Evolution Simplified

Some time ago, Adminmooseus suggested that I make this previous post of mine a new topic. I didn't do it at the time since I didn't see the need. Now it seems to be relevant to a conversation that is going on in another thread.There is often confusion about what the theory of evolution is or what it says. Here is a very simplified version of evolution; I present it to show that the basics are independent of the mechanisms of heredity and independent of the processes of abiogenesis.1. Fact: Most breeding organisms produce more offspring than is necessary to replace themselves.2. Fact: The population of most species are not increasing.3. Conclusion: Most individuals must die before reproducing.4. Fact: Many of the physical traits of individual organisms are hereditary.5. Fact: Some traits make an organism more likely to survive and reproduce, while others make an organism less likely to survive and reproduce.6. Conclusion: From 3, 4, and 5 we can conclude that organisms with the traits that make them more likely to survive and reproduce will produce offspring with those traits, while organisms with traits that make them less likely to survive and reproduce will leave few or no offspring with those traits.7. Conclusion: A corollary of 6 is that as generations pass, the number of organisms with "good" traits will increase, while the number of organisms with "bad" traits will decrease, until eventually all individuals in the species will have the "good" trait and the "bad" trait will disappear altogether.8. Fact: New heritable traits, usually subtle, occasionally appear.9. Fact: These new traits do not appear in any predictable pattern; these traits can appear in any body part or instinctual behavior; furthermore, some of these traits are helpful to an organism's survival, and others are detrimental.10. Conclusion: From 7, 8 and 9 we can conclude that a species will slowly "improve" with time, as new helpful traits appear and as the organisms with these traits are better able to survive and produce offspring with these traits.11. Fact: There is no mechanism that is known to prevent these small, incremental changes from adding up, over time, to large changes; furthermore, there very few (if any) physical organs and instinctual behaviors in any species that do not appear in simpler versions in other species.12. Conclusion: From 10 and 11 we conclude that there is nothing that will prevent very simple, primitive living species from producing the complexity of the sort that we seen in the species around us.13. Fact: Occassionally separate populations of a species will become physically isolated from one another and cannot interbreed.14. Conclusion: From 9 and 13 we conclude that these populations will evolve independently; from 12 we conclude that these will become different species.15. Conclusion: From several interations of 14, we conclude that several species can have a common ancestor.Everything that I have labelled as a fact is a fact; these facts have been observed and verified. Everything I have labelled as a conclusion seems to me (and to most people) reasonable conclusions based on these facts. What about all of this do you not think makes sense? More to the point, what here violates any known law?I will end this post with some evidence for the plausibility of evolution, and some evidence for evolution having actually occurred.16. Fact: Over the course of human history, animal and plant breeders have produce a huge variety of animal and plant breeds; many of these breeds share of common ancestor, and these breeds are often very, very different from one another as well as from the ancestor.17. Conclusion: The appearance of random traits coupled with a selection process can result in evolution.18. Fact: The species can be classified in a hierarchical pattern.19. Conclusion: 15 and 18 allows us to conclude that all known species have evolved from a very few (perhaps one) ancestral species.So the intent of this thread is to guage where the disagreement with the theory. So, what do people disagree with? Is it the facts that I have presented? If so, why do you disagree with them? Is it with the conclusions? If so, why do you feel that the conclusions are not warranted?

Hi, Funkaloyd.For purposes of the discussion, members of the opposite sex are part of the environment of the individual, and any trait that would make it more likely that one or more of these members of the opposite sex will choose to breed with the individual is a "good" trait.Sexual selection, in other words, is but a certain type of natural selection.How's that?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Good morning, nemesis.Good response - the sort of thing that I was looking for. You know the "Socratic dialogue" method of discourse, where the other person asks questions one at a time, trying to lead you to the answer that they want? Well, I find that method annoying. So the OP contains all of my questions all at once, so that anyone can read through it and see where I want to go with this.Let us take things a little at a time.

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1. Fact: Most breeding organisms produce more offspring than is necessary to replace themselves.

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True.

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Good. So there is nothing more to discuss here.

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2. Fact: The population of most species are not increasing.

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This conflicts with your first premise, which I agree with.

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Unfortunately, facts are facts. They do not conflict. They are what they are. It is a fact that the population of most species are not increasing. You do point out an exception that humans are one species whose population is increasing. I would also add the possibility of domesticated plant and animal species which rely on humans for their survival, as well as certain pests (like rats and cockroaches) which can take advantage of the ecological niches that human societies provide. But by and large, the vast majority of species are not increasing in population, and it has only been historically recently that humans have been increasing at such a phenomenal rate.

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3. Conclusion: Most individuals must die before reproducing.

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I would be inclined to agree with you in most lower lifeforms, such as amoeba, plankton, fish, amphibian, and possibly reptiles. However, its a fact that humans populate more quickly than they are dying. Hence, there are more people on earth now than ever before. Aside from that, I'm not sure how that promotes evidence of macroevolution.

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As I said, facts are facts. We already agree to Fact 1. I'm not sure whether you are really objecting to Fact 2; if you are, then that warrants further discussion. At any rate, Fact 1, by itself, would seem to indicate that the populations of animals and plants should be increasing, but Fact 2 is that they are not. It would seem to be a necessary conclusion that in most species (humans being a current exception) more individuals are born than will reproduce, and so most individuals will die without having reproduced.I'll wait for your response before I make any further comments.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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I'm pretty sure that is what he meant.

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You're not sure what he meant? Whenever anyone makes a strange claim, the first thing I ask is why they think that.-

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Moreover, he used our sun as an example. He said if the sun were "truly" as old as it is, it wouldn't have such a great amount of H.

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From what I understand, the sun's abundance of H/He fit right in with the standard models of solar evolution. The only mystery I know of concerning the sun was the low neutrino flux, but I think that has been resolved now.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Chiroptera writes:

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Whenever anyone makes a stange claim, the first thing I ask is why they think that.

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I believe I have learned more about argument and logic since last "talking" with him....

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Heh. It seems like a real obvious thing to ask now, but it has taken me several years of participating on boards like this before I figured out what the "obvious" responses should be.I still read messages where I'm not sure how to respond. Too bad holmes hasn't been participating much these days; I learned a lot about how to dissect another person's posts by reading his responses.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Sorry I haven't responded sooner, my internet was down for a couple of days.

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It happens. I'm patient; I have a lot to do in my real life anyway.-

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What we do know is that overall, if any creature births 30 creatures of its own kind, a small percentage will survive, we'll say 15%. That's very crude, but it certainly appears to be the case.

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That's interesting. 15% of 30 is about 4. If we assume sexual reproduction among species with distinct sexes, (so these 4 individuals had two parents), then the population would double in a generation. I would think this would be noticeable. Other than humans (and perhaps a few species that can take advantage of the increased human population), are there any particular species that are increasing at this rate?By the way, for the rest of the argument (which we have not yet gotten to) to work, it isn't strictly necessary for the population to remain constant. The population can be increasing. What is necessary is that a significant percentage of the offspring that are produced do not reproduce themselves, which you do seem to agree with (if I am reading you correctly). This, by the way, also seems to be true in human populations; Third World Countries suffer from a high infant and child mortality rate, while in Western nations many, many individuals voluntarily (and involuntarily) have either one child (and so less than the replacement rate for two parents) or no children at all.So perhaps I can restate points 1, 2, and 3 as follows: Would you agree to this? If so, we can move on; otherwise we can continue to hash this one out.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Didn't I already agree with that premise?

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I thought that you did, but I wanted to make sure. When you have been on this board long enough, you will see that people tend to complain about others "putting words into their mouths" -- I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misrepresenting you.-Now lets move onto the next couple of points.

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4. Fact: Many of the physical traits of individual organisms are hereditary.

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True. Virtually all of our traits were inherited. And of those that aren't directly inherited, it was the product of gene deletion or small insertions.

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Great. Howevever, the gene deletions and small insertians themselves are hereditary since they occur in the genome.

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5. Fact: Some traits make an organism more likely to survive and reproduce, while others make an organism less likely to survive and reproduce.

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True. I agree that Natural Selection exists, and that it may or may not be a product of random chance or design.

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So far so good.

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6. Conclusion: From 3, 4, and 5 we can conclude that organisms with the traits that make them more likely to survive and reproduce will produce offspring with those traits, while organisms with traits that make them less likely to survive and reproduce will leave few or no offspring with those traits.

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I agree with that to a degree, but not holistically. Yes, Natural selection weeds out the weaker vessels.

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Right now that is my sole point. You continued:

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But on average, everything is dwindling down and winding down in nature. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Any process that begins will tend toward degradation. With as much copying of genes that goes on, I believe that all organisms from prokaryotes and eukaryotes, to the most complex ecosystems, are generally deteriorating and not increasing. So while Natural Selection helps stave off complete annihilation, there is an underlying factor of overall degradation within any given population.

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However, I don't think this is appropriate to discuss this here. If you read ahead in my list, I think that you will see that there will be a better time to discuss "deterioration" and "complexity". Just to keep things simple, let's hold off on this until we get there.All I want to know at this point:Do you agree with #6? Do you agree that the natural conclusion from 3, 4, and 5 (with which you have stated that you agree, at least after modifying #3 a bit) would indicate that if there are traits that would make an individual more likely to reproduce, then the next generation would have more individuals with that trait? And that if there is a trait that would make an individual less likely to reproduce, then there will be fewer individuals with that trait in the next generation?To me, this seems like an obvious conclusion, but some people might not agree.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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If something doesn't exist, you can't insert new genetic information.

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I am speaking of traits (or alleles) that already exist in the population. Further down in my list, starting with #8 amd #9, are comments about new traits coming into existence. Right now, I am discussing about traits that exist in the population right now. Sorry if I wasn't clear on this.So far we have agreed to the following:3. More organisms are produced than will reproduce themselves.4. Most physical traits are inherited.5. Some physical traits are beneficial in the sense that an organism possessing those traits will be more likely to reproduce. Some traits are detrimental in the sense that organisms possessing those traits will be less likely to reproduce.Do you still agree that these are accurate?If so, do you agree there will be more individuals in the next generation that will inherit the beneficial trait, and fewer that will inherit the detrimental trait? And so in the next generation, more individuals will have the beneficial trait and fewer will have the detrimental trait? Or do you have an objection to this?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Do you still agree that these are accurate?

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For face value, yes.

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So we'll continue on for now. We can revisit these points later if you decide that these points are problematic.-

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For instance, most people that develop cancer don't recieve it before they procreate. Most people get cancer later in life. And whether they die or not, that information is coded in the DNA to the next generation.

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Then the trait is not "detrimental", at least not in the way I have used it. I meant "beneficial" and "detrimental" in regards to #5. A "beneficial" trait is one that confers an advantage to an individual in regards to reproductive success, while a "detrimental" trait is one that leaves an individual at a disadvantage.Sorry for the confusion. In biology these terms have a very precise meaning, and like in the other sciences it is possible to confuse these words with the ordinary colloquial meanins in every-day speech.Perhaps I should reword #6: In each succeeding generation there should be more individuals with the more advantageous trait and fewer individuals with the less advantageous trait.What do you think?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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I think any evolutionist, by necessity, eventualy will have to rest their claims on the transfer and mutation of genes.

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I think we are quickly coming up to the point where this will be relevant. Right now, I'm trying to keep things simple by looking at it just a little bit at a time. Just to keep things from getting too confusing by too many details.-

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For instance, many evolutionists use Sickle Cell Anemia as a prime example of a good mutation.

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Again, what is important to the point so far is whether we expect to see some traits increase generation by generation because those traits give a reproductive advantage to the individuals which have them, and whether some traits will decrease in subsequent generations because those traits will prove to be a disadvantage.-

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Perhaps I should reword #6: In each succeeding generation there should be more individuals with the more advantageous trait and fewer individuals with the less advantageous trait.

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I think that can happen and I think it does happen.

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This is the point I wanted to make. (Sorry to snip off the second sentence -- I just think that this part here is the important point.)-Now we come to #7: I will add here that "good" means that the individuals possessing that trait will have a reproductive advantage, and "bad" means that individuals without that trait will be at a disadvantage.This time I won't quote the response you have already given here since I don't think much of it is relevant to the point that is being made; however, if you think it still needs to be said you can repeat it here.Right now, based on our conversation so far, I can think of two reasonable objections that can be made to this conclusion, which I can share if anyone is interested. First, however, I'd like to get your thoughts so far. (And besides, I want to go home and get some dinner.)Do you think that it is reasonable to suppose that an advantageous trait will increase in every generation until the entire population has it? Do you feel that a disadvantageous trait will decrease in every generation until it has disappeared altogether?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Unless my knowledge of biology is way off, what you've said here isn't accurate. Octopi DNA is made from exactly the same things as human DNA, and any other DNA.

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And the genetic code that is used is the same, too.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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That's reasonable. Its not concrete, but it is well within the realm of possibility.

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Yes, as I have said before, I can think of a couple of objections (although I think I can answer them). However, since you are not objecting (and we can come back to this point later if you want to object to it), I think we can go on. Especially since there were points that you wanted to bring into the discussion, and we are now getting coming to the place where those points are relevant.So far we have now agreed that there are physical traits that confer an reproductive advantage to the individuals that possess them, and traits that are disadvantageous to the individuals that possess them, that most of these traits are inherited, and that over generations the advantageous traits will increase in the population, and the disadvantageous traits will decrease. We also have now acknowledged the possibility that given enough time the entire population might possess the advantageous trait (through the gradual elimination of individuals that do not possess the trait), and that the disadvantageous may eventually disappear (through the direct elimination, perhaps gradually, of the individuals that possess it).-

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I'm gonna go out on a limb and presuppose that you've posed these series of questions before, and based on their answers, you go back and say, "See, evolution is possible."

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I've posed these questions several times before on several different message boards. But you are the first to really put any effort into responding. Most people have ignored this set of questions, or have only made a half-hearted attempt to answer a few of them and then abandoned the conversation.Actually, the intent (originally) of the OP was to divorce the discussion of whether evolution has or has not occurred from the discussion of abiogenesis, or of the "complexity of DNA", or whatever people tried to bring up. If you look at all the statements in the OP, you will see that one either agrees to them or disagrees to them on their individual merits -- how life originally arose, or whether we ever understand how life originally arose, is irrelevant to whether you agree or disagree with the individual statements, and whether you agree or disagree with the conclusions that can be reached.Although this goal was secondary, it is also as you say; part of the intent is also to show that evolution is plausible. Part of the difficulties some creationists have with the Theory of Evolution is that they don't really understand it. Part of the intent of the OP is to provided a step-by-step explanation of the individuals pieces to aid in understanding what the theory of evolution really is, and also, hopefully, to show that it is not so implausible an idea as some think it is.One more thing: I used to be a creationist. I came to recognize that evolution was not only plausible, but regardless of the validity of the Genesis story, if we were to wait around for another 100 million years all the species we know of today would be gone and would evolve into quite different species. This was one important part of the reason I eventually abandoned Young Earth Creationism.-

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But as I alluded to before, abstract methods don't circumvent or trump actual evidence out in the field.

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Heh. That is exactly what I tell creationists when they try to "prove" that evolution is impossible. Probability calculations showing that abiogenesis is impossible, for example, do not make all the evidence that evolution has occurred go away. Abstract discussions about "information" do not trump the multitude of evidence supporting evolution in many different fields of science using a wide variety of different methodologies. Heh; in fact we are now at the point where you might try to make some abstract arguments involving "information" or "complexity", and you might want to keep in mind that "theories" and "abstract arguments" do not trump evidence.Right now we are discussing the plausibility of evolution, so discussion of the evidence in favor of it would be off-topic here. If you wish to discuss the evidence, it might be better to join another thread, or start another one if necessary. To get you started, though, in understanding what the evidence is, I will link to my favorite web page on the topic. If you do decide to start a new topic, I'll let you know that my favorite piece of evidence is the heirarchical classification scheme.In fact, if you now feel that there is no point in continuing this particular thread (because, perhaps, you already agree with the plausibility of evolution) and want end this particular converstion, then I will understand. Otherwise:================================So, to repeat, we now agree that physical traits are largely inherited, that some are advantageous (in a reproductive sense), some are disadvantageous, and that over generations the advantageous traits will increase, the disadvantageous ones will decrease, until the advantagous traits are dominant.I will also note that there has been no assumption of "intent" or "direction" -- just that some traits are more advantageous than others, and so will preferentially be selected for in each succeeding generation. So far, we have only been talking about traits that already exist in the population. Now we move onto the emergence of new traits. I will make some clarifications here: by "subtle" I mean that the "new traits" are very small changes of old traits. Maybe hair color is slightly more mottled, maybe a fin is a little longer, maybe a particular bone is a little bit thicker.By "helpful to an organism's survival", I mean, of course, helpful in the sense that the organism is more likely to produce surviving offspring, and similarly for detrimental.Edited to change the subtitle.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 07-May-2006 03:16 PM

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Meh. I like this one better.

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http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp

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Dr. Theobald has answered most of the criticisms that Camp raised. Most of the time, it appeared to me that Camp did not understand Theobald's point. However, having read Theobald's original version of that essay, I do admit that sometimes the point wasn't very clear; Camp did do a service in pointing out where Theobald needs to be more clear. Theobald did do a bit of rewriting to take into account Camp's criticisms (especially Camp's misunderstandings).-

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I guess I'm not understanding why we are going over them again.

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Because I didn't go over them the first time. When these points were previous discussed, it was during times when I felt it was inapporpriate and potentially confusing, and so I purposely avoided discussing them there. Now that we are finally talking about new traits, I think this is the ideal time to talk about them. I guess I've had too much training in mathematics -- I like a great deal of organization to my expositions. And, like many mathematicians, I have a deep preference to my organization. At any rate, I'm afraid that you'll have to put up with my fetishes.-

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In either case, yes, new traits can develop in any given specimen.

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Okay, and I will assume that you agree with the observation that the new traits arise in a more or less random manner.The rest of your quote is better off discussed with the next points. (My pedantic organization again.)-

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I object to 'improve' because that's completely subjective.

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Indeed; but just like "good" and "bad" and "beneficial" and "detrimental" I mean in the sense of increased reproductive fitness. I apologize for the confusion caused by using a colloquial word where I should have used a phrase with a more precise meaning. I find it tiring to keep using phrases like "reproductive fitness" and "increased chances of reproductive success", so I keep using words like "good" and "improvement" as a short hand for this, hoping the reader will be able to tell what I mean. Also, you are the first person who has taken the time to actually respond to these points, so there are still a lot of bugs in this "rough draft". But you are giving me a lot of ideas for improvement.Also, I should point out that we are still talking about relative short time scales here -- maybe a few hundreds or thousand of generations. Once a new species arises, one may not be able to talk about the new species having better reproductive success than the previous species, since they might now be inhabiting different niches and so would no longer be in competition. For instance, humans are not an "improved" version of fish: drop someone in the middle of a lake, and they will likely drown. Jaws are not improved gills, and ears are not improved jaw joints. So, in some sense, creationist are correct -- there was a lot of degeneration involved in evolution -- humans are pretty much badly deformed fish, so much that they can't even swim very well or breathe in water. Jaws don't take oxygen from water very well, and our inner ear bones are useless in keeping our jaws attached to our skulls.So, when I talk about a species becoming "improved" I mean that we are still talking about individuals that are recognizably the same species living in more or less the same ecological niche, and that the later individuals now possess slightly different traits and features that would enable them to "out compete" the earlier individuals if any the earlier forms are still around. I think some creationists call this "microevolution".Is this better?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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The problem is, I can't think of one instance in where cancer, Down Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis benefitted anyone in any way.

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No claim has been made that all novel traits are beneficial.Anyway, how about Hemoglobin C? People who have hemoglobin C have increased resistance to malaria. A very few people with hemoglobin C might be at risk for very slight anemia, but most people with hemoglobin C are completely healthy. Can you see a possible benefit for this relatively recent mutation?What about nylon digestion? A certain bacterium was found that was able to digest nylon -- this bacterium was found in waste associated with nylon production. Would this be a beneficial mutation?-

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Right, and I don't contend with that. We know that small adaptations occur.

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Your use of the word "adaptation" suggests that you agree that novel beneficial (in a reproductive sense) traits can appear in a population, and that after a number of generations most of the population will have these traits -- that is what "adaptation" means.I'll wait for your response in case this isn't what you meant.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

I fear that this may be going off-topic, but I can't resist:

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We have one less chromosome than chimps as far as I know, which may make it impossible to successfully reproduce.

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One of the human chromosomes looks exactly like two chimpanzee chromosomes joined end-to-end. So the reason that humans have one less chromosome than chimps is that sometime after the human/chimp split, a pair of chromosomes joined together.Now, this is not sufficient by itself to prevent interbreeding; I think that there may be examples of this type of chromosome fusion where the individuals with now differing numbers were still interfertile. In fact, they have to be interfertile, otherwise that first individual with the fused chromosomes could not pass on the fused chromosomes into the next generation.So, if humans and chimps are not interfertile, it is because of greater differences in the genome than simply the chromosome number.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)