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Author | Topic: Evolution and complexity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ircarrascal Inactive Junior Member |
Oh men, I ask a couple of simple questions and some people treat me like a total fool. I thought I'd get a better welcome here.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Some folk behave that way.
Sorry. You asked some good questions. The first had to do with "Why are not fish intelligent (like human inteligence I mean)?" Well the answer is that what happens during evolution is what is just good enough to live long enough to breed and pass on the genes. There is no pressure for something to evolve beyond just good enough. You then asked...
Anyways, perhaps a related question then is how two (new?) species can coexist? ... and the answer is that it is not a replacement scenario. Some critters moving from sea to land does not mean all critters making the move. Some critters evolving to exploit some new food source does not mean all critters evolving to exploit that food source. So what is the next question? Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Percy Member Posts: 22505 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
ircarrascal writes: Oh men, I ask a couple of simple questions and some people treat me like a total fool. I thought I'd get a better welcome here. We're not perfect angels here, but you've been given a bit of a rougher time than is normally given to a professed newbie to evolution, and I think it's because you said "I am a scientist..." in Message 19. People are therefore holding you to a higher standard than they would your average newbie who possesses little to no science background. Certainly the misconceptions and questions you're asking are pretty much the exact same ones those with no science background have, and you come across not as a scientist of the stars who happens to be unfamiliar with biology, but instead as someone unfamiliar with science altogether, so it's a bit puzzling. --Percy
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Oh men, I ask a couple of simple questions and some people treat me like a total fool. How do you survive peer-review with such a thin skin?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Yeah, I was confused too. Then I realised he was talking about stars, which are often likened to living things (with the 'birth' of a star, and the 'death' of one, and its life-cycle. Yeah, and they use evolution too, but in this case they mean evolution within an "organism" - stars evolve as they age ... red giant nova neutron etc. I also got a "new agy" feeling from that description of stars. compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3321 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Well, I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised or confused. We've had a self proclaimed engineer who thought earth's gravity is caused by its rotation, a self proclaimed biologist who thought anti-biotics work on viruses, a self proclaimed teacher who thought "falling stars" are actually literally falling stars, etc. Why not a cosmologist who thought speciation happen over night with the parent species automatically going extinct?
By the way, welcome to this forum. I certainly hope you'd stay here and participate often. Don't let me drive you away. Just think of me as a cranky person who likes to pick on newbies. We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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Zhimbo Member (Idle past 6041 days) Posts: 571 From: New Hampshire, USA Joined: |
"Showing that picture and telling me (or anybody else) that that's the way I probably think is kind of rude." Actually, I would have given a very similar answer if I had read this thread earlier. You might see it as rude for us to assume that's what you meant, but it's what your post communicated to me, as well. Just so you know. I didn't see it as ridicule, either, just an explanation of the basic fallacy that I (and others) read into your post. As to your follow-up questions, the Wikipedia entry on "speciation" is a good little intro on ways new species arise - look over the discussion of allopatric, sympatric, etc. speciation.
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Zhimbo Member (Idle past 6041 days) Posts: 571 From: New Hampshire, USA Joined: |
On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin lol I'll second that, actually - everyone SHOULD read the Origin of Species. A true "Genius at Work" experience. But, of course, a little out of date! For a more up-to-date intro, I like Must Read Files at talkorigins as a good intro. I'm not as familiar with the Understanding Evolution website, but what I have seen looks like an excellent alternative.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
History repeated. Let me quote Giordano Bruno who faced out Oxford doctors and scientific estabishment of his time ... Actually, he was burned alive by the religious establishment of his time. And most of the charges that led to his burning stemmed from purely religious heresies, nothing that would have anything to do what we would call science today. Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
ircarrascal
I am a scientist and I work with things* that have 'lived' billions of years and 'evolve' very slowly so the misconceptions about *quick* evolution I have are there because I'm human, and human time-scales are very very short. Boy I need to go read a good book about evolution, any suggestions? I am in the middle of reading an excellent book by Richard Dawkins called "The Ancestor's Tale {A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life} and it is fascinating. He documents the evidence showing the individual stories of our evolutionary ancestry down through the ages into deep time. Along the way he dispenses insight that is not normally revealed in lesser discussions of evolution and so I highly recommend your purchasing a volume for yourself. Let me know what you think of it. " Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!!What a ride!" ----------------------------------------- What delightful hosts they are-Love and Laughter! Lingeringly I turn away at this late hour,yet glad They have not withheld from me their high hospitality. So at the door I pause to press their hands once more And say,"So fine a time!Thank you both...and goodbye.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3321 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Zhimbo writes:
While I do agree that it's a work of genius, I wouldn't recommend this book to beginners. To tell you the truth, while reading that book, I had the feeling I was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein all over again. I'd recommend reading things like high school bio text books first before moving on to Darwin's book. I'll second that, actually - everyone SHOULD read the Origin of Species. We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Oh men, I ask a couple of simple questions and some people treat me like a total fool. I thought I'd get a better welcome here. Well ... we're not all mean all of the time. On the other hand ... suppose a biologist came on to a forum about astronomy and asked you guys to explain how the sun stays up in the sky when gravity pulls it down. I bet some of you would have pulled his leg.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
I'd recommend reading things like high school bio text books first before moving on to Darwin's book. A basic problem with high school biology textbooks is that most of them are written by professional textbook writers, not by biologists. Their works have a reputation for containing inaccuracies and misinformation. In addition, creationists have long exerted grassroots pressure on textbook publishers to minimize or remove their coverage of evolution. I've long wanted to do a writeup on the events in California as reported in the NCSE's Creation/Evolution Newsletter of the mid-1980's. During that time, California was selecting new biology textbooks. William J. Bennetta organized a panel of scientists to review the textbook offerings. That panel found none of the candidates to be acceptable, all containing numerous inaccuracies, misconceptions, and outright false information. For the least horrible candidate (or the top few; I don't quite remember that detail), they submitted a long list of the errors they had found and how those errors could be corrected. One of the publishers made a few of the corrections and resubmitted their book. Without informing the scientists, the board met and approved the new version, despite their knowledge that it was still filled with erroneous teachings about science. So one must be careful when one turns to high school textbooks. One source of information on the quality of textbooks is William J. Bennetta's website for "The Textbook League" at Text Book League -- I'm not certain how recent it is. It contains several reviews. As I recall, BSCS textbooks are considered higher quality (indeed, that they were written by scientists who aren't afraid to present evolution is what caused Epperson vs Arkansas, 1968, which resulted in the 1920's "monkey laws" being struck down, which resulted in "creation science" and its claims of being based solely on scientific evidence). Glencoe textbooks of all stripes do not fare well. As a slight aside, in viewing Hovind's seminar tapes that he used to post on his drdino.com (no longer there, last I checked), I saw him use a Glencoe textbook in a "bait and switch" (something he kept accusing "evolutionists" of doing). From my notes on Tape IV:
quote:His claim basically was that modern textbooks were still using Haeckel's doctored drawings, yet the only such example was from a Glencoe text; he never did show what the other books had to say about Haeckel nor whether they also display the drawings. Wouldn't undergraduate college textbooks be better?
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Taz Member (Idle past 3321 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
dwise1 writes:
Yes, I suppose. Anything is better than asking a newbie to go straight to Darwin's book. Wouldn't undergraduate college textbooks be better?
The only reason creationism seems to be winning out among the ignorant crowd is because of its easiness to digest. You guys are hardly doing us a favor by asking people who never got anything beyond a high school degree to read Darwin's book. Beside scientific approach (which is pretty hard for people without the proper education to understand), the book was written in 19th century language... like I said before, while reading that book, I had the feeling I was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It's certainly not something I'd recommend to people who haven't been through at least some form of higher education. We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Agreed that Darwin up straight should not be the first choice. Kind of like reading the Bible straight through from the beginning -- turned me into an atheist before I even got half-way through Genesis.
The more modern popularizers should be the first choice. I'm not up on the recent contributions, but a couple good ones: Darwin for Beginners by Jonathan Miller and Borin van Loon. Comic-book format, but it presents an overall history of the development of the ideas. It's available on amazon.com Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution by Maitland A.; Johanson, Donald C. Edey . Apparently no longer in print, but can be bought through amazon.com. Another historical perspective, only this one goes through the development of the ideas behind evolution, including how genetics and mutation were at first thought to contradict Darwin (mainly his ideas of inheritance, which were wrong) but then it was found that genetics supplied the missing piece to Darwin's puzzle. It also went through how scientists arrived at their conclusions, something that's largely missing in science education.
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