article on the coelacanth.
Given mutation, how does one run out of variation?
The fossil record is filled with animals that have stayed the same for hundreds of millions of years.
Well, if you apply the same criteria you used for the coelacanth and the horseshoe crab (which was either thinking that "looks pretty much the same" means "is the same," or trusting creationist websites, or both) then I guess you're right. But if you instead apply the criteria you earlier defined for kind, mutual interfertility, then this is dead wrong and the fossil record contains no examples of animals that have stayed the same for hundreds of millions of years. If you check out the Wikipedia article on Horseshoe Crabs and the Wikipedia article on Xiphosura (order that includes the modern horseshoe crab), then you'll find that all existing species of horseshoe crab reside in a biological family (Limulidae) that didn't even exist hundreds of millions of years ago.
Why is it that living fossils like the cockroach and horseshoe crab stayed the same, while concurrently, there was a mammalian ancestor that was evolving into a whale, porpoise, seal, polar bear, bat, monkey, cat, pig, opossum and cattle?
Evolution reacts to environmental change, which includes the local climate, terrain and all other life. Species in environments with little change (much more common in the ocean than on land) will change little in comparison to species living in changing environments. And as your examples of the coelacanth and horseshoe crab make clear, even creatures that have experienced relative stability in their environments undergo considerable change after millions of years, even though their appearance might seem little affected.
So living fossils are not examples of species running out of variation. DNA's biggest enemy is imperfect copying. Millions of generations mean millions and millions and millions of mutations, and as a species underlying DNA changes even species in a stable environment will change.
Of course, the irony is that although DNA's biggest enemy is imperfect copying, it is life's biggest friend because without the plasticity provided by mutational change life could not adapt to the inevitably changing circumstances of our planet.
--Percy

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 Message 126 by Portillo, posted 04-01-2012 1:39 AM Portillo has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


(1)
Message 168 of 188 (671031)
08-21-2012 5:40 PM
Reply to: Message 163 by barnes
08-21-2012 3:49 PM


Re: Silly creationist story
barnes writes:
I am still at a loss, the word selection assumes thought. What does nature ultimately select and why haven’t we seen any advancement in what we have. Has nature made her Ultimate selection?
Evolution is a process of mutation and natural selection. Natural selection is similar to artificial selection (e.g., breeding), but instead of people doing the selecting it is the natural environment that does it on the basis of traits. For example, in a cold environment heavier coats, a favorable trait, will provide a survival advantage and are therefore said to be selected for.
Variation will always be present in any population of organisms. Some individuals will have heavier coats, some lighter coats. As a region becomes gradually colder the population will change over a number of generations to be increasingly composed of individuals with heavier coats. If the region instead becomes gradually warmer then the opposite would be expected to occur.
Mutation (changes in genetic makeup that occur during reproduction) provides new variation to a population, to then be acted upon by natural selection just as it does on existing variation.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 173 of 188 (671500)
08-26-2012 5:16 PM
Reply to: Message 172 by barnes
08-26-2012 4:56 PM


Re: Silly creationist story
barnes writes:
The fox through natural selection will beget a fox, better adapted to survive in an ever changing world,...
You seem to be agreeing with the premise of this thread, that evolutionary change is inherent to life and produces improving adaptation to the environment.
...the whole time never changing from a fox. The fox was Created a fox and will stay a fox, just better adapted to carry on as a fox.
And you seem to be disagreeing that evolutionary change can accumulate to the point of change beyond the species level, but I don't think that's something we're discussing in this thread. If you'd like to discuss the evidence for speciation or macroevolution then you should probably propose a new thread over at Proposed New Topics.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by barnes, posted 08-26-2012 4:56 PM barnes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 174 by barnes, posted 08-26-2012 6:04 PM Percy has replied

  
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