Key points of Evolution

If you mean evolution from single-celled to multi-celled, we can see that happening in the lab.Of course, we don't know if the particular mechanism discovered was how it started in nature, hence the use of the word "possible" in the title: Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity

The website wants $32 for me to download the file. I don't think I need it that bad.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Yeah, that's the basic idea. Consider what would happen if seventy-four novel traits appeared in a single offspring? Considering all the possibile permutations of these trats, what are the chances that they would all happen to work well together? Would behavioral traits also line up nicely with anatomical traits? And how would its mother know how to care for it? But, if just one change occurs in each generation (say, an extra toe, or a bigger webbing between the fingers), the organism and/or its parents could adapt to the new trait fairly easily.It's like the old analogy of putting the frog in boiling water versus putting it in cool water and gradually raising the temperature. I can respect this. However, I hope you will be willing to change your religious viewpoints to fit the truth, instead of the other way around.In the meantime, keep asking honest questions: that's how learning happens for everybody.

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.

Single-cell to complex is predicted by science, not approaching impossible. If you can see that single-cell to multi-cell is possible, where does it follow that complex is impossible? Multi-cell is already more complex than single cell. Complexity is just a matter of degree, once you get the multi-celled organism, mutation, reproduction, and natural selection would begin driving more and more complexity.

I am not sure that you have been following this conversation. The close to impossible was science's view of a complex muti-cellular organism such as a bird being formed randomly from single-cell organisms.The process of single-cell to multi-cellular to dinosaur to bird was viewed as possible in the eyes of science.As for my eyes, I am a little more skeptical. I need to study the number of positive mutations that would be necessary to be introduced into a population over a given period of time to achieve this transition from reptile to bird. It is going to take a lot more than natural selection to accomplish this change.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

You're right, I may be misunderstanding some of what you're saying. If that's the case, I apologize.

Keep in mind while you do that the period of time here is in the tens to hundreds of millions of years. And also keep in mind that hens still have the genes to grow teeth - they're just silenced during modern bird development.

Well, just read the abstract, then. Unless you want to be able to reproduce the experiment yourself, you can probably dispense with the rest of the paper. The point is that people have seen it happen.One interesting thing to note about that paper is that we would probably have imagined that the next step from a one-celled organism would be a two-celled organism. But no, the mutation that brought about multicellularity did so by causing incomplete cell division, so that it went from single-cell to globs of hundreds of cells, before further mutations brought the size down to the stable eight-celled structure.--- If I've understood the scenario you're proposing involving lateral gene transfer, that does seem impossible for about the same reason that you can't go to your local pizza parlor, order just the right combination of toppings, and wind up with chocolate cake; or shuffle two hands of ordinary playing cards together and get the Tarot pack.For example, single-celled organisms have no Hox genes, which are important genes controlling the development of the body plan of a bird (or other "higher" life-forms) from fertilized egg to adult. A mere pick-and-mix from the genes of things that don't have Hox genes isn't going to give you something that does have Hox genes.

It is getting close to the 300 post limit, and there are still some unresolved questions for Wumpini and others about evolution. I would like to take this time to summarize what I feel are the key points of evolution:

1. Evolution is simple. There are a few basic principles that are sufficient for a basic understanding of real evolution (not creationist mythology).
   

   Evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.

   
   This can easily be observed in the world around us. No two individual organisms are identical, every breeding population is composed of individuals with different mixtures of variations in traits. Some of those individuals will be more successful at surviving and breeding than other individuals. This results in their being able to pass on genes to more of the next generation than others, thus changing the mixture of traits from one generation to the next. Their relative success or failure to survive and breed are related to the phenotype of each individual organism and to the ecology in which they are living. Different phenotypes will have different relative success or failure in different ecologies.
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2. Diversity is inevitable. Every subpopulation of every species inhabits a different ecology, although differences may seem relatively minor. Traits that are advantageous in one ecology can be disadvantageous or neutral in others, thus the relative success or failure of different phenotypes will be different results in different ecologies. Without sharing of the genepools between subpopulations inhabiting different ecologies, the subpopulations will inevitably diverge based on the different relative success or failure of different phenotypes to survive and reproduce in the different ecologies. Because the earth ecology is constantly changing, the relative success or failure of different phenotypes to survive and breed will be changing from generation to generation. Because catastrophic change to ecologies do occur, isolation of subpopulations will occur that will prevent sharing of the genepools between the subpopulations.
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3. Time only increases the effect. Once subpopulations have become non-mixing daughter species from their respective common ancestor parent population there is no mechanism to remix, reintegrate, rejoin two species into one. It is inevitable that they will become increasingly diversified from each other and that they too will have subpopulations living in different ecologies that will accumulate different traits with different success and failure in survival and breeding for the various phenotypes in each subpopulation. It is inevitable that isolation will occur, it is inevitable that as time passes the process will repeat time after time.
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4. The Theory of Evolution can be briefly stated as the theory that these simple, ongoing, inevitable, processes are sufficient to have caused all the diversity of life we know, from the world around us, from history, from the natural history of geology and paleontology, and from the genetic record embedded in the DNA of all living (and many dead) organisms.

The evolution has been observed, both in the changes in traits from generation to generation, and in the separation of subpopulations where gene mixing ceases, and in the different results in different ecologies. In this regard we have factual evidence that all these processes of evolution have occurred and will continue to occur. We also see exactly the same trends in the fossil record. We also see exactly the same trends in relationships between different populations of organisms in the fossil record and in the genetic record, thus confirming the relationships of organisms to common ancestor populations.

We can say that evolution is a fact of life, and that as a result, diversity is inevitable.

The only remaining real question, then, that creationists can have is not whether evolution occurs, but how far back can we go to determine how many common ancestor populations were involved at the start of the process.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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This thread will close soon, and a lot of comments have passed since you replied to my post, so I will suggest continuing on another threadhttp://EvC Forum: Dogs will be Dogs will be ??? -->EvC Forum: Dogs will be Dogs will be ??? This is called "punctuated equilibrium" and there is some debate over how different the different rates can or need to be. There are no wild wolves that are like dogs. There are no wild foxes like the "domesticated" ones. These subpopulation have become genetically as well as behaviorally different from their ancestor populations. This demonstrates that a fair degree of diversity and variation is available for evolution over fairly short periods of time, while still only involving the change in hereditary traits in populations from one generation to the next.This is the heart of the argument in the Dogs will be dogs thread.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Then ToE must have been twisted and distorted to fit into a 6000 year old universe. No need. Both these faiths have ample space for plate tectonics and expanding universe. No need for Hindu friendly version of ToE-- ToE is in Hindu thought. Pal, since you do not know about Hindus and Hinduism, you should not impute ideas to them. They would not be upset. So no need to speak for them.

Many (perhaps most) Christians do not take their scriptures very literally. They cherry-pick, so the age of the universe can be anything. There are plenty of them who accept all general scientific views, only making exceptions for some miracles in relation to Christ, particularly the resurrection. No need so far as plate tectonics and an ancient, expanding universe are concerned, certainly. With biological evolution, there are some interpretations of Hinduism that object to aspects of it, though.What can certainly be said is that the eastern religions and philosophies in general should not produce the polarization on evolution that occurs in cultures based on the Abrahamic religions, because there is not the same direct contradiction of any core creation mythologies.However, search around the internet, and you'll easily find Hindus attacking "Darwinism", and even telling lies about Darwin, in true religious character.For example:Hinduism Today - Authentic resources for a billion-strong religion in renaissanceEdited by bluegenes, : wrong word correction

No need so far as plate tectonics and an ancient, expanding universe are concerned, certainly. With biological evolution, there are some interpretations of Hinduism that object to aspects of it, though. Of course. Eastern religions do not balk at any sceintific ideas. But ToE is not Darwinism "only", it is much more.No scentific knowledge militates against Hindu Dharma. Sceinces are treates as secular fields and theologies do not seek to direct or control them. This is the reason why a Hindu sceintist can be deeply theistic and religious too. They can be easily discounted.E vs C debate is not there among Hindus.

New guy, first post."The evolution has been observed, both in the changes in traits from generation to generation, and in the separation of subpopulations where gene mixing ceases, and in the different results in different ecologies. In this regard we have factual evidence that all these processes of evolution have occurred and will continue to occur. We also see exactly the same trends in the fossil record. We also see exactly the same trends in relationships between different populations of organisms in the fossil record and in the genetic record, thus confirming the relationships of organisms to common ancestor populations.We can say that evolution is a fact of life, and that as a result, diversity is inevitable." This is a quotation from a previous post. I don't know how to get it into a box. Can someone help me out with this?There are a couple of problems with your summation of evolution. One is that you are confusing evolution with natural selection. Natural selection, the selecting out or selecting for certain traits is observable. This is like a dog breeding program. It is not evolution. Evolution is an increase in complexity and organization through incremental change leading from one species to another. The evidence for this is substantially weaker.
The second is your reference to factual evidence. There are no facts in science. We form a hypothesis based on empirical evidence with the understanding that it may need to be changed if additional evidence comes forward. The closest thing to a fact in science is a reasonable probability. Claiming evolution as a fact is misleading and harmful to the reputation of science.

Hi, Alaninnont. Welcome to EvC! I very strongly disagree with you in two ways:The quote to which you are responding very clearly mentions both mutation (in pink) and natural selection (in green), here: ...so you are incorrect in your assessment of his summation of evolution.Secondly, evolution need not reach the level of species in order to be considered evolution.-----For new posters:You can quote using the following system:Type "[qs=name]paste quote text here[/qs]" to make this: Or, type "[quote]paste quote text here[/quote]" to make this:

quote:

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When you're writing a message, on the left hand side of the screen, there is a "help" link to a list of dBCodes. That will tell you all the formatting codes used to make text colors, lists, bold and italics, etc. (You can also click the "Peek" button at the bottom of a post to see what codes they used).Also, there is a "reply" button at the bottom right corner of each post, and it's best to use that. It links the messages to their replies so readers can keep track of the conversation better.Last note: the moderators try to limit threads to roughly 300 posts. Because this is the 300th post on this thread, it's likely that this one will be closed soon. It's probably better to find another place where the definition of evolution is being discussed, or start a new thread, than to continue the discussion here.Have fun here at EvC!

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.