Message 4 of 493 (489686) 11-29-2008 8:46 AM

Reply to: Message 1 by Integral 11-29-2008 6:36 AM

Why is this a problem? The evidence shows that the earth is old, over 4.5 billion years old, and that life has existed for most of that time, for over 3.5 billion years. The evidence also shows a progression of life forms, from simple cells to the multicellular life we see around us today.

In one sense all mutations are "malformations" because they are different from the previous version/s. The definition of something as a "malformation" is just a subjective interpretation, likely based on a biased or uninformed view. Every person (including you) carries hundreds of such "malformed" DNA sections, and usually there is no effect. This is because most mutations are neutral in our current environment.

Some "malformations" change the DNA so much that the organism cannot develop properly and it dies. We call this death natural, and it is part of the natural selection of organism to fit their environment that is an ongoing process every minute of every day.

Organisms that survive and breed we call "fit" and consider this fitness a natural product of their genetic inheritance and the mutations they were born with. This too is part of natural selection - those that are more naturally "fit" for the environment they currently inhabit, are better able to survive and breed, and thus they pass on more genes to the next generation.

When we look at the fossil record we do not see any sudden formation/s of bits and parts, rather a gradual adaptation of existing features into new uses.

For instance the transition from fin to leg, with organisms that "walk" on fins (as do some modern fish) to organisms like Tiktaalik roseae, that have all the basic structure of a fin, but organized to adapt it for lifting the torso and walking, and later fossils that develop this ability further and further.

For instance we now know that feathers existed long before the first flying dinosaur, and that the wing of a bird has developed further since that time, including the gradual change from symmetrical feathers to modern asymmetric feathers and ones with special functions compared to other flight feathers.

Nor do any such developments need to be "perfect" (another entirely subjective opinion), as all they need to do is offer the organism an opportunity to survive and breed, and if they happen to survive and breed better than other organisms, then their genes will be passed to the next generation in greater proportion. Any development only need to be "good enough" to survive and breed in their current environment.

Unfortunately for you, nature is completely unimpressed by your opinion, nor is it restricted in any way by what you think.

Perhaps you have not really considered the question completely.

Enjoy.

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Message 10 of 493 (489755) 11-29-2008 7:18 PM

Reply to: Message 9 by Taz 11-29-2008 6:26 PM

The concept of "fully developed" also seems to imply that what you see today is the final goal, rather than just what happens to be living today and which will be replaced by different life forms in the future.

Enjoy.

Message 57 of 493 (490323) 12-03-2008 7:25 PM

Reply to: Message 36 by wardog25 12-03-2008 10:26 AM

Of course there are limits - physical limits to how big a body can become and still survive. Limits that have nothing to do with biology or evolution. The mass goes up as the cube of the linear dimension: do you think a 6ft cocker would look like a standard cocker? It wouldn't have the strength to support itself, it's dietary needs would be entirely different.

This kind of limit has nothing to do with biology or evolution in terms of what changes to features could occur, and is rather a logical fallacy of equivocation on what kind of change we are talking about.

To be specific we know that we can get the range of variation in features seen in dogs from a single form seen in wolves and still remain a single species.

Now the question is, what difference is greater than the variation seen here to go from say a fox to a cat?

Or is the difference between fox and cat just "microevolution"?

What mechanism other than microevolution is needed?

Curiously descendants of a population will always be descendants of a population, no matter how many generations are involved, and if you think evolution says otherwise, you are wrong. Descent with modification from common ancestors - Darwin's original formulation - means that descendants of salamanders will always, must by definition always, be descendants of salamanders.

Once populations are no linked by breeding they are free to diverge through microevolution into different forms. We see the effect of reproductive isolation in dog breeds with only a few generations. We can repeat these kinds of changes in other species by the same methods: isolate populations and select for characteristics that make the offspring different.

What mechanism other than reproductive isolation combined with microevoltion is needed to explain the total diversity of life as we know it - from the world today, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from genetics?

Can you tell me the differences between these skeletons?

Click to enlarge

Dog Skeleton, by Cheryl R. Dhein, Washington State University

Click to enlarge

"dawn horse." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16-Dec-07

Are the differences between dog and eohippus more or less than the variation we see in dogs?

Or is the difference between dogs and horses (and cats and foxes) just "microevolution"?

Sure we can: the "limit" is life. All life is related by common ancestry.

Enjoy.

Message 75 of 493 (491590) 12-17-2008 9:17 PM

Reply to: Message 72 by wardog25 12-17-2008 12:42 PM

The diversity of life as we know it, from the world around us, from history, from prehistory and the archeological record, from the fossil record and from genetics.

Nope, not really, for the critical point is that there is not one piece of scientific evidence from any field that contradicts it, not one piece of evidence that says that evolution is wrong, that there are no other contenders that explain all the evidence as well, as thoroughly, as completely and as consistently as evolution. That is NOT an assumption.

You haven't demonstrated any reason for seeing more. When you have a process that takes a long time, you must admit that it is unreasonable to expect to see the same process occur in a short time. People don't watch mountains grow, heck they rarely sit around and watch grass grow. We don't need to watch grass grow to know that it does eh?

Now you could claim that we just ASSUME that grass grows, we don't know for sure. You can even measure it at different times, but then you are still ASSUMING that it is growing by tiny bits between measurements ....

It's not an assumption. Every way you slice the evidence, whether it is from life as we know it today, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record and from the genetic record, you see a consistent, objective, palpable pattern of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. You can take a hundred year period, or a thousand year period, and if you look at the same time frame for any of the evidence we have you will see the same pattern of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.

But paleontology is the record of past life - how is the study of plant and animal fossils and their habitats and predator prey relationships, behavior in parent child relationships, relationships by common ancestry, etc, etc, etc, NOT biology?

People keep asking you to define small change, and so far you have dodged, ducked, and avoided this rather simple request - simple if someone REALLY wants to know the truth, one to be avoided at all costs if one wants to be in denial of the truth.

Let me help you out: I'll provide three definitions.

Definition 1: Small change is the amount of change you see in any species. It is the gradual change you see in the varieties of various ring species, but in time rather than in space. It is the amount of change necessary to create the diversity we see in dogs: Click to enlarge Definition 2: Small change is the largest known amount of change you see in DNA from parent to offspring that still remains viable as a living organism, as known today. This includes duplication of chromosomes as well as insertions and deletions of DNA of lengthy sections from entirely different sources (whether duplicates or other sections of the DNA). This includes polyploidy for instance. quote: Click to enlarge Polyploidy is the process of genome doubling that gives rise to organisms with multiple sets of chromosomes. The term ploidy (see glossary for this and other related terms) refers to the number of complete genomes contained in a single cell. In general, polyploid organisms contain a multiple or combination of the chromosome sets found in the same or a closely related diploid species. Polyploidy can arise from spontaneous somatic chromosome duplication, or as a result of non-disjunction of the homologous chromosomes during meiosis resulting in diploid gametes (for review see Ramsey and Schemske, 2002). Definition 3: Small change is the amount of change needed to turn two subpopulations into reproductively isolated populations that no longer interbreed when the opportunity arises. This can be represented by the difference between overlapping but not interbreeding varieties of the various ring species. quote: Greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides) inhabit forests across much of northern and central Asia. In central Siberia, two distinct forms of greenish warbler coexist without interbreeding, ... ... There is a clear gradient in song characteristics around the ring, with the northern forms viridanus and plumbeitarsus differing dramatically in their songs. By measuring song spectrograms from various populations and doing a statistical analysis to illustrate the variation, we produced the following figure. Click to enlarge

This covers the different ways of looking at evolution, from visible traits, used by field naturalists and paleontologists, to genetic traits, used by geneticists and molecular biologists, and it demonstrates an easy metric that can be used on any set of evidence, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record.

You will note that each of these definitions is BIOLOGICAL. Your task is to show that there is any evidence of change that exceeds these small change definitions at any time in any record from generation to generation.

If you cannot do that, then you will need to concede that change by these definitions is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, not just in BIOLOGY, but in its TOTALITY, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record.

If you cannot do this, then you ought to, in honesty, concede that the diversity of life as we know it, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record, IS the "host" of evidence you have asked for.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : totwotoo

Edited by RAZD, : smalll

Edited by RAZD, : tiny bits

Edited by RAZD, : format for clarity

Message 112 of 493 (492451) 12-31-2008 2:06 PM

Reply to: Message 85 by wardog25 12-29-2008 5:12 PM

I see you still have not defined what you are looking for, and thus you are still waffling about the evidence.

Correct, and the fact that the mechanisms of evolution explain the divergence from a common ancestor into dogs or primates is why evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - is not contradictory to creation. Anyone who tells you so does not understand evolution.

Where the difference lies, is that Darwin (and Wallace and a few others) realized that this was ALSO sufficient to explain the divergence of primates and dogs from a common ancestor, that all the diversity of life could be explained by this one simple mechanism.

In other words, rather than be satisfied with a simple explanation for varieties of dogs, and varieties of primates, the question is asked - why stop there? What is the evidence that dogs and primates do not share a common ancestor?

Unfortunately for you, this still means you are confusing the terms and failing to speak clearly. A theory explains evidence, it isn't made up of evidence. The evidence exists independent of the theory.

There are three things called "evolution" relating to biological science (and many others not related): there is the science of evolution, there is the process of evolution, and there is the theory of evolution.

As noted above, the process of evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. And as noted by you above, most creationists don't (can't) argue with this as an ongoing process, observed, documented, factual: the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation does in fact occur.

The science of evolution studies, examines and tests various concepts for exactly how those hereditary traits change, under what conditions they change, and how much change occurs in each population, whether it is a constant trend or a cycic one, etc etc etc.

The theory of evolution is that the diversity of life as we know it, from history, from prehistory, from the geological\paleontological record, and from genetics, can be explained by this very same process.

The science of evolution also studies, examines and tests this theory against all the known evidence from history, from prehistory, from the archeological record, from the geological record, from the fossil record and from the genetic record.

So far ALL the evidence shows that evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - has been a continuous process throughout the time-span of the evidence.

Most people are ignorant. The argument from popularity is also a logical fallacy. If people don't know what evolution is, then what value is their opinion on the matter?

People who talk about evolution without knowing\using the definition/s as used in the science ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT EVOLUTION.

The question to you is, what prevents all these different organisms from being related via a common ancestor?

Can you point to one difference between these two skeletons that shows they cannot be related?

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Would you say that the difference between these two skeletons is more or less than the difference you see within dogs?

Click to enlarge

Enjoy.

Message 113 of 493 (492453) 12-31-2008 2:10 PM

Reply to: Message 109 by Blue Jay 12-30-2008 6:56 PM

You have http: twice. Try Dogs will be Dogs wil be ???

Message 123 of 493 (492478) 12-31-2008 5:57 PM

Reply to: Message 114 by wardog25 12-31-2008 2:11 PM

I fathom it. It is simplistic and naive, uninformed, and contradicted by the evidence. Like believing that the sun revolves around the earth. All needs to do is ignore evidence to the contrary. Such as the fossil evidence you have refused to consider. Such as that mutations cause changes to hereditary traits that are passed to following generations.

Curiously I believe in god, a god that created the universe in all it's untold mystery. A god that created the conditions for life to evolve.

Thus, when you say something like this, you are saying a falsehood. Strangely, the only one deluded by your falsehood is you. You do NOT understand the "evolutionist point of view" and the evidence of this is all the posts to you on this thread alone correcting your misconceptions and false understandings.

To understand evolution, all I need do is assume that the evidence speaks the truth, that any concept about the history of life can be false, and then investigate where the evidence leads. All I need is open minded skepticism.

To believe in creationism, I have to do is start with the beginning assumption that the evidence shows a set pattern of life, and that everything that contradicts it must be false. Then just keep ignoring the evidence that contradicts the belief. Blind belief trumps any evidence. All I need is closed minded denial. It is that simple.

It's called genetics. Mendel figured it out.

What you are seeing is the result of evolution at a family scale: parents with different sets of hereditary traits pass on some to each child, and what the child ends up with is different from the combination in either parent, and some of the traits are combined in different ways.

In addition the offspring will have some DNA sequences that are NOT found in either of the parents, sequences that are new mutations.

Correct, individual organisms do not evolve. The DNA they inherit is composed of DNA from each parent and some that are new mutations made from the DNA of each parent.

When Mendel did his experiment, he did not always get precise exact mathematical matches to his theory, as some plants exhibited traits that had not existed before. He did not know about mutations.

The question you are not asking yourself is how the traits of the parents became so diverse in the first place that they represent different races - where did all those different traits come from?

When a child has a new trait that never existed before, then where does that come from?

When an offspring of an organism survives a disease that kills both the parents, grandparents, etc, where does that resistance come from?

The question you are not asking is why the parents have such different traits to pass out - why are they not all the same as the original parents? Interestingly, what scientists do, is pursue the question of what the parents looked like. This is what the evidence shows:

Click to enlarge

The question you are not asking is how the parents have these different traits to pass out - why are they not all the same as the original parents?

Notice that what you have done is deny one piece of evidence that is a dominant factor in evolution in order to maintain your belief.

Sadly for you this is another falsehood. You have selected traits and changed the distribution of hereditary traits in a population, and over the course of several generations you will be selecting from traits that did not exist in the original population.

If your new breed is based on a unique set of hereditary traits, and you have selected members for reproduction that exhibit those traits while omitting others from the reproduction of following generations, then yes, you have caused a new breed to evolve. Reproductive isolation plus selection that differs from selection in the parent population will produce different results.

If your new breed is not based on a unique set of hereditary traits then you have not developed a new breed.

The question you are not asking is how the organisms have these different traits to pass out - why are they not all the same as the original population?

Enjoy.

Message 124 of 493 (492479) 12-31-2008 6:36 PM

Reply to: Message 121 by Blue Jay 12-31-2008 5:19 PM

It's from an old Ferdinand Feghoot story ... a planet with no magnetic field but some bugs that always faced north. The exploration was sabotaged by substituting a non compass mantis for the real one. The stories always end with an outrageous pun.
[/ot aside]

The critical thing here is that at the point of reproduction the offspring DNA includes sequences that are not matches to sequences in either parent, and this results in net differences from parents. Those difference may or may not affect how the organism develops.

Whether offspring dies or flourishes as a result of those differences is the selection part of evolution.

Enjoy.

Message 131 of 493 (492639) 01-01-2009 11:08 PM

Reply to: Message 129 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-01-2009 10:40 PM

The evidence points to some single-cell organisms somewhat similar to modern cyanobacteria some 3.5 billion years ago as the first known life in the fossil record.

Again, the evidence points to all life, not just man, evolving from those original single cell organisms.

All fossils are transitional, as they are intermediate between those organisms that are their ancestors and those organisms that are their offspring. This is what transitional means in science: if you have a different definition, then you need to define what you are talking about.

The fossils that lead from that first life to man, through descent with modification, and forming the chain of common ancestors that we understand from the fossil record and the genetic record are but a small segment of the diversity of life that exists and has existed on earth. The evidence shows the same basic pattern of diversification of life for all known organisms that we see in our own history.

At any time in the past you could take a "snapshot" of the diversity of life existing and the organisms alive at that time, and you would see life existing and behaving in a manner similar to today: living, reproducing, surviving and perishing according to their abilities and traits.

Denial of evidence does not make it disappear.

Enjoy.

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Message 173 of 493 (492790) 01-02-2009 10:24 PM

Reply to: Message 168 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-02-2009 5:24 PM

You're welcome. We try to provide information when people ask. The problem I am seeing is that it doesn't appear that you really want answers, you want to play gotcha games.

I'll pick up here, seeing as you have not progressed beyond repeating your first post other than to brush aside other replies.

You did not reply to my first reply, Message 131. I understand that it is difficult to reply to so many, but you complained about not getting an answer to your question about the first human ancestor. Perhaps you did not understand my reply:

quote:

---

The evidence points to some single-cell organisms somewhat similar to modern cyanobacteria some 3.5 billion years ago as the first known life in the fossil record.

---

These fossil organisms do have names, they have several names, "cyanobacteria" is one.

You also asked for the transitions from that first organism to man, and this too was answered:

quote:

---

All fossils are transitional, as they are intermediate between those organisms that are their ancestors and those organisms that are their offspring. This is what transitional means in science: if you have a different definition, then you need to define what you are talking about.

---

As there are several million fossils, naming all of them would be rather tedious, and I suspect that you are not really interested in that information.

If you don't understand what these answers mean, I will be happy to explain them, if you are willing to learn.

Curiously, we have no idea whether links exist or not. We can hypothesis, but without actual evidence it is just a guess. It's a guess tempered by a rather extensive knowledge of how life operates and how evolution occurs, but it is a guess. It is also a guess based on the information we do have -- the fossils.

What we have is the natural history of this planet preserved a handful at a time in often incomplete fossils. What science tries to do is understand what happened before our recorded existence.

Whether what we hypothesis is true or not, those fossils are still the evidence of the past life on this planet, they are facts.

Strangely, evolution is based on many observations of evidence all around us. It was this evidence that first led Darwin to his conclusion that life underwent descent with modification.

Interestingly, matching the fossil record to a pattern of common ancestry and descent with modification is only one of many independent tests of the theory of evolution.

Do you realize that you are not really asking about the theory of evolution, nor about the process of evolution, you are only asking about the fossil record: this is just the evidence of the natural history of life on earth.

A theory explains evidence, but it isn't the evidence itself.

Currently the of descent with modification from common ancestors is the best explanation for the distribution and variety of fossils found.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : format

Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

Message 174 of 493 (492792) 01-02-2009 10:31 PM

Reply to: Message 159 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-02-2009 4:40 AM

Would you care to present your evidence, the detailed comparison of physical traits for every bone and tooth, lengths, proportions, muscle attachments, and your cladistic analysis complete with out-group.

Baring that, please provide a citation of a paper you have published in a technical journal discussing this analysis, so we can look it up.

If you are the authority you pretend to be.

Enjoy.

Message 178 of 493 (492800) 01-03-2009 12:37 AM

Reply to: Message 175 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-03-2009 12:11 AM

I understand that you want to limit your responses to one poster, so you don't have to deal with too much information at one time.

Just a word-up: yeasts are eukaryotes, and thus are not the earliest ancestors by a long shot (off by over 1 billion years).

The first eukaryote, btw, would also qualify as a transitional between the first life form and humans ...

Your ignorance is showing.

Enjoy.

Message 182 of 493 (492805) 01-03-2009 1:14 AM

Reply to: Message 179 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-03-2009 12:44 AM

Is this how you think evolution happens? That individual organisms "transform" into new organisms?

Care to point out any scientific reference that says this is what happens?

Here are a couple of references you can peruse (read and study) and quote from:

berkeley evolution 101
berkeley evolution 101, definition of evolution
U.Mich, The Process of Speciation
U.Mich, Evolution and Natural Selection

These represent the teaching of two universities that provide degree courses in (real actual) evolutionary biology, so these are valid sources of information on evolution.

Another source is:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.,

One should always go to the original source to discuss a scientific theory, rather than rely on dubious websites by authors of unknown expertise.

Evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. The process of evolution occurs constantly, all around the world, in all forms of life.

You can compare the hereditary traits in one generation to those in the next and measure the differences. That is evolution occurring "in the natural world" and it is an observed fact.

Darwin's insight was that this simple process was sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from history, prehistory, archeology, geology, paleontology, the fossil record and the genetic (though he didn't know about it) record.

This theory is tested, among other ways, by using the fossil record to see if it matches what the theory predicts. What the fossil record shows is what happened, the theory - if it is correct - explains how it happened.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : clarity

Message 183 of 493 (492806) 01-03-2009 1:30 AM

Reply to: Message 181 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-03-2009 12:53 AM

Message 177

quote:

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... due to fossils being somewhat brittle in nature,that the actual fossil record doesnt support the fact of evolution.Would you agree or disagree with this statement made by rahvin?

---

What he said (Message 132):

quote:

---

Unfortunately because single-celled organisms do not fossilize, we won't likely ever know specifically what the single-celled common ancestor of all Earth-bound life was like. It simply couldn't have left sufficient evidence of itself behind. What we can tell is that the genetic structure of all life on Earth is the same (with the possible exception of viruses who use exclusively RNA rather than DNA, but RNA and DNA themselves are very closely related).

---

Not at all what you claim.

Message 198 of 493 (492849) 01-03-2009 9:45 AM

Reply to: Message 186 by seekingfirstthekingdom 01-03-2009 3:04 AM

This is just to clear up some of your visible confusion.

What you are replying to is the documentation of your misrepresentation of what rahvin said.

You also display a level of ignorance of science in general - no scientific theories can be proven, not one, no matter which science you pick.

You are repeating yourself because you have failed to learn that this concept is a false portrayal of evolution.

Not really, not when you look at the genetic evidence that preserves the bits and pieces of shared genetics with other organisms, the markers that trace genetic history. Some of these markers are in neutral segments of DNA and don't have any effect on growth or development of the organisms, so reproducing them is pointless to a designer unless the goal is to deceive (your god = satan\loki\etc explanation).

No, you asked for a list of all the transitional fossils, a task that could fill pages in a book as thick as the origin of species, you mistake the fossil record for the theory of evolution, and you've displayed a level of ignorance that is sad to observe, yet you have the arrogance to think that your opinion counts.

And you fail to realize that this is not what the theory of evolution says.

The reasons you are now restricted from this site are (a) refusal to learn when you are wrong, and (b) failure to support your position regarding the amazing yeast with documentation showing this is found in scientific literature pertaining to evolution.

Neither of these behaviors are tolerated on the science threads.

I have started a new topic at Topic In Great Debate to address your concept:

Remedial Evolution: seekingfirstthekingdom and RAZD

Enjoy.

Edited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.

Edited by RAZD, : added title of new thread