What i can't understand about evolution....

I'm sure you wouldn't give serious consideration to the thought that your father could not be your ancestor because he was also your contemporary. Same thing. Just because you said so doesn't make it true. Sure you must be joking. You cannot possibly expect anybody to mistake such an obviously fallacious argument for serious debate, can you?Have you ever heard of adding a space after periods to help separate sentences? What about capitalization?Edited by fallacycop, : typo

It is sad, but not surprising, to see that your childish behaviour has not improved That only shows how wide your lack of understanding really is.BTW, could you please stop using "must of" and use the proper "must've" instead? it is really distracting.

Now you're just making a foul of yoursef.

Two tangencial points1. That message was a reply to yourself. That makes it hard to figure who the message was actually intended to.2. You are still using the expression "could of been" instead of the proper "could have been". That's very distracting for the readers.ABE: one more tangencial point.could you please use the space bar after periods? It's hard to read your posts when you don't do that.Edited by fallacycop, : No reason given.

Peg, I know that these comments already attracted a lot of responses and you might be feeling overwhelmed by them. Still, I decided to add my own comment. I hope you take the time to read it.We scientist like to break down our theories into small parts that can be tested and improved separately. We may have different levels of confidence in each part, depending on the amount of evidence pro and against each one of them. You've been lumping three different things that we like to keep separate. The main reason to keep them separate is because we have different levels of confidence in them.1.) The theory of evolution (ToE):
That's the idea that life forms evolve over time into other different life forms through the process of speciation fueled by mutations and guided by natural selection.Our level of confidence in this theory is extremely high because the evidence for it is strong enough to be considered incontrovertible.2.) Common decent:
That's the idea that all life on earth evolved from a single common ancestorOur level of confidence in this theory is high (but not as high as our confidence level in the ToE) because the evidence for it is strong (but not strong enough to be considered incontrovertible)3.) Abiogenesis:
That's the idea that life came from non-life at some point early in the history of earthOur level of confidence in this theory is definitely lower then in the other two because the evidence for it is quite spotty. (I happen to believe in it, but I know some scientists that don't). One symptom of that is the large number of alternate processes for abiogenesis that have been proposed so far.I hope you read this post and try to take that into consideration in your future posts, otherwise we will never be able to mode the debate forward. (We've been stuck for a couple days now)Edited by fallacycop, : typo

I met one guy that tells me he believes in panspermia (Aparently our universe is being seeded through whiteholes). More seriously though, I know quite a few that hold that God must have given the initial push.

How could you tell a neutral mutation carried by the human genome. It seems to me you would have to compare it with something else. may be by comparing it with some other species and look for differences?It's not clear to me what is it you are looking for here...Edited by fallacycop, : typo

Pery sujested keeping this thread open for 100 more posts. I would like to second that. I think we actually have had some progress here, albeit slow progress.

The answer depends on what you mean by ape and ape-man. If by ape you mean modern living apes (arbitrarily excluding humans), and by ape-man you mean Australopithecus, then the ape-man came first! But if by ape you mean the common ancestor of all living apes, then apes came first. the problem here is that "ape" is not an officially adopted terminology. You must define your terms so we can make sure we are talking about the same thing. Again, you have to define your terms. what criteria do you use to decide which forms are more advanced?

That's the source of your problem. You think that the ape where man evolved from is identical to modern apes. they were different species of apes which are long gone. As I said, the earlier apes are gone. Gorillas, Chimps and the other modern apes (including us) have all been evolving. I think that despite the fact that you've been consistently confusing earlier apes with modern apes (as if they were one and the same), there is indeed some validity to your question that must be addressed. You are asking why did some of the early apes evolved into human beings while some of the other early apes evolved into modern apes (which to your point of view is a much noticeable change). I love using analogies to explain things like that because I believe that helps people think about them more clearly. Ask yourself why did some of the early civilizations like the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Incas, etc evolved highly elaborate societies, while other early civilizations, like the pygmy, Eskimo, bushman, etc didn't. The short answer is "different historic contingencies". The world is complex and variety is the rule. different populations are subject to different evolutionary pressures and will grow apart over time. Besides, we should never forget that even when two different populations are subject to similar evolutionary pressures, they will still grow apart due to the intrinsic randomness of evolution. Evolution is a historic process and as such is unpredictable and unrepeatable. Bringing it back to the point of your original question, early apes are believed to have been forest dwellers. Due to climate change, savannas advanced. some of these early apes found themselves forced to adapt to the new environments or die. The rain forest didn't disappear entirely though, and some of the early apes survived there and lead to modern apes such chimps and gorillas which still live in those environments to this day.I hope that helped.

May be you meant perpetrated?

Did Pasteur's experiments prove that abiogenesis did not occur around hidrothemal vents though some slow process? How so? By slow I mean a process that could have taken 10 million years or more. Would it be reasonable to expect scientists to be able to reproduce in a lab some process that may have taken millions of years?

Evolution like other historical events is not completely random and yet cannot be predicted os repeated. Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo was not a random event. I was a direct consequence of the actions taken by people at the time. Still, it was not possible to predict the outcome of the battle beforehand. Also, it cannot be reproduced in a lab. That does not prove the battle didn't happen.

Why don't you open a new thread about abiogenesis where we could properly address your concerns without going off topic?Here I'm just going to point out that gaps in the scientific knowlege make for a very poor base for a theology. Religions have burned their thingers before that way.

There you go again with that word 'kind'. Without a clear definition of that word it's really hard to know what is it you are looking for. That's not good enough Peg. Do you really think it reasonable to expect us to be able to see or replicate a process that may take millions of years to happen? Do you only believe things that you can observe directly? Really? I'm not entirely clear about what you mean here