Question Evolution!

Natural selection is not taught as 'evolution' as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life. It is taught as a very important part of evolution which combined with other factors explains the diversity of life. I'll answer this question in as broad a stroke as the question itself is asked. Mutation. They are designed. By a process that is not intelligent. And that's what they look like. To almost all biologists. There are no fossils at all expected under evolutionary theory. They just happen to exist, quite happily giving testimony to the natural history of life.I'm not sure you are really interested in the answers, but they are out there if you take the time. These questions are set up to look like there is some serious doubt over evolution, when this is not in reality the case.The answer 'evolution did it' is equally as good as 'god did it'. Only there is some evidence that evolution actually exists. And usually the answers are much more detailed than 'evolution did it'. Creationism never gives details for how malaria came to exist in the world, other than by some divine will. This doesn't explain how, it doesn't explain how divine will works, what the mechanisms for actualising that will, or propose any evidence that there is such a thing as divine will.If you actually want in depth answers to any of the 15 questions, you are free to start a thread (1 for each question, if you please) and we can really get to grips with them. One thing that creationists are often criticised for is the 'Gish Gallop' which is throwing lots of things out there hoping something will stick. This question list looks like a Gish Gallop to me. My prediction is that therefore you will shy away from in depth discussion about any of the questions listed, and hope to score rhetorical points by just waving the list around.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Depends on the kinds of designs and the kinds of designers that we know exist. Obviously life wasn't designed by a human designer. The only other designer we know that existed at the time was heritable variation and selection. Agreed.We can see in evolutionary derived designs that they are extremely complex, almost impossible to truly understand, filled with subtlety, strange inefficiencies, solutions that no human would ever have dreamed of, pointless redundancies, and a whole heap of irreducible complexities. It seems reasonable superficially. But not in light of knowing about evolution. First of all, an all-wise mind is an unaccounted for entity (where did it come from, how does it exist?), for which there is no evidence. I could just as easily postulate a slightly wise mind.But the kinds of solutions that biology has shown us, are exactly what we would expect from a mindless process with no forward planning. I don't remember doing that. Was it the malaria thing? The malaria comment was just an example of something I have seen creationists raise as a problem for evolution. But there exists no counter explanation. There is no explanation for how flagella came to exist, or where tails come from, or why the Lancet Liver Fluke has such a convoluted lifestlye (from snail slime, to ant brains, to sheeps gut, to sheep poo, to poo-eating snails) . It's just divine will. No mechanism. That's what I was saying. That bafflement is on your side alone. I understand how people can believe it was the work of divine will. I just don't think they've read and understood as much about evolution as I have. They have protected themselves against critical thinking about evolution because it threatens their faith, which is one of the most important things things to them in the world.And I don't think 'clear-cut' is exactly right. I had to do a lot of training, and get embarrassed by my many errors before I could think remotely scientifically. It was a painful experience that took a lot of humility and a lot of crossing out.Indeed, when I came to this debate it was because someone made a claim about thermodynamics which 'seemed off' but if true, would change my entire perspective on evolution. So I investigated and found that it was bunk. Indeed, as I learned more about evolutionary biology and the creationist's arguments against it, it served merely to strengthen my opinion of evolution. It was more subtle, interesting and complex than I had believed. I was miss-sold biology at high school, where we mostly did anatomy and the like.If it had been more about evolution, and especially genetics, I'd have probably loved it. The evolution that we covered was embarrassingly sparse. The only question on my exam about evolution was actually about adaptation: I was asked which of the following birds is adapted to a soaring lifestyle, with picture of something like an albatross and a sparrow. You don't need to understand evolution to get that right! Hopefully, my disagreement and expansion won't have been perceived as a battering.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

We'd be keen on hearing your feedback if you'd be so kind. What is difficult about it? How can we improve it? I would have thought that EvCForum, a forum designed specifically to debate Evolution and Creationism would be a more suitable venue to debate than a blog. Then you came to the wrong place. We are long bored of people, especially creationists, plopping down a link to something as if it conclusively proves their point and then leaving. This is a debate board, where we debate. So debate or leave. With all due respect, and all. That's just saying the same thing twice, it doesn't make it circular. Natural selection is the process by which alleles which lend themselves to replication better than other competing alleles increase in frequency in a population. This process 'naturally' selects for 'fit' alleles. By extension (when we realize the relationship between genome and phenome) this generally results in selecting for phenotypes that are more fit to survive and reproduce (there are exceptions to this, but they can be understood in terms of the theory). You are right that it is almost trivially obvious, but some people really have a problem with the obvious, when it is pointed out to them and it disagrees with dearly held beliefs about the world.You'd be right in saying that survival of the survivors is essentially a tautologous position, but hopefully you will one day learn that natural selection is a little more interesting than that - but it is as inevitable as any tautology. We have observed that alleles have changed in frequency based on their relative capacities for replication. Therefore we have observed natural selection in play. You can deny these observations if you want, and try and convince yourself that there is something terribly illogical about better replicators replicating more frequently that less good replicators or good reproducers out reproducing poor ones - but you'd be wrong.Anyway, when lots of people reply to a single post it is sometimes called 'dogpiling' around here. It isn't always a pleasant experience, so my apologies for that. On the other hand, your arrogant attitude kind of opens you up to that kind of response. If you stick around, perhaps you will learn humility as well as something about biology.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

There are a number of problems with the questions.1. Some of the answers are either 'we don't know' or 'we don't know exactly'. This is taken by creationists as an admission of defeat for evolution when it is nothing of the sort.2. Some of the questions are poorly worded or rely on understandings that a clearly faulty. Therefore they cannot be answered directly, and instead the answer has to be a correction of the misapprehension that lies behind them. This is like saying 'If the book of Romans was written by Romans, why did St Paul hate the Church of Corinth?'. It is a gramattically correct question, but it is still nonsense. And when someone responds to such a question with 'But Romans wasn't written by Romans', this is taken as avoiding the question. Much like creationists have taken some of the responses to some of these questions.3. Other answers have taken books, or weeks of tutoring for students who already have an impressive background in the subject at hand. These cannot be answered quickly, easily and in a way that can even be understood by the majority of humans (let alone creationists who have their own baggage) without extensive training. This inability to succinctly answer, in an understandable fashion, is seen as a victory for the anti-evolutionists.4. Creationists cannot use their models to provide better answers.Poor form indeed.