Why is evolution so controversial?

Not every statement is accompanied by the evidence supporting the statement. That's going to be particularly the case for well studied and well known phenomena. Where you have doubts, it is a simple matter to ask for the evidence behind an assertion. You are free to then point out out any holes you see.You'll probably then note that at evidence weighing time, the people who have actually studied the evidence and have more knowledge of what the observations are have a distinct advantage over you in a debate. But you can counter all of that because they aren't going to be allowed to invent stuff that has not been shown to occur. You can challenge them for references for anything they assert. How about some examples of what those things might be? Because citing something that is taken into account does not seem like much evidence of sloppiness.

I wouldn't expect such a thing. I think it is reasonable to assume that most of the things that make us look for human than a chimpanzee developed post divergence.That's just a guess of course, but I don't understand why we should favor a guess that chimpanzees actually lost a bunch of human features which is what would have to happen if our common ancestor looked like Ardi.

Wasn't the ancestor to all apes already adapted to trees? And aren't all apes except us and gorillas adapted to trees? It seems more likely that we left the trees after diverging.I guess I'm speculating just as you are.

Perhaps you should do some of that research. A pure birth model results in an exponential growth rate of exactly the same form as the continuous growth formula.Here is a link to reference deriving the relationship. See the derivation illustrated by formulas (1), (2), and (3) in the following paper. Error Page State something correctly, and then condescend. Have you gotten anything at all right during your recent return? Condescension when you are wrong makes you look like a total idiot.

Would that r be between the values you indicated?Would the derived value of r be useful for predicting the population after a further 100 years?How do you use a pure exponential growth expression to model a population that levels off?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No I don't seem to affirm any such thing. I simply discussed mathematics and your incorrect statements about that subject. If you want a definitive statement from me, you cannot model human population growth since the dawn of mankind using a continuous growth equation. It is certainly not the case that we've been able to do so for all of human history. And regardless of whether you accept that, if your purpose is to invalidate scientific consensus, you need to either demonstrate that we were never hunter/gatherers or take that part of human history into account in your prediction.And since we've been able to grow our own food and domesticate food animals, there are still limits on the food we can grow, which in turn places limits on what population an area can support. As technology has gotten better the amount of food we can grow or find in an area has gotten larger. You seem to be arguing away from your own position.But let's see your modifications. Or getting straight to the point, show me that those modifications are a simple modification of r by a factor of 2 or so. Your claim up till now does not seem to have taken those modifications into account. Also, there are multiple different resources to model as well as competition, war, disease, etc.Can you modify your continuous growth model to take those things into account? Is the resulting model still a continuous growth model? It we're allowed to change the parameters on the fly, we can model population using a linear relationship, or a quadratic one. The point is that you cannot simply pick a value of r for an environment. A stable population requires an r value of zero. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Probably not a function of the population size because that would not take into account external factors that do not vary with population size. For example, if the population size ever declines, then that would mean that we have two different values for growth rate for the same population. Having two different values for the same population is not a functional mapping.Let's call it a function of time or a function of multiple variables one of which may o be the population size.If the variable were population size alone, it should be possible to use a different model in which that variable is removed. Of course the model would then not resemble an exponential at all.

You are supposed to be showing us which logic is being defied. So far your logic is that constant growth is more appropriate than stagnant growth.On the other hand you claim that simple modifications to the constant growth model can model a stagnant population.Now where is the logic in your argument?

If you are prepared to do some math, I can give you an example of how this might happen. Also let's define effective growth to mean the average size of the population over a long period divided by the length of the period.Model a simple situation in which humans are primarily hunters and have some situation say a predator, disease etc which acts successfully on the population with some probability. If you are pretty good at math, you can also add some ability to use secondary food stuffs. Once you've constructed the equations, evaluate what happens as you very the effectiveness of hunters and their opposition and of the prey.This is an exercise that is easily done using a system of ordinary, first order differential equations. You'll note that some of the scenarios result in the population of humans oscillating between upper and lower values. The scenarios of course are not totally realistic, but they should give you enough reason to never have to ask this kind of silly question ever again.

The model is used in those situations where it fits.Mathematically, the exponential curve results from a fairly simple model in which birth and death rates are proportional to the population and no other variables are needed. It fits things like radioactive decay very well. But outside of problems in elementary school math books, it is not seriously used to determine population levels when we know that other factors are involved.

Not that the stuff you say is reliable, but did you not make the claim below: What should we make of your new values for r? That you're in a corner and will say anything?Once characteristic of an exponential growth curve is that they are always concave upward (form a bowl holding water rather than dumping water). Why don't the curves for known population points, such as the ones RAZD provided, show such behavior?

I provided the limitations on using exponential growth and you did not respond to them. The curves cannot be used on wild fish populations other than for brief periods. What do your curves say about the fishing in Cape Cod, for example. I have done so in another post. But so have others. Again, if you are willing to chose short enough periods for each constant r, including allowing r to be 0 or negative at times, you can model any curve. Which means your observation is meaningless. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

There are several answers to his question in this thread. Zaius did not acknowledge, let alone address a single one of them. He simply declared himself the winner.He is not an idiot. He's a fraud. I'm pretty sure that matches the opinion I formed of him the last time he was here.

A statement which makes absolutely no sense at all. Horse caca. You don't even try to make any defense for any of this nonsense.As far as diversity goes, what matters is who survives and how high the mutation rate is. You have to take into account the selection pressure on the population, which is not something I see in your proposition. At a high enough selection pressure, more variation is screened out as unfit for survival.The other problem is that 10,000 people only supports a limited amount of diversity, particularly given a set of relatively recent common ancestors which would be the case in a cycling population size. Any new diversity would have to come from mutations if there is no introduction of diversity from outside the group. Over time, the population may be distinct from their ancestors, but possibly not from their siblings and immediate predecessors.Nobody thinks you are joking. But there is no reason to take you seriously either Mr. Point still stands after being refuted.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Such an exercise would be pointless. Most of your posts here draw complaints about your failure to address a point, about issues about which you are wrong (including evidence or argument backing up the point) and questions of statements in which you merely assert when an argument is required.At this point, a primary issue that you have not addressed are the responses to your assertion that periods of zero population growth represent an unstable equilibrium.At a minimum a claim that an equilibrium is unstable would need to point to forces that would drive the system away from equilibrium, and to a lack of a restorative force. Instead you play silly games about wanting the mathematics regarding equilibrium recounted to you? Why do we owe you that when you yourself haven't kept up your end? If you don't understand what constitutes a stable/unstable equilibrium, then what is the basis of your bowling ball comparision?A second point you have not responded to is the responses to your statement that cycles of population growth and decrease cannot result in lack of diversity. At this point we just have your assertions otherwise facing arguments indicating why you are wrong.The unaddressed points regarding population growth being exponential as long as we allow the exponent to change as needed are quite numerous and easy to find. This is totally backwards. You are the one who makes stuff up and cites essentially nothing. Why don't you owe the rest of us a source when you post your silly assertions? Why is it not enough for us to show that your assertions produce predictions that are not correct?It's pretty easy to get people like RAZD to do some homework for you if you ask. But pretending to know when you don't is probably going to result in people doing the minimum necessary to show that you don't know what you are talking about. You've already gotten more of a response than you've earned.NoNukes outEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.