Evolution is random! Stop saying it isn't!

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact..."
-Stephen Jay GouldI have to disagree with Gould, here. I am NOT interested in debating for its own sake. I AM interested in getting at the truth.

You're asking because you don't understand evolution. It's a tree, not a chain.Ducks aren't the descendants of crocodiles. They're the descendants of something that is also the ancestor of crocodiles.A crocoduck would disprove, not prove, evolution. Since evolution is largely true, we don't see any crocoducks.If you want to see deformed individuals, there's a bazillion of those. Two-headed frogs and albino tigers. Evolution, though, doesn't proceed from a basis of deformity. It proceeds via small mutations - like the hundred or so mutations you yourself possess.

The only people who think that there should be transitional species between every existent species are those who really don't understand the tenants of evolution. Epo5, I don't ridicule you, I point to the straw man creationist so often construct to knock down with grand applause with self deluded belief that it proves a point. I am not accusing you, in this case, of intentionally misrepresenting evolution, I think you simply are one of the people who has already been mislead by someone else to believe that this really is the case. And thank you for addressing the quote in my sig block...Edited by EighteenDelta, : No reason given.

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"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.""But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. Q.E.D.""Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.--------------"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould----------------“ I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ”
”Stephen F. Roberts

As I predicted this is going way off topic on whether evolution is random or not. The answer is that changes from generation to generation in any species breeding population are smaller than the kind of wholesale change that the terms "crocaduck" and "hopeful monster" imply.Instead what you have are transitions from one species to another over many generations and those species are closely related in form, behavior and appearance.When you look at the fossil record you see a nested hierarchy of lines, some leading to dead ends (extinct) and some leading to modern life. At every stage along those branches the fossils found are intermediate in form from the ones before and the ones after.You can see this kind of change over time in the evolution of the horse:http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htmEvolution is the change in hereditary traits - like the length of leg bones and the shape of the skull - in species over time. It's that simple.If you want to pursue this further though it IS off topic and a new thread should be started.Go to Proposed New Topics to post new topics.Or you could go to another existing thread with this kind of discussion, such as Evolution and complexity or When does microevolution turn into macroevolution?. Both of these debates will give you some additional information (some good some bad, so ask if you have questions), and both are stalled for now, and the issue of "crockaduck" complexity or macroevolution would be on topic.Then we can get back to random evolution.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clarity

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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"It's just the usual Loki's Wager maneuvering. Science will never be able to provide enough transitional species to satisfy those who don't want to be satisfied and there will never be enough examples of 'failed experiments' given to satisfy those who don't want to be convinced."You're making this sound like a religion (and indeed I believe evolution is nothing but a religion without a god). I do not "want" or "not want" to believe in evolution. I want to see the evidence to tell me whether or not evolution makes any sense. So far the "evidence" tells me it's more bunk than science.

You're playing with different scenarios of the same concept, which does not add to or detract from any of this. It really doesn't matter if the changes were small, incremental changes or quick, sudden changes. At the end of the day, there should have been some very strange creature all over this planet. And it doesn't matter who said this or how many times it was said -- these strange creatures should have exited and they don't. Unless you can find them, all the talk-arounds have little meaning."...those species are closely related in form, behavior and appearance..." I'm not aware of profuse quantities of transitional species or missing links you're talking about. The last time I check, they were scarce.And if they don't exist in large quantities, I guess we must be talking about magic. Or maybe some god of evolution, who, without an extensive trial and error of many strange species that did not work out it, somehow knew what the next species was supposed to have in order to survive. Are your kidding me? We have religion for this kind of hocus pocus.As far as your little map is concerned, most of this "well understood" progression of life forms is now being uncovered as just a lot of misunderstood malarkey.Here's the tip of the iceberg:The New York Times - 8/9/2007FOSSILS IN KENYA CHALLENGE LINEAR EVOLUTION
-------------------------------------------Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens ” a 1.44-million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55-million-year-old Homo erectus found in 2000 ” said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago, a time when fossil hunters had drawn a virtual blank.Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought.Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood.The challenge to the idea of a more linear succession of the three Homo species is being reported today in the journal Nature. The lead author is Fred Spoor, an evolutionary anatomist at University College London. Other authors include Meave G. Leakey and her daughter Louise Leakey, the Kenyan paleontologists who are co-directors of the Koobi Fora Research Project that made the discovery. The field work was supported by the National Geographic Society.You can read the rest at: Fossils in Kenya Challenge Linear Evolution - The New York Times

I will not be responding anymore on this topic on this thread. I'll start a new, more appropriate one when I get a chance. Thank oyu.

At the risk of going off topic, there are two different types of extinction, those where descendant species are left and those where no descendants are left. Eohippus is extinct but is the ancestor of modern horses. Dinosaurs left no descendants. But which was more successful? Are those species that currently occupy the outermost growing shoots of the tree of life the most successfull simply because they are alive now? There are undoubtedly evolutionary experiments going on right now that are doomed to failure (I'm 46 and single, so I'm probably one!). And it doesn't look too good for the unique species that have evolved on the Galopagos. Are they successful just because they're alive now? From a naturalistic perspective it is possible that humanity will be a failed experiment. Which species was more successfull, humans surviving a few million years, or trilobites dominating the Paleozoic, or dinosaurs dominating the Mesozoic? Looking at the tree of life now there is no way to know what it will look like in the future. But we can look back in amazement at large branches that are no longer growing. It's hard for me to think of dinosaurs as unsuccessful just because a ET impact terminated their branch. They represent one of the most explosive radiations and branching the tree of life has ever seen.

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Brent

Heh. See Two New Hominid Finds (re: Time overlap of H. habilis and H. erectus). You see the curious thing is that those skulls do not challenge branching evolution, which is what we have. The fact that the media is ignorant of a lot about evolution and can't get the facts straight from the scientist interviewed is another topic.I'll see you on your new thread. Oh please please please make this the topic of your new thread ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : .

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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I presented powerful (and as yet unrefuted) evidence in this thread:More Evidence of Evolution - Geomyidae and GeomydoecusThe evidence I present is irrefutable confirmation of the accuracy of molecular phylogenetics, the scientific field that discerns evolutionary relationships via genetics. Evidence from molecular phylogenetics proves that all organisms are descended from a single original ancestor.I'd be delighted if you'd share your thoughts on the topic.

The problem is that it is easy to equivocate the definitions. Creationists can fairly easily convince people that evolution is random, by using the definition of random where there is no purpose to anything, and then claim that random processes can't produce order, by using the definition of random where all outcomes are equally probable.I'm going to write an essay on this for the EvoWiki, and that's why I've got you all to respond to my initial pseudo-creationist rant.

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Yes that's true. I think YECs want evolution to be random so they can make ridicoulous straw men like monkeys with typewriters producing the works of Shakespear, or the random chaos of the big bang evolving by random chance into what we see today. They mistakenly equivocate random with purposeless, and ignore non-random processes. They are related but not synonymous. I'd rather not characterize evolution as either random or non-random. It involves both types of processes.

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Brent

Just playing devil's advocate again. I know the answer, just asking...How can the effects of mutations be random (using the definition where the probability of each event occurring is equal), if mutations are much, much more likely to be detrimental than they are to be beneficial? That doesn't sound like equal probabilities to me.

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I'm not sure what the benefit of repeatedly using a clearly inapplicable definition is, shouldn't there be a difference between playing Devil's advocate and playing dumb?The relevant definition is clearly along the lines of ... There is a perfectly good term for when all probabilities are equal and it is equiprobable. If I wanted to say that the distribution and effect of mutations were equiprobable then that is what I would have said, and had I said that I would clearly be lying or delusional since the most basic familiarity with molecular genetics would give the lie to both parts of the statement.TTFN,WK

Hmm, then that brings up the problem of evolution being random again. Under a weak selection pressure, survival with respect to fitness is described by a probability distribution. It is more likely for a 'fit' organism to reproduce than a comparatively 'unfit' one, and therefore can be deemed random (yet biased).

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