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Author Topic:   Problems with Mutation and the Evolution of the Sexes
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 11 of 180 (458402)
02-28-2008 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Lyston
02-28-2008 12:21 AM


Evolution tells us that not only did something evolve into a guy, but at the SAME time and SAME place, a thing of the SAME species evolved into an organism that perfectly matched as an opposite of the male, aka a female.
No.
How can that happen? Seriously. If, by some statistically absurd chance, that happened, wouldn't natural selection crush that eventually? Self replication, a process seen as a basic process found in the 'beginning', should increase chances of survival. And with its increase chance of survival, how come no animal can do that today? I consider it a genetically superior trait, something that should still be around today in things besides bacteria.
Oh, look, it's the Argument from Undesign!
Well, you've got us there. The only possible solution is that we are the product of fiat creation by an omniscient God who really really screwed up. Next time you're praying, remember to tick him off for creating us male and female, instead of blessing us with his wonderous gift of asexual reproduction.
Whereas obviously evolution would have made us whatever you happen to think is "superior", because it's perfect and infallible and can read your mind.
I think there actually might be a certain animal that can do that, actually. If you find it, check for something. God says that each animal was created with the ability to reproduce. Check to see if self replication is necessary. If it is a type of species that lives alone for its own survival.
I'm not following you here.
As you can tell, I am Pro-Creation in view, and I would appreciate it if you would post your view (for creation/evolution) before you reply.
Evolution.
P.S: the phrase you want is not "self replication" but "asexual reproduction".
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Lyston, posted 02-28-2008 12:21 AM Lyston has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 13 of 180 (458404)
02-28-2008 7:29 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Lyston
02-28-2008 7:05 PM


Have a look at the sex-lifes of ciliates such as Paramecium. Is that sexual reproduction? Are they hermaphrodites? Do they have sexes? Note that they are single-celled.
Now consider the F plasmid in E. Coli ...

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 152 by godservant, posted 04-15-2008 3:50 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 14 of 180 (458406)
02-28-2008 7:41 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Lyston
02-28-2008 7:24 PM


You also say you only want to see "actual observable evidence" well, thing like the Big Bang or Evolution are not observable.
However, the evidence for them is.
I think the one most overlooked fact is that while God uses miraculous signs to display His power, he doesn't leave the world in a state of magical operation. If you look hard enough, you will surely find that everything has a way of working, from gravity to the cognitions of the human mind.
Er, yes. That's the pro-science Christian view. You'll find a lot of people round here telling you that. And they would add that evolution is one of the things that works.

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 Message 12 by Lyston, posted 02-28-2008 7:24 PM Lyston has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by Lyston, posted 02-28-2008 8:09 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 21 of 180 (458422)
02-28-2008 8:39 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by Lyston
02-28-2008 8:30 PM


And do you have something add/change/subtract from my old teacher's lecture on traits being passed down from parents to offspring?
Well, apart from pointing out that acquired traits are not inherited, I should also like to add a little derisive laughter.
Good grief, man, that's Lamarckism. That's not the theory of evolution at all.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 23 of 180 (458424)
02-28-2008 8:45 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Lyston
02-28-2008 7:56 PM


I can see dozens of genetically superiorities with such a thing as two heads. It would double fighting chance (if its a fanged type animal) and double food intake, giving more time to whatever.
So God screwed up again?
He makes rubbish animals, doesn't he? They reproduce sexually, they don't have enough heads ... is there anything this all-knowing creator of yours got right, in your opinion?
Why don't you pray for two-headed asexually reprodcing giraffes and see if God will vouchsafe you one?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Lyston, posted 02-28-2008 7:56 PM Lyston has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Lyston, posted 02-28-2008 8:48 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 25 of 180 (458429)
02-28-2008 9:01 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by Lyston
02-28-2008 8:48 PM


You call that a screw up?
No. It is not I who am complaining that giraffes should have more heads. Though I admit that it would have comedy value.
He made us perfect in His eyes.
But not, apparently, in yours.
This is your cake.
Two choices lie before you.
Why can't we fly and breath under water? Why only two arms when four would be more useful?
If you believe in fiat creation, these are questions that you should be addressing to God. If he grants you the wonderous gift of four arms, two heads, and the ability to reproduce asexually, then I for one am prepared to admit that that would constitute a wonder and a sign.
If you want to play that game, answer your own side too.
Could I remind you again that it's not me who's making these complaints?
However, if you were to ask me why the products of evolution fall short of your standard of perfection, I should reply that the process of evolution, being imperfect, will not produce what is perfect, still less what you happen to think is perfect.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 36 of 180 (458529)
02-29-2008 3:19 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by CTD
02-29-2008 12:54 AM


Re: LOL
"Oh, it'd be so much easier for a mutation to put both male and female in one body than in separate bodies - see, problem solved! And you're ignorant and stupid for thinking it ever might be a problem, BTW." That's what you'll get, only much, much wordier ...
... and consisting of actual statements rather than the stupid gibble-gabble that you've made up in your head.
Wow! Now that's insightful. But giving a motive for guiding evolution to produce sexual reproduction doesn't explain how it supposedly evolved.
True, we should also mention the existence of random variation.
This is even more ironic/moronic when one considers the ruckus raised about evolution being guided.
What a strange non sequitur. If you know what it means, do tell us.
Greetings, Lyston. As you can see, evolutionism is still as bankrupt as ever on this topic, and no serious attempt to tackle it is likely to be forthcoming.
There has been a serious attempt to reasearch this subject, which is still ongoing, and all the creationist lies in the world won't make that go away.
Meanwhile, creationists don't have to do any research, do they. 'Cos all you guys have to do is sit on your arses reciting: "I don't know how it happened. Therefore I do know how it happened. God did it by magic".
Or can you point me to one piece of creationist research on this subject?
'Scuse me, did you use the phrase "intellectual bankruptcy"?
I notice you've already been "corrected" for not understanding that sex would evolve in a population. Funny part is: mutations happen to individuals. And they don't spread to populations if the individual can't reproduce. But we're too thick to figure that out...
Wow. A creationist finally manages to understand a point about evolution that we've only been trying to explain for the last century or so, and immediately he thinks that it's a problem for evolution rather than one of the crucial aspects of the theory.
Have as much fun as you can. It can get pretty funky when you bring up an issue that they know for dead certain kills their fantasy.
One of the more interesting aspects of creationism is the deeply stupid lies they tell about there opponents.
Obviously, in the real world, the one outside CTD's head, anyone who was "dead certain" that CTD's bibble-babble "killed" evolution would be a creationist. If he has ever thought about this for five seconds, he knows that as well as you or I.
His use of the word "fantasy" is as amusing, in this context, as his use of the words "intellectual bankruptcy", above.

This message is a reply to:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 41 of 180 (458558)
02-29-2008 7:56 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by CTD
02-29-2008 7:16 PM


Re: Why do so many Christians bear false witness?
The "it" in my sentence refers to the HOW question. Millions of words about WHY don't count. Evolution's motives are distinct, separate question.
Perhaps you should try learning the first thing about evolution. That way you wouldn't babble about "evolution's motives" and you might be able to begin to grasp what is, after all, quite a simple concept.
There has never been a plausible scenario imagined which accounts for the reproductive systems to form by numerous, successive, slight modifications. Pardon me for agreeing on this point with your prophet.
If, by "your prophet", you mean Charles Darwin, then evidently you are not agreeing with him, because the two sentences:
Darwin writes:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.
CTD writes:
There has never been a plausible scenario imagined which accounts for the reproductive systems to form by numerous, successive, slight modifications.
... are clearly logically independent.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 44 of 180 (458561)
02-29-2008 8:04 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by CTD
02-29-2008 4:57 PM


Re: LOL
Nonsense. I was merely pointing out that in a situation where it will serve to give the illusion that a creationist doesn't know what he's talking about, there are individuals who will happily "forget" even the most fundamental and obvious scientific facts.
For example, when you babble about evolution having "motives", you have forgotten "even the most fundamental and obvious scientific facts", and this does indeed create the impression that a creationist doesn't know what he's talking about.
I am not sure why you describe this effect as an "illusion".
Any time evolutionists answer a HOW question with a WHY answer, they attribute motive to their god.
What perfect gibberish. You have forgotten "even the most fundamental and obvious scientific facts". You do not know what you are talking about.

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 Message 37 by CTD, posted 02-29-2008 4:57 PM CTD has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 45 of 180 (458563)
02-29-2008 8:16 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by iano
02-29-2008 7:57 PM


The Mountain And The Molehill
Demonstrate...not possible.
That's what I call an Everest-sized "if"
I agree with your point that this is not a good way to test the theory, because it requires the challenger to prove that "you can't get there from here" by any conceivable pathway. No, scratch "conceivable".
For this reason, when I'm asked to give evidence for evolution, I mention the things which are strongly testable ... the contents of the fossil record, molecular phylogeny, comparative morphology, and so forth, rather than putting the inability of creationists to prove that sex can't have evolved anywhere in my list.
As you observe, it would be a huge mountain to climb --- if creationists tried to climb it. Instead, they rely on those two old standbys: "I don't understand it, so goddidit" and "you can't tell me how it happened in every detail, so goddidit". They can't climb mountains, but they can get to the top of molehills.
Given this, you might think that they would be better advised to attack evolution on points where it is highly testable. And they would indeed be better advised to do so, if they were right.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 46 of 180 (458566)
02-29-2008 8:29 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by CTD
02-29-2008 7:57 PM


Re: Not so fast
It's not hard to designate which question one is answering. For example, "Once it was present, natural selection would favor sexual reproduction because..."
This is distinctly different from "Here's how it happened: it happened because..."
I see a little "We might be able to start a story with...", but nothing clear and explanatory, and nothing approaching the full story from no sexual reproduction to the male & female sexes. That's what the O.P. asked for.
No it isn't. The OP combined the claim that evolution required a leap from self-replication to replication involving two sexes, which is not true, with the claim that sexual reproduction is inferior to asexual reproduction, which is also not true, and to which an answer beginning: "Once it was present, natural selection would favor sexual reproduction because..." would be an entirely reasonable one.
The OP did not ask for the full story.
That's what's required lest Darwin's "theory" break down.
No it isn't. In the light of your quote from Darwin, what he required is an absence of proof that there could be no such story.
As Iano and I have pointed out, that is not a good way to test the theory, which is why I don't start threads entitled: "Evidence For Evolution: Creationists Can't Prove That Sex Didn't Evolve". That would be silly.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 63 of 180 (458737)
03-01-2008 8:05 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by Lyston
03-01-2008 12:22 PM


Then you started talking about how God screwed up and made us imperfect. What I meant to say is that God made us perfect in his eyes.
You still haven't seen what's wrong with your argument.
Let me put this in the form of a parable. Imagine two men --- let's call them Bill and Fred --- quarrelling over the provenance of a painting. Imagine that the dialogue goes like this:
Bill: This painting is magnificent. A masterwork of this nature can only have come from the hand of the great Michelangelo.
Fred: Whereas I have good evidence that it was painted by a chimpanzee.
Bill: It cannot possibly have been painted by a chimpanzee. Look at how crude and ugly it is. Chimpanzees are endowed with an aesthetic taste exactly like my own, and would never produce anything that I regard as stupid and grotesque. Therefore, it was painted by that superb master of all that is beautiful --- Michelangelo.
Fred: I detect a flaw in your argument. You propose that this painting is so "crude", "ugly", "stupid", and "grotesque" that a chimp couldn't have produced something so bad --- and yet you attribute it to a man whom you describe as a "superb master of all that is beautiful". I believe that these claims are inconsistent.
Bill: Not at all. I said that I thought that the painting was ugly. That is merely a personal opinion. It is ugly in my eyes. But what is my aesthetic judgement compared to that of Michelangelo? In the eyes of Michelangelo, a genius who truly knew beauty when he saw it, this painting would be regarded as a sublime, exquisite masterpiece. And it is clearly too gross and clumsy to have been painted by a chimpanzee.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 85 of 180 (458971)
03-03-2008 1:48 AM
Reply to: Message 71 by Lyston
03-02-2008 11:20 PM


That's exactly what I meant. As for the first sentence, it is a belief. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, as you all know. It has evidence, but you still need to believe in it, just as one needs to believe in the concept of atoms (something that my Chem teacher of all people brought up). No matter how obvious it seems, there is a possibility (no matter how slim) that it could be wrong. That's why we are in debate.
That's not why we are in debate, or people would be equally vociferous in denouncing the atomic theory of matter.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 86 of 180 (458973)
03-03-2008 2:14 AM
Reply to: Message 77 by Lyston
03-03-2008 1:11 AM


OK. Imagine you have sexual reproduction, but no distinct sexes. Two organisms in the species mate by each contributing a haploid cell.
Now, there is a way to cheat on this process, which is to contribute haploid cells which don't have much cytoplasm. That way you can produce more haploid cells. They aren't so good, 'cos the fetilized zygote then starts with less cytoplasm, but there are more of them. A tendency to cheat by producing lots of small gametes instead of a few big ones can, therefore, be favored by natural selection. But only up to a point --- for two cheats will produce a fairly useless zygote. Hence, the more cheats there are in the population, the greater the advantage of not being a cheat.
You might wonder why the non-cheats don't just evolve a cheat avoidance mechanism. Well, until they do, cheats are successful. And if the trait of being a cheat is dominant (in the Mendellian sense) then non-cheats breeding with cheats ensures them a 50:50 mix of cheat and non-cheat offspring, which turns out to be a good idea. Hence, non-cheats ought to breed with cheats, and cheats with non-cheats, and anything that favors this choice of mates carries a selective advantage.
You will observe that this process does not require any coincidences such as you proposed in the OP: the first step towards the production of males would be anything which increases gamete production at the expense of gamete size.
This shows how two sexes could evolve: obviously stuff like this is not going to show up in the fossil record, so it would be hard to confirm that this is in fact what happened.
I might add that the evolution of something that looks rather like sex has been seen in simulations of evolution such as Tierra, which starts with an asexually reproducing computer program.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 111 of 180 (459123)
03-04-2008 1:51 AM
Reply to: Message 110 by Lyston
03-04-2008 1:28 AM


Years and years ago, scientist thought the Earth was the center of the universe. They had to change that. They thought everything was made up of only four elements. They had to change that. They had no idea about cells or even what was in them, completely changing their opinion of things about life. They thought that atoms were the smallest things until they decided to open them up. What I'm saying is couldn't there be a chance - a teeny, tiny chance - that with all the reforming they have to do with their theories and ideas, that Evolution - with all its facts and evidence - could be another mistake?
No. Creationism was the mistake. We know this 'cos of the facts and evidence that you mentioned. This is why, in common with the other prescientific views you list, it has been abandoned.
The fact that science is in a process of continual improvement is not a reason to abandon modern science and go back to the natural philosophy of the Dark Ages. It's a reason why we shouldn't.
And there's no reason why you should single out evolution for this line of reasoning. Why not say: "Scientists used to be creationists, so how do I know they're right today when they say they can split the atom"?
'Cos of the evidence, that's how.
But of course the reason that you've singled out evolution has othing to do with the history and philosophy of science, and everything to do with that book you have in your avatar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by Lyston, posted 03-04-2008 1:28 AM Lyston has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by Lyston, posted 03-04-2008 10:42 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
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