Evolution Logic

I think you missed something very important - reptiles do have follicles - scale follicles. I mean, did you miss this? It's from the very article you link to:

quote:

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Epidermis: characterized by complete covering of keratin (the same stuff that makes up mammalian hair and mammalian, avian, and reptilian nails/claws also makes up the plates we call "scales").

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That would seem to undercut almost every conclusion in your post. Almost certain isn't good enough for you to come to a conclusion? Even about stuff that happened so long ago?Why the high standards? Why so high only for evolution stuff? I'm fairly certain that you don't apply this same standard to anything else, do you?

That's a common misperception. Actually, quite the opposite is true - we observe that mutations cause a gain in genetic "information." New genes and novel structures develop through mutation, and are refined through natural selection. No, because the gulf between sexuality and asexuality is not nearly as large as you think. Almost all asexual creatures still have some means of genetic exchange with their conspecifics. The first sexual organism might simply have lost the ability to recieve certain kinds of genetic "payloads", without losing the ability to transmit them. It isn't, actually. The major discovery of the Human Genome Project was how few genes it actually takes to "construct" a human being - less than 25,000 if I remember correctly. That's 20 times less than the number of genes in an onion, or a staggering 200 times less genes than it takes to describe an amoeba. Information-wise, our genome is not significantly more complex than the genome of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit (or vinegar) fly. Much like Aristotle, your mistake is that you believe you can simply reason your way to truth about the natural world. This idea has been discredited for centuries. Empiricism, not deduction, is the key for understanding the truth about the natural world. Until you educate yourself in the field of genetics, your conclusions about genetics - no matter your ability to "reason" objectively - will not be correct. Like this, for instance. Absolutely wrong. DNA is a remarkably simple language. Here it is:Four base nucleotide "letters"; three letters for every "word" in the language. Each word either stands for one of 20 amino acids used in our bodies to construct proteins, or it stands for "stop" - the end of the polypeptide sequence. It's not at all complex. I've just showed you how to read DNA. If I can do that over the internet, how complex can it really be?

It's a start, though. When most people say "DNA is a complex language", what they're actually saying is "I have absolutely no idea how DNA works."

Oh, nonsense. The fact that you can get DNA to replicate itself with nothing more than some nucleotide bases and some Tac polymerase is what has made modern DNA analysis possible. If we couldn't get DNA to replicate outside of a cell, you wouldn't be able to do those genetic tests you see on CSI, or do paternity testing, or perform the kind of phylogenetics work my wife does. More nonsense. The tests do support it.Why don't you post exactly what tests you're referring to? What tests has evolution failed, specifically? A bunch of quotes absent their original context don't mean anything. And it's not terribly honest. I could quote you out of context, piece together statements that you actually posted, and make it seem like you support evolution. Wouldn't be that hard, actually.

Where do you observe evidence for these limits, and how do you make predictions about what variation is and is not allowed?

Sure they can.See how much fun this is, when both of us make assertions and then don't provide anything to prove them?

Sure it does. The transitional forms are the families, taxons, creatures etc that you refer to - the ones that appear suddenly.Why wouldn't the transitional forms appear suddenly? You say those two things like they're mutually inconsistent.

I think you meant "fish have remained fish."But, yeah. Here's the thing - there's more different breeds of dogs now than before. There's more different species of monkey now than before. There's more families of fish now than before.There's more different kinds of mammals now than before. More different kinds of plants. More different kinds of everything. That's the definition, and proof, of evolution. Evolution is not one organism changing into another. It's populations of species giving rise to new species. "Mammal" used to encompass a single species. Now it encompasses thousands. There used to be one kind of insect. Now there are millions.That's evolution. And when we see new species arise, even now, that's observing evolution in action.And you still haven't answered my question. Instead, you're reasoning circularly - your proof that evolution can't happen is because there's this barrier. But your proof that the barrier exists is your assertion that evolution can't happen.

One kind gives rise to several kinds, but each of those kinds is part of the original kind. It's hierarcheal, do you see? Kinds contain kinds. We use the term "taxa", though, or sometimes "clade." Eventuallly, dogs will give rise to a different creature; but that creature will still be a dog. The dog "kind", that you recognize, will give rise to new kinds, but those kinds will still be part of the "dog kind." Just as the first mammal gave rise to many different kinds of creatures that are all still mammals. Just as the first vertebrate gave rise to many, many different kinds of creatures, all of which are still vertebrates.Evolution doesn't predict that the decendant of dogs will not be dogs. They're be dogs, but they'll be something else, too, just as humans are both mammals and humans at the same time.This isn't magic or mysticism, this is the imprecision of describing a hierarcheal concept in linear language.

Who said? That's what we observe. We see it happen.It does stay one kind, though. One kind that contains an increasing number of kinds. It will. But that kind contains a bunch more kinds. Is it just that you don't get the idea of a hierarcheal system of classification?

You really need to look stuff up while you're typing it, because this sentence doesn't make a lick of sense. "Hydrogen molecules" don't contain oxygen. And this? I mean, what are you talking about? Of course there's charts for how plants evolved. Plant evolution is a huge deal, particularly in agroscience, where it's super-important. There's a lot of work being done on plant evolution.You really need to be checking your statements more carefully.

Damn, why all the hating on plants all of a sudden? "Less features"? "Don't learn all that much?"I get it that plants are a lot less sexy, but if you like to eat, thank a plant and the people who study them. And they're no slouch in the features department, either.Norman Borlaug studied plants. As a result of what he learned he saved over a billion human lives. "Don't learn all that much?"

Gosh, you mean to say that a discussion of scientific findings became technical? Who would have thought?Look, if you want to understand the issues at hand, here, you're going to have to get over your deep hatred for all things intellectual.

When one group acccumulates enough change that it's sufficiently different from other groups within the same kind, it's in a new kind. In other words:We have a kind called "wobbles", containing all wobbles. Wobbles live in the east and the west, but they're all wobbles. But a mudslide seperates all the wobbles into two groups that, now, can't have anything to do with each other. The eastern wobbles change, over time, in different ways than the western wobbles do. The eastern wobbles become tall and thin, and the western wobbles become short and furry. Eventually the mudslide clears, but neither side recognizes the other as fellow wobbles - they're too different - and they keep their distance.Where there was once only plain-old wobbles, taxonomists now recognize two new kinds of wobbles - Wobblus orientalis, the tall thin wobble, and Wobblus occidentalis, the short furry wobble. The wobble kind now contains two new kinds of wobbles. Wobbologists analyze their evolutionary history and discover that these two kinds of wobbles are both decended from a common ancestor, which was of the wobble kind but wasn't in either of the two current wobble sub-kinds.What once might have been a species - wobble - is now a genus, the next-highest category, because it contains two kinds of its own, that are new. Both those new kinds of wobble arose from a kind that they still belong to, but an ancestor that wasn't a member of either of those kinds.Hierarcheal classification of species. Pretty simple, when you think about it. Adelobasileus cromptoni. There. That's an undebateable transitional organism from the fossil record. No, you can't. You can't employ the same reasoning. The reason that you cannot rely on Answers in Genesis for information is because the "information" they promulgate is objectively wrong, a fact which they're aware of. It's definately been demonstrated to the AiG crew over and over again, so we know that they're dishonestly promulgating information that they know is wrong. Moreover, AiG does not employ persons who are experts in the fields in which they comment.The same cannot be said of talkorigins.org. The information at talkorigins.org is objectively accurate, and when any inaccuracies are discovered, the talkorigins crew corrects them, regardless of who pointed out the error. The contributors to talkorigins are persons with advanced degrees and research experience in the fields in which they contribute.Objectively, the information from AiG is not reliable, whereas the information from Talkorigins is. So you can't turn the reasoning around. You can't simply dismiss TO because they're pro-evolution, because we're not dismissing AiG simply because they oppose evolution. We dismiss AiG because their resources are objectively wrong.

Um...If we've got humans standing on every square meter of the Earth, where are we going to grow all the food?Or did it escape your notice that human beings have to eat?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.