Why is evolution so controversial?

And I like to use white backgrounds to gifs with transparent backgrounds to make them more readable, especially when you have dark colors against the dark blue background: The black dot point is unstable because the population tends to move away from that point towards either growth or death (extinction). The orange dot is stable because the population tends to return to that level because it is the carrying capacity for that ecology, and small oscillations can occur -- as has been observed in many cases.The tendency for a population to move along this theoretical curve is dictated by the difference between births and deaths -- as has been discussed already on this thread regarding your argument (see Message 627 for example):

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Of course, that doesn't mean that you would be able to understand what the Wikipedia article says, considering your demonstrated inability to understand your own sources: Biological exponential growth. It gives the formula as a derivative:

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If, in a hypothetical population of size N, the birth rates (per capita) are represented as b and death rates (per capita) as d, then the increase or decrease in N during a time period t will be:

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dN/dt=(b−d)N

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(b-d) is called the 'intrinsic rate of natural increase' and is a very important parameter chosen for assessing the impacts of any biotic or abiotic factor on population growth.

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Despite different variable names, that is the same equation that Olnick develops. When you integrate it and clean it up a bit, then it becomes the familiar:

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p(t) Ne^(b-d)t

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where p(t) is the function of population size with respect to time,
and your r = (b-d)

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A little inspection will show you that your r = (b-d) is the r_o above.In addition, it should be mundanely obvious that after a stocastic event that does not permanently alter the habitat for a surviving population that r_o will be greater than zero because selection pressure deaths will be less -- the habitat is capable of supporting a much larger population.If you want to argue your point you need to provide evidence that r_o = 0 and must remain at 0 for the time after the bottleneck\founding event.You haven't. All you did was solve the 0 point for r_o -- which is mundanely true, but doesn't constrain future growth, the ecology does that (not math). The next generation will have its own r value.You have not shown any cause for the r to stay at 0 for the black dot location. That "instability" is the tendency for population size to change, which in terms of population growth and adaptation is that a population that is adapted to the habitat will tend to increase until it reaches the carrying capacity, while a population that is not adapted to the habitat will tend to decrease until it is extinct -- ie the extremes on this graph: Where there are an infinite number of possibilities depending on the adaptation to the habitat (fitness within the ecological network). Only if the adaptation to the habitat (fitness within the ecological network) is unknown and uncertain. From the graph above we see an infinite number of possibilities between rapid growth and rapid death, balanced in a wide plane around a stable zero growth population.In a bottleneck event we KNOW that the species is well adapted to the habitat if the habitat is not permanently altered, from its previous history in that habitat.We also KNOW that populations do not behave along pure mathematical model lines, that the ecology varies not just the species, and that one bad year can be followed by one good year, that the rate of population growth, the r=(b-d) can change from negative to positive and oscillate around any value. Math doesn't control\constrain\mandate reality.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : finishing post

Let's try to communicate the same point in a more intuitive manner. Zaius claims that the data for heterozygosity depend on the population holding exactly steady over a given period, that a "bumpy" population graph would not achieve the same effect. Intuitively this is obvious nonsense, and I've tried to bring that out. So, consider the three graphs of population with respect to time given below. The graph of k(t), you will note, shows the population holding steady at 10,000, and so in zaius' opinion represents the One True Graph.Each of these graphs will have associated with it a figure for the final heterozygosity of the population. Now you can see that since f(t) is always smaller than k(t), the heterozygosity associated with it will be less than that associated with k(t); and because g(t) is always larger than k(t), it must be associated with a greater heterozygosity.Now the point is that it is possible to construct a whole range of compromises, of weighted averages, between the graphs f and g. This will of course correspond to a range of heterozygosities between that associated with f and that associated with g. So we can choose one compromise between them associated with just the same heterozygosity as k.This is necessarily bumpy, since f doesn't go down where g goes up, and so the weighted average can't cancel out the bumpiness of the curves from which it's constructed. So we have at least one "bumpy" population curve which has the same effect on heterozygosity as the flat one.And there is nothing so special about f and g that we can't pull this same trick an infinite number of times using different curves to construct our compromise from.So there is, literally, an infinite number of things the population can do which will result in the same heterozygosity as though the population had stayed exactly the same over the same time period.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Curiously I have already presented it -- that you failed to understand it is not my fault. (Search thread for your post with "supper" in it).

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Yet you still draw the same wrong conclusions. Inventing impossible bottleneck scenarios because evolution science needs to establish why the human genome exhibits linkage disequilibrium; it is ad-hock and scientifically unsustainable.

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So you take a speculative extreme view as fact because it suits your beliefs

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I have backed up all my arguments with accepted science. Just because speculative extreme views are held by some does not deter a logical examination by curious laymen (myself).As for your other comments. You still do not understand, that the low population choices that evolutionists present have nothing to do with caring capacity; because they do not know it (their argument is circular). We are not Buffalos or even bacteria, we have reason and intelligence, Humans can and do modify the caring capacity of their environments. Yes human population growth is exponential and with adequate normalization can be modeled mathematically.

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So there is, literally, an infinite number of things the population can do which will result in the same heterozygosity as though the population had stayed exactly the same over the same time period.

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Possibly, but I usually consider the Occam’s razor in such matters and reject fairy tails out of hand.

No. This is why the things you yourself have cited say that you're talking crap. Explaining the phenomena in terms of established theories is exactly what scientists do. All the time. Haven't you noticed? Being an evolutionist, he does know exactly what evolutionist arguments have to do with. You, on the other hand, don't. Yeah, what actually deters you from carrying out a logical examination is that you have the same capacity for logic as an avocado. But when their tools were rocks, their ability to do so was rather limited. But it can't always have been.

Rather than being logically consistent in your application of Occam's razor you only apply it to the benefit of your argument. You can't even be consistent in two consecutive posts ... Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, cherry picking and ide fixes, are not the tools of an open-mind or an honest skeptic, and continued belief in the face of contradictory evidence is delusion.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : ...

Perhaps you could expand on this gibberish, both to clarify your point and because it promises to be extremely funny.

Oh, he's not applying Occam's razor. He's just mentioning it, as though the words "Occam's razor" were a magical incantation for making reality disappear.

And where did you demonstrate that they were wrong? Post number and quote please. I am not inventing the bottleneck event -- that is what the data shows from a number of different sources. One recent DNA study showed that it occurred at the same time as the Toba eruption, thus providing support for that theory. So, to put it in plain english, evolutionary scientists need to invent "impossible bottleneck scenarios" because there is evidence for a bottleneck event.Fascinating.Even more curious is the fact that these same scientists did not at once claim there was a bottleneck event, rather they investigated the possibility of a bottleneck event and went looking for evidence that this has in fact occurred.What we find is increasing evidence from various other sources for such an event at about the same time, evidence that is conscilient and that supports such an event. Curiously this is no different functionally from any species moving into a new habitat and being able to exploit the opportunities there, increasing the overall population.Humans also poison and trash their habitats to an unprecedented level untouched by any other species and ignore the evidence of global changes due to their actions.Why are there so many deaths from starvation every year if we are so good at modifying our ecological resources.Do the increases in droughts in the west from global climate change improve our habitat carrying capacity? Until it isn't.It varies from year to year oscillating as it is affected by the ecology around it, until it begins to be affected the carrying capacity of their current habitat when growth slows down, birth rates drop, death rates increase. Or in plain english: you can continually modify the equation so that it applies to each generation, each year, each week, each day, in order to force it to fit the observed objective empirical data that show that the formula unmodified is inadequate to model the date in even the most cursory application.Or to be plainer still: you can't use the equation to predict the population for any time period where you have not made adjustments to fit actual known data.Or to take it one step further: the same process can be used to adopt any of an infinite number of function to match the actual data, even sections of straight lines or sine curves or circles, to force a fit between any (each and every) two known data points.Or to be plainer still: until it becomes useless as a predictive model.If you modify the formula to fit situation A
and modify it again to fit situation B
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and modify it again to fit situation Y ...Then you cannot predict the results of situation ZEnjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrty

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And where did you demonstrate that they were wrong? Post number and quote please.

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Unfortunately, I can not persuade a individual that has outgrown logic."Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75."
Benjamin Franklin

Bozo could prove Evolution.A final hope for the theory of evolution could rest on Bozo. He is the ideal example of natural selection, symbiosis, mutation, gene drift and horizontal gene transfer. The fossil record shows that Tiktaalik’s flippers explain Bozo’s flipper like feet in an amazing way. Fossil evidence may be somewhat lacking for his direct ancestry but that should not be considered an obstacle for traditional evolution. Although my right wing Christian friends have cast doubts that maybe Bozo is just some want to be actor dressed up as some freak.What do they know? They also consider evolution as want to be science.
My frustration here is not with the critics of evolution but the lack there of. The branches of that hominid family tree, according to the theory, should support the phylogenic tree. But these days’ recent findings in the fossils are causing an explosion of new supposed of hominids. You evolutionists have no reason for concern; evolution will just change its view (again).

The amount of Neanderthal DNA in humans is <5%.This is consistent with some occasional interbreeding during a period of transition from one species into two distinct breeding species as interbreeding fertility decreases with succeeding generations.We see occasional fertile cross breeding between horses and donkey, and yet that doesn't mean that they are one species instead of two. Same with Zebras. Rather this is evidence of common ancestry in the final stages of reproductive isolation. The evidence is that the frequency was low and that it became lower. What is your definition?My definition involves speciation events characterized by separated breeding populations that do not interbreed, whether due to genetic infertility or behavioral patterns, where gene flow is reduced to negligible levels and habitat adaptation is moving in different directions.Now I will specify that I don't think there is a one-size fits all definition for species, just one that is practical in application: a group of organisms that do not normally interbreed with other groups of organisms. Certainly some groups can be forced to breed with others: lions and tigers, camels and llamas, horses and donkeys, etc etc etcIt is evident that interbreeding between sapiens and neander was in that realm of very low occurrence during the time period of early overlap. For interbreeding to occur there has to be genetic compatibility, opportunity, and attraction\willingness.This doesn't include anagenic speciation, also known as "phyletic speciation", as we are clearly talking about cladogenic speciation involving an evolutionary branching event of a parent species into two or more closely related sister species, and the formation of nested hierarchies. They are members of Homo genus so this is rather more indicative of making sloppy confused claims on the order ofNeanderthals are clearly not a different species than apes ...But they are a different species than Homo sapiens.Species | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

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While the exact number of early human species is debated, on this page are links to summaries of the early human species accepted by most scientists. ...

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While some of the early species categories maybe debated, the classification of neanderthals is not:Homo neanderthalensis | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

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Neanderthals (the ‘th’ pronounced as ‘t’) are our closest extinct human relative. Some defining features of their skulls include the large middle part of the face, angled cheek bones, and a huge nose for humidifying and warming cold, dry air. Their bodies were shorter and stockier than ours, another adaptation to living in cold environments. But their brains were just as large as ours and often larger - proportional to their brawnier bodies.

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Distinct physical differences, different phenotypes, that don't match Homo sapiens physical characteristics.There is an interesting discussion of DNA here. You'll need to provide me with more details than that. What I found is a list of publications onPage not found – Department of Anthropology – UW—Madisonand Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution, published while he was at U of Utah, and which doesn't appear to support your claim, but rather makes a different argument altogether.He wrote (or co-authored) many papers -- which one are you citing? Are you a student of his? Curiously I have not see any evidence from you that shows common descent does not occur, which would be remarkable given that speciation events have been observed, thus demonstrating common descent. All you have provided is your opinion.Enjoy.

Ah, so you did not demonstrate this and thus cannot provide the post number and a quotation, but devolve into ad hominem logical fallacies to lessen the cognitive dissonance between your claiming to have done something and your inability to show that you have done something.Classic.Enjoy.

There are plenty of critics within the field -- where do you think the "explosion of new supposed of hominids" comes from? Dogmatic pontificators?ALL science adapts to new information -- why would evolution be different?The question on this thread is "Why is evolution so controversial?" and you have made an interesting, convoluted and sometimes funny argument, but not one that - even if accepted - would change biological evolution teaching or alter the Theory of Evolution.Your problem is more internal inconsistency and failure to address known facts of population growth.Enjoy.

The "final hope" rests on the overwhelming, crushing evidence of the fossil record, genetics, morphology, etc. And yeah, it seems pretty damn final. This is why the opponents of evolution are reduced to posting gibberish about clowns. Apparently that's their final hope.Let us know how that works out for you. Oh, there's no lack of creationists. It's just that all their arguments turn out to be stupid. Some of them involve driveling about clowns. Can you explain what you think the word "but" is doing in there?---I notice that none of this sad silly nonsense was a reply to my post. May I take it you find my point unanswerable?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.