Evolution... good, bad or ugly?

[outside looking in]

Re: 8. FOSSIL AND FOSSIL FUEL FORMATION

Do you believe that world-wide flood happened at one time? Or at least a very very large one, submerging great parts of the planet under water. Once you answered this I can take the discussion a bit further.

I believe there have been numerous big floods in the past, some caused by climate shifts, some by meteor impacts, etc. Some of these may have covered large areas of land.

I do not believe however that there was ever a flood lasting a year that covered the entire planet. There is no evidence to support such a belief.

 

[outside looking in]

Re: 7. VESTIGIAL ORGANS

Vestigal doesn't mean useless, but rather it points to a trace of something else. Vestigal legs in snakes for example still have some limite use in locomotion, but their importance isn't in their usefulness (or lack thereof) but rather that they look like traces of legs. Think about that for a moment and you'll realize the fallacy of the above arguments.

OK I don't quite see your line of reasoning here... More explanations would be appreciated.

Vestigal legs in snakes indicate one of two things: remnants of past legs, or beginning of new ones. Tracing the evolution of snakes and reptiles through the fossil record, it surely looks like the former.

Now, if you cast aside both of those two options, you are left with the Creationists view: snakes were created with vestigal legs, which are all but useless. Why? Couldn't God have created more useful appendages? Why psuedo legs? To confuse us? To make it just look like the snake had evolved?

The point is that, even if vestigal organs retain some limited usefulness to the organism, their greatest importance is simply as a marker of where evolution occured.

 

[Luis G]

Standing ovation for this remarkable display of intellect. The level of this discussion is now so much higher.

ohhh i forgot, if it is written in the Bible, the level of discussion is much more higher. c'mon LL, you are far more smarter to actually accept Earth is more than 10k years old.

We might not have a prove that Evolutionism is true, but it has nothing to do with the earth being a planet whose age is less than 10,000 years.

 

[Jeslek]

Re: 9. PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA

[quote="LastLegionary]
Where is the mutations today? No, where are the beneficial mutations today. Actually, name some benficial mutations that happened on the genetic, or physical, level in the last 5,000 years. I'm not much informed, and there could be, but I'd like to know.

There are many examples of plant and animal species mutating in a short time to gain resistance to a certain chemical or disease. If you insist, I can dig up a few of them for reference.[/quote]Don't bother yourself, I will take your word for it.

Yes, nearly all genetic mutations are harmful. The vast majority in fact. However, under certain enviromental pressures (natural selection), a certain mutation (one in a million for example) might produce a benefit to the organism. In that case, the organism has an increased chance of survival, and passes the gene on to offspring. These offspring, in time, tend to survive more often, and the population slowly shifts to carry this mutation.

For a modern example of a helpful mutation, I believe sickle cell anemia protects its carriers from malaria (I think that was it). In some environments, the threat from malaria is greater than that from anemia, and the mutation survives.

Hm, I'm not sure how far I would take that. Organisms simply don't just develop a mutation and pass it along. And I didn't know about that malaria thing sich sickle cell anemia... very interesting.


Look I can't argue like this, I don't know enough. You obviously know a lot more than I do, and I haven't read on this subject for a while.

 

[Jeslek]

Standing ovation for this remarkable display of intellect. The level of this discussion is now so much higher.

ohhh i forgot, if it is written in the Bible, the level of discussion is much more higher. c'mon LL, you are far more smarter to actually accept Earth is more than 10k years old.

No I'm just a stupid 19 year old that is religious and therefore dumb.

 

[outside looking in]

So because a lot of scales from a lot of manufacturers give the same answer, which is unverified, makes it completely accurate? *frown* I don't think so, personally.

How then, do you propose to ever verify the weight? You can't just say "I know it weight 20 pounds." How do you know? If all methods of weighing it say it weighs 10 pounds, then it weighs 10 pounds. Unless a divine voice tells you, I suppose.

 

[Jeslek]

Re: 8. FOSSIL AND FOSSIL FUEL FORMATION

Do you believe that world-wide flood happened at one time? Or at least a very very large one, submerging great parts of the planet under water. Once you answered this I can take the discussion a bit further.

I believe there have been numerous big floods in the past, some caused by climate shifts, some by meteor impacts, etc. Some of these may have covered large areas of land.

I do not believe however that there was ever a flood lasting a year that covered the entire planet. There is no evidence to support such a belief.

Alright, lets take it one step at a time. Do you believe that Noah's Ark exists? Saying you do doesn't mean you are religious or believe that stuff, I just want to know where I can start discussing and what I can assume.

 

[Nixy]

Did I not make many points about that on the previous page? Did everyone not just ignore them?

 

[Jeslek]

So because a lot of scales from a lot of manufacturers give the same answer, which is unverified, makes it completely accurate? *frown* I don't think so, personally.

How then, do you propose to ever verify the weight? You can't just say "I know it weight 20 pounds." How do you know? If all methods of weighing it say it weighs 10 pounds, then it weighs 10 pounds. Unless a divine voice tells you, I suppose.

No, we defined mass to be something. And our scales are calibrated to that mass. Similarly, we defined time to be something. The difference is, we didn't calibrate radiometric dating to time. Scientists think it is accurate, but it hasn't been proved. IMHO anyways.

 

[Jeslek]

Re: 7. VESTIGIAL ORGANS

Vestigal doesn't mean useless, but rather it points to a trace of something else. Vestigal legs in snakes for example still have some limite use in locomotion, but their importance isn't in their usefulness (or lack thereof) but rather that they look like traces of legs. Think about that for a moment and you'll realize the fallacy of the above arguments.

OK I don't quite see your line of reasoning here... More explanations would be appreciated.

Vestigal legs in snakes indicate one of two things: remnants of past legs, or beginning of new ones. Tracing the evolution of snakes and reptiles through the fossil record, it surely looks like the former.

Now, if you cast aside both of those two options, you are left with the Creationists view: snakes were created with vestigal legs, which are all but useless. Why? Couldn't God have created more useful appendages? Why psuedo legs? To confuse us? To make it just look like the snake had evolved?

Snakes had legs, originally.... However God cursed them. (read it in Genesis 2, 3, yeah I know you don't believe it but thats the story anyways)

The point is that, even if vestigal organs retain some limited usefulness to the organism, their greatest importance is simply as a marker of where evolution occured.

Alright, I'm not going to persue this either... I simply don't know enough.

 

[outside looking in]

You're missing the point. The box weighs 20 pounds, period. Thats the fact. Its the scales in question. Even though a trillion different scales from a trillion different manufacturers give the same answer, the fact is, unless you an prove that one of them is accurate and precise, the mass of the box has not been proved or established, only estimated.

That's rhetorical hogwash. Weight is a measure of the force exerted by an object in a gravitational field. The only way to measure weight is by direct experiment. By definition, you can define weight as the effect an object has on a certain measuring device. If you define the object to weigh 10 pounds under a certain reading, then it weighs 10 pounds.

Beating your chest and shouting "but it weighs 20 pounds, it's a fact!" does not change the fact that it actually weights 10 pounds.

Now, perhaps you're aguing that a billion scales could all actually have a manufacturing defect, that causes them to work differently than intended. Yes, I suppose. I could also kick a rock a billion times and not actually feel it, though the chance is rather remote. In that case, I might be inclined to believe that the rock isn't real... after all, how could you prove to me that it is real if my senses, against all probability, continually tell me it isn't?

Your argument is equally reaching.

 

[Nixy]

OK I AM GOING TO WRITE THIS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE NOONE SEEMS TO BE PAYING ATTENTION TO ME!

VERY LITTLRE IS PROVEN IN SCIENCE! THAT'S JUST THE WAY SCIENCE IS! THAT'S THE WAY THE EARTH IS! WE CAN'T ACRUALLY PROVE VERY MUCH OF ANYTHING. WE JUST TEST IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER. IF YOU TEST SOMETHING 100000000 TIMES IT IS NOT VALID TO SAY "NO THAT IS WRONG" BASED ON 1 TEST! IF 99999999 TESTS SAY IT'S TRUE AND 1 SAYS IT'S FALSE THEN IT IS TRUE!

 

[outside looking in]

Re: 5. PROBABILITY

I don't understand your line of reasoning here. The numbers are there... Face it, what is the chance that random molecules bumping into each other will form a protein. Not just a protein, a single celled creature!! All by sheer chance.

Sigh. Evolutin does not operate by chance alone. Therefore, any calculation that only considers random events is meaningless. Reread my explanation on this one.

 

[Jeslek]

Re: 2. MAGNETIC FIELD

The earth's magnetic field is decaying rapidly, at a constant (if not decreasing) rate. At this rate, 8,000 years ago the earth's magnetism would have equaled that of a magnetic star, a highly unlikely occurrence. Also, if electric currents in the earth's core are responsible for the earth's magnetism, the heat generated by these currents 20,000 years ago would have dissolved the earth.

The magnetic field varies drastically in its strength, as is indicated by magnetic particles trapped in the geologic record. In fact, the Earth's magnetic field has swapped polarity many many times during the Earth's lifetime.

How do you know this?

Currently, the magnetic field is decreasing in strength rather rapidly. If this continues (which there is no guarantee that it will), then there will be a polarity change in perhaps a thousand years or less. Saying that 8000 years ago the field strength would have equalled that of a magnetic star is like taking one data poing off of a sine wave, and extrapolating that slope back into the past (or foward into the future). It completely ignores the cyclic nature of the data.

Hm, hang on to that thought, I'm going to do some research on it... I'm quite positive one of my scientific journals had an article on that.

 

[unclehobart]

geology 101

If you're not going to bother explaining it more than that, your argument isn't valid. Just referring to a course isn't a valid argument. Tell me HOW you know for a fact that the given strata is 40,000 years old. HOW did they get that age?

Why should I bother? To everyone here BUT you it is a self apparent widely accepted field of study that doesnt have an agenda. No matter what type of explanation I would try to give you, you would just poo-poo it away. You would have us all chase smaller and smaller fragments and chase our tails until we implode in order to keep anyone from making the slightest observation.

OK so you can't give me any reasons? ... fine

In your world, Chinese people dont exist because you've never been to China. World War 2 never took place because you wernt alive to see it.

Take a hike will you? I'm asking for proof, and you refuse to even _try_ to explain it to me.

At least OLI is trying to carry on a decent discussion... I'm going to ignore asinine comments now and only focus on valid discussion points.

Again. Why bother? When anyone else asks the same of you, all you manage to do is answer a question with a negative position question. Its not much of a threat to disavow anything that isnt valid in your own eyes since you only treat what you have said yourself as being the only idea of validity. I'm just using your tactics. Curt questions get flippant answers. Positional arguments are brushed off as invalid and retorted with negative position answers rooted in existential philosiphy.

If I thought for one minute that you truly were hungry for the opinions and observations of others, I would give you more than 30 second answers. All you desire is to try and show up everyone by way of spewing out the base method of freshman Greek debate.

 

[Jeslek]

Re: 5. PROBABILITY

Sigh. Evolutin does not operate by chance alone. Therefore, any calculation that only considers random events is meaningless. Reread my explanation on this one.

Hm, not alone. OK, question then.... why don't see see intermediate species today? Ie, those between ape and human... Why did just about all of them evolve, became extinct, and disappear from the geological record?

 

[outside looking in]

No, we defined mass to be something. And our scales are calibrated to that mass. Similarly, we defined time to be something. The difference is, we didn't calibrate radiometric dating to time. Scientists think it is accurate, but it hasn't been proved. IMHO anyways.

We defined half-life to be something. It was calibrated against observerd decay rates in laboratories, and verified by observations of stellar events. It is just as valid a form of measurement as weighing something. It is proved.

 

[Luis G]

Re: 5. PROBABILITY

Hm, not alone. OK, question then.... why don't see see intermediate species today? Ie, those between ape and human... Why did just about all of them evolve, became extinct, and disappear from the geological record?

you mean the austrolopitecus, homo-sapiens, homo-erectus, and such?

maybe we are an intermediate specie between homo-sapiens and homo sapiens sapiens sapiens.

 

[outside looking in]

Re: 5. PROBABILITY

Hm, not alone. OK, question then.... why don't see see intermediate species today? Ie, those between ape and human... Why did just about all of them evolve, became extinct, and disappear from the geological record?

They are not still alive today because they would occupy the same ecological niche, and humans are fiercly competitive in that regard (we kill off other species which aren't even a direct threat to us).

The apes are still around because they do not occupy the same niche. Fairly simple.

 

[outside looking in]

And Luis raises a good point. We can't say which species today are intermediates, because we don't know which are evolutionary dead ends and which are not.

Many different dogs are reproductively isolated (and differ more greatly in morphology than many examples of "different" species do). Perhaps some breeds are actually the first members of a new species, or perhaps we would classify them as intermediates, whatever that may mean.

The fact is that we don't know, because all such things are retrospective titles. Speciation is an event that simply can't be witnessed in real time - at least, if you witnessed it you just wouldn't realize it. We may be witnessing a speciation event in dogs currently, but we will have no way of knowing until a long time has passed and we can clearly see that the species split and diverged. Retrospective.