What convinced you of Evolution?

I'd be "honestly curious" as to how you arrive at this conclusion. (Nice opening, btw). Beyond the "evolution is a religion" assertion, this certainly doesn't bode well for your motivation in starting this topic. However, be that as it may: I arrived at my acceptance and understanding of the modern theory of evolution as the best current explanation for the diversity of life on Earth through a long process of accretion and personal observation. My parents were both well-educated, but "science null". I doubt that either one has ever taken a biology course in their lives for example, nor have they ever evinced any particular interest in the subject. It was not a subject of dinner table conversation in our household. However, they DID encourage me to spend a lot of time outside. ("Encourage" may be the wrong word - "forced", as in "Go outside and play you lazy git", is probably closer to the mark.) I was extremely fortunate that "outside" in this context referred to a 10 ha temperate forest, complete with a beautiful stream which led, if you followed it long enough, past a very tiny, local "nature" museum. I spent most of my childhood - winter and summer - exploring those woods, that stream, and ultimately spending time at that little museum.In the Spring and Summer I would turn over rocks in the stream and marvel over the weird critters living there. I climbed trees and peered into squirrel and bird nests. In the Winter I followed animal tracks in the snow to their burrows. I found fossils in the shale cliffs bordering the stream bed. Sometimes I just sat in a clearing and watched - just watched and listened for hours. (If you get the impression that I was a pretty solitary kid, you're mostly right.) At some point I started to get a feeling that all of this was somehow connected, although I don't think I ever articulated it that way. It was more through absorbtion than logic - and was a long slow process.As a freshman in high school I had the incredible good fortune to be taught by a biology teacher that, in spite of my rather indifferent grades in his class, recognized some kind of spark (for the life of me I can't figure out what he saw). However, he not only encouraged my interest in the subject, but literally shanghaied me (and several others of similar bent) into working on various ecology-related projects of his (everything from fish breeding for restocking a small lake to homemade maple syrup manufacture ). During all of which he patiently explained and demonstrated the principles behind what we were doing - lake and stream ecology, water chemistry, the biology and lifecycle of maple trees, and a myriad of other subjects. All of my random and vague observations from all those years playing in the woods started to jell - to the point where as a senior I was able to compete for and win a secondary school science fellowship grant to study pond ecology. At the same time he encouraged me to read up on the subject - to discover the underpinnings and details of the things he talked about and showed us. I owe Cosmo DiBiasio - a high school science teacher - a debt I'll never be able to repay.It wasn't until I got to college that I had any significant academic exposure to evolutionary theory. By that time, however, there was no question in my mind that nature was, well, natural. Evo biology, ecology, environmental science, biochemistry (yuch), genetics, even a course in geology (I never did get that bit down well - rocks aren't alive, so there wasn't much interest I guess), etc in college opened up for me the vast literature and world of evidence for the theory. I've never looked back. Every single book or paper I've ever read simply adds more to the conviction that evolution is a damn good explanation - not because some authority told me, but because it matches with, ties together, and explains all those summer observations - childhood thoughts and fancies.Since then, my career has taken me from chilly, wet cloud forests to tropical reefs. Nothing I have ever seen anywhere - from the hundreds of lifeforms swarming in the cup of a rainforest bromeliad to the lifecycle of a strangler fig to successional transitions on volcanic lava to new cichlid species isolated in volcanic crater lakes to creating an thriving artificial reef ecosystem - has given me any reason to question the one idea that explains both the how and the why of life's diversity. Too funny. Oddly enough, magical beasts and the supernatural never even crossed my mind in relation to the natural world - at any time in my life. I'm surprised I missed all the evidence for it. I'm sure that your detailed description of how magic accounts for the observed character displacement of Anolis lizards on St. Maarten (A. pogus and A. gingivinus), or the extreme endemicity of the Hawaiian biota. Perhaps you can use magic to provide a detailed explanation of why Plumeria alba (the sacuanjoche tree) seems to thrive on the 100-year-old lava flow but not in the dry forest (growing on a ~600-year-old flow) of the Masaya Volcano complex only 300 meters away. I'm delighted you'll set me straight on that since evolutionary theory obviously can't explain it. Perhaps you could even - dare I ask - use your supernatural explanation to describe how the mutualism between the bulls horn acacia (Acacia cornigera) and the stinging ant Pseudomyrmex ferruginea might have arisen in Central America. Make sure you take into consideration cornigera's lack of the normal acacia alkaloid defenses when explaining it. Naw, not disrespectful or mean. Just a jerk. Since it turns out that there is quite a bit - huge and almost incomprehensible amounts, in fact - of data from multiple sources and even multiple sciences that support the theory, you seem to have a different idea of what constitutes "insignificant" than I do.

Rather a weak analogy, IMO. Both students are wrong, but for different reasons. In case 1, the student will never get an accurate calculation as the experiment was rigged. In his/her case, there is literally no way - scientifically - to determine the initial conditions and hence any calculation made will be wrong. In case 2, the student is still wrong because s/he utilized the wrong formula - as two minutes would be 120 seconds, not 160. In this case, even knowing the initial conditions, the student is incorrect. Science, including evolutionary biology, is designed to detect and eliminate such errors because every single observation is repeatable by others under the same conditions. If it is not - if the observation cannot be replicated - then the observation or the conclusion, etc, is in error.Try this hypothetical (well, not really hypothetical, a similar occurance happened to me last week) example of the value of evolution to our understanding of the workings of nature.You are out in your back yard, pulling down and cutting a huge tangle of tough, woody vines. The vines are ubiquitous, have choked out most other vegetation, and have even killed two small trees. Your daughter comes out and asks, "Daddy, why are these vines so difficult to remove, and why are they everywhere?". You could, of course, simply reply, "Because God made them that way, sweetheart."However, that doesn't actually answer the child's question. In my case, drawing on my (limited) understanding of the natural world, I was able to explain that the vine was an exotic species that was brought from Asia as a decoration. It got loose in the wild around here and thrived. Back in Asia it wasn't a problem, because there were bugs that ate it and kept it under control. It evolved in an area of tough competition with its eater. When it got loose in an area where the local plant eating insects couldn't eat it, it established itself everywhere. Since the local plants are still fighting their own insects, they can't compete with one that has no natural enemies.Which explanation actually explains something? Goddidit, or evolutionary ecology?

This "response" to my post represents an exceptionally weak rebuttal. Especially since the post contained none of the things you mentioned here. I simply pointed out how your little "story" was fallacious. In fact, I even went so far as to take your alleged point at face value, and briefly explain how the scientific method was designed to detect and eliminate such errors - including bias.If you are referring to my hypothetical situation wherein there was a reference to creationism, you will note that the point was not whether you were or weren't a creationist. Rather, the point was contained in the last line of the post: "Which explanation actually explains something? Goddidit, or evolutionary ecology?" The implication being that whether or not there is bias as you claim in evaluating evidence, the evolutionary explanation more closely matches the available data AND provides a more accurate answer to the "why" and "how" question asked.Oh, and btw - creationists DON'T talk about biology, except to distort, misinform, mislead, and misrepresent the findings of the science and the evidence that led to those findings. I guess if (as you seem to be proclaiming) you're not a creationist, then you shouldn't find anything insulting in this, correct? Perhaps you might clarify your position, rather than playing semantic games?

DNFTT

Good post jantool. I think most of the folks on this forum would be willing to give you a "second chance".Perhaps a discussion of what made you doubt evolution? Or picking any given particular aspect you think problematic and asking rather than frothing whether it really is problematic. Were you, as Loudmouth suggested, referring to the coelocanth wrt the "prehistoric fish"? That could be a good thread (or resurrect an older one - it's been discussed several times here.Suggest perhaps opening a new topic with a bit more specifics on what you'd like to discuss.

Hi jantoo:Our resident Queen of the Universe linked to a pretty good discussion (if I do say so myself - since I wrote it ) of living fossils, which included info on the coelocanth. If you'd like to either resurrect that thread and ask questions about it, or start a new one on the subject, I and others here would be delighted to continue it. Relictual (basically, "left-over") species are a special interest of mine. Here's the link again to the relevant post.