Seriously, scientists (postdoc in immunology here) need better PR. We used to have Carl Sagan out there, but now who do we have?
I’m also a fan of beginning to change it from the “Theory of Evolution” to something else. The “Fact of Evolution”. I dunno. I’m sick of creationists using the open-mindedmess of science against us. We call it a “theory” instead of a “fact” because we are open to the possibility, nomatter how slight, that new data will come in and change our view. DNA double helical structure is just a “theory”. But, somehow scientists become the closed-minded people.
There’s a great deal of misinformation to be cleared up here.
I’ve not only seen it, I lived there for several years, including 3 years at the bottom at Phantom Ranch, where in addition to my paid duties I volunteered part-time with the National Park Service as an amateur naturalist. The exposed layers of the Grand Canyon start with Vishnu schist at the bottom. Schist is a metamorphic rock created from sediment that has been melted by heat and pressure over time. Vishnu schist is capped by Tapeats sandstone, whcih in turn are covered by successive layers of limestone, sandstone, and shale, indicating even to the wholly untrained and uneducated layman that the layers of Grand Canyon geology were not deposited in a mere 40 days’ time.
The rest of the OP is so ungainly and disjointed that it will take too much time and space to address it, but I do want to point out that the insistence on transitional fossils, which creationists ignore when they are produced, indicates a lack of understanding of the lines of evidence used in the scientific process. To quote from Michael Shermer’s column in this month’s Scientific American:
Through repeated cycles of inundation, uplift, erosion. Layers of different types of rocks, with bedding planes tilted in different directions, are among the most blatantly obvious evidence of the age of the earth. Charles Lyell figured that out 100 years before Darwin.
Cite?
And long before the idea of evolution by natural selection was devised, observant people, Leonardo da Vinci for a classic example, relalized that *most *fossils were encased in rocks in a manner that resembled how they existed in life, and showed no evidence of having been chaotically placed by flood waters.
Yes indeed, of the various ways that creature can become fossilized, burial in a flood is one possibility. Floods happen. Things get buried. It’s hardly like there has been only one flood in all or earth’s history to blame fossils on.
You really think scientists just made this stuff up?!?!?!?!
The evolutionary time scale is based on extensive analyisis of the fossil record, radiocarbon dating, and a whole slew of corroborating data from various disciplines. Go take a geology class.
Blantantly untrue. Small mammals predate dinosaurs, as previously noted.
Sure could fooled a whole lotta bichemists on that one. And contrary to what some people seem to think, we have learned a whole lot since Darwin’s day. How on earth does nitpicking any particular idea of Darwin’s invalidate the rest of the mountain if evidence for evolution?
Only the entire history of life. Again, how about a cite for your argument here?
Blatantly absurd. On what basis do *you *claim to know why the rest of us believe what we do???
No, they didn’t. The earliest known mammal fossil comes from about 195 million years ago. The oldest known dinosaur fossil comes from about 225-230 million years ago. At best, the two groups arose more or less concurrently. At worst, dinosaurs were first on the scene.
As has been pointed out, utterly false. The species that we find in the fossil record, are, by there very nature, transitory. Just as the species we see about us today.
False. Darwin suspected we would find many such fossils, but only because he believed our lack of knowledge was solely due to an incomplete fossil record. The fossil record remains incomplete, but vastly more fossils have been discovered since Darqwin wrote Origin. And, much to Darwin’s delight, the first Archaeopteryx skeletons were unearthed a mere two years after Origin was published. At the time, Archaeopteryx proved quite sensational, as it was exactly what was expected to be found. And since then, we have found many more fossils which give us a nearly unbroken progression of the dinosaur-to-bird lineage, including fossils of feathered, non-avian dinosaurs.
And floods couldn’t happen - never happened - apart from the Noachian Deluge…?
There are two types of dating: relative and absolute. Relative dating uses index fossils to link up distant sites: if a given fossil assemblage only appears in a given sediment layer, then wherevere that assemblage is found, it can be assumed to be the same layer, even if surrounding layers differ. Further, relative dating only tells us which sediments were laid down in which order. Absolute dating dates the rocks or fossils themselves using radiometric dating methods.
As noted, false. The significance of the find had more to do with the presumed size of early mammals, not their presence. Previously, many scientists thought that mammals were limited to shrew-like creatures in size and form during much of the reign of dinosaurs.
Change over time of the proportions of individual organsisms differing genetically in one or more traits.
No doubt. How do you explain the dispersal pattern of organisms after the alleged Flood? We should find evidence that all animals (including humans)dispersed from a central point from the period after the Flood. That pattern should, furthemore, lead us directly to the resting place of the ark. Why do we see no such pattern?
The grand canyon cannot have been laid down quickly then eroded all at once during the same event; you simply can’t get mud to stack up like that - it would be impossible for near-vertical walls to be cut through layers of soft sediment.
Well, more properly stated, evolution is an observation. We have seen from a variety of fields–palentology, zoology, virology and bacteriology, et cetera–that evolution (the combination and modification of phenotypes in successive generations) occurs, and we can even affect changes in phenotypes, from alge which prefer a particular band of light to dogs who demonstrate preferred show characteristics to domestic crops. The method by which this occurs is subject to debate, but the theory of natural selection–that is, the propagation of phenotypes that add to the reproductive fitness of a vessel and the suppression of phenotypes that detract from fitness–is by far the most widely accepted (and, IMHO, the only reasonable) explaination. In fact, it should probably be considered the most validated theory in the history of science, even moreso than theories of physics.
Natural selection is, as a scientific theory, subject to continued analysis, criticism, and refinement, but just because two camps disagree on the validity or significance of a particular mechanism doesn’t undermine the whole theory. Any significant challenge to natural selection would have to demonstrate that nearly two centuries of scientific observation, including entire fields like molecular biology and paleontology are badly mistaken, and simply throwing in a few minor disagreements on technical interpretations of an evolutionary mechanism or blatent lustrations regarding past events (like the notion that the Grand Canyon was formed in a single flood) is not a legitimate challenge. Nor is calling forth Darwin’s or others “deathbed reservations” about natural selection a valid argument, any more than Einstein’s famous musing that “God does not play dice with the universe” undermines the theory of quantum mechanics. For the record, Darwin struggled to find a mechanism by which characteristics (phenotypes) would be transmitted from parents to child, and had the misfortune to be born about a century too early for Crick and Watson (and the uncredited Rosalind Franklin) to provide him an answer in the form of genes and their associated genotypes which seed phenotypes. Gregor Mendel could have given him a huge clue, but unfortuantely Darwin (and the rest of the scientific establishment) didn’t know of Mendel’s observations until long later.
I agree with Fiveyearlurker that we need to stop referring to evolution as a theory. It is a natural law, like gravitation, and is as widely observed. Anyone who doesn’t believe so is as equally likely to believe that the earth’s surface does not curve and [sarcasm] shouldn’t be allowed to handle things like fire or hard objects for fear of hurting themselves[/sarcasm]. Anyone who disagrees with the theory of natural selection is fully welcome to do so, but if they intend to argue the point they must be prepared to disprove the mass of data, validated theories, and whole fields of science which have established the theory. And as for people who want to throw in irrelevancies and bowdlerations of scientific data…it’s a pretty pointless (though occasionally a good intellectual muscle-stretching) exercize to engage them, and in a public forum simply gives their arguments the apparence of validation. :sigh: It’s dirty pool when your opponent keeps forcing you to chase after and beat to death red herrings.
Mostly related to the OP, so this seems like a good thread to post this:
Has anyone ever tried to break evolution down into a series of simple, undeniable statements that, when taken together, show that evolution must happen? IANABiologist, but such a list might look something like:
[ol][li]Heredity exists (children inherit certain features from their parents)[/li][li]Intraspecies variation exists (not all members of the same species are clones of each other)[/li][li]Hereditary features influence an organism’s life (and death)[/li][li]Not all members of a species produce the same amount of offspring.[/ol][/li]I’m sure I’ve left some things off, but that’s the basic idea.
Gregor Mendel did that experiment about a century and a half ago. [gross oversimplification] All of evolutionary biology, zoology, and botony since has been just tying up the loose ends. [/gross oversimplification]
Since you all are the ones SOOO smart and wise I will just point out a few of the glareing false statements made
the propagation of phenotypes that add to the reproductive fitness of a vessel and the suppression of phenotypes that detract from fitness–is by far the most widely accepted (and, IMHO, the only reasonable) explaination. In fact, it should probably be considered the most validated theory in the history of science, even moreso than theories of physics.
As has been pointed out, utterly false. The species that we find in the fossil record, are, by there very nature, transitory. Just as the species we see about us today.
Only the entire history of life. Again, how about a cite for your argument here?
Not a false statement. It’s not even a complete sentence.
Nothing false there either.
Not false. While you may well be unwilling to accept that evolution of any sort occurs, you should at least be familiar with how it is alleged to work. “Kinds” may be static, but species aren’t.
And the glaringly false statement would be…?
Here’s a thought: demonstrate how anything said so far really is false. Provide evidence, cites, whatever. I’ll settle for a logical argument. All you have provided have been declarative statements which have demonstrated little more than ignorance about science in general and evolution in particular.
Nolies, would you mind pointing out what what makes these statements false?
Stranger On A Train, thanks, though that may not be quite what I’m looking for. I have to wonder why a very basic definition of what evolution isn’t brought out more in these debates. We always seem to be debating on the terms of the creationists, which is perhaps not the best strategy. If we can discover which premise is disagreed with, it should make argument much easier.
You can’t win the gap argument. It turns out that the more complete the fossil record, the more gaps there are.
For example, suppose we have fossil A and fossil B that have characteristics indicating the descent or perhaps branching of of B from A. There is one gap. Now when intermediate fossil A’ is discovered we have A > A’ > B and two gaps. And with the discovery of B[sup]-[/sup]’ we have A > A’ > B[sup]-[/sup]’ > B with three gaps. And so on. As is the case with all sequences of discrete items, gaps are inherent.
I’ve decided not to get worked up over the Nolies. They will zoom by on a strafing run every now and then and then pass away. And in the long run I think it is unlikely that they will have any effect on the increasing evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution or upon its acceptance by knowledgeable people.
So what we need is to keep increasing the supply of knowledgeable people. Now when it comes to state legislators mandating the inclusion of some form of Creationism, such as Intelligent Design, in science classes in schools then I do get a little agitated.
I’m majoring in evolutionary bio; the theory of evolution by natural selection, and its components, has been drummed into me so much that I can pretty much quote it by memory:
Variation between individuals in a population of a speces are not identical.
Some of the variation between individuals is heritable.
Some of the variation results in differential survival or reproduction.
Thus, changes in allele frequencies will occur across generations.
It’s actually really similar to what you thought up. I wonder if Nolies disagrees with any of the four statements. The problem is that most Creationists I’ve talked to usually believe that some evolution can and does happen, just not evolution that causes change between “kinds” (whatever that means… species? families? phyla?).
Hmmm…I’m not quite certain what you’re looking for then, exactly. Are you looking for something like a proof in symbolic logic, or some kind of immutable progression, as with an object in motion under gravity? The problem is that the “event” of evolution is very complicated. So is throwing a ball in a parabolic trajectory through atmosphere, but we can make reasonable assumptions about the latter that allow us to reduce the problem to a couple of equations without losing anything significant on the macro scale. With evolution, the amount of knowledge you have to first absorb to fully comprehend the observation (biology, genetics, games theory and statistics) in order to validate any theory is much greater and not given to simplification on the same scale. You can start with something like Conway’s Life, but relating that to real-world natural selection (or even making it model selection on a macro scale) is much more complicated. That doesn’t mean that evolution is inexplicable, any more than the behavior of particles on the quantum level is unexplainable, but it does mean that you have to learn to apply tools such as math and statistics in order to create an accurate model.
At any rate, I don’t think Creationists want a simple, basic definition. Obfuscation seems to be the game, and the more examples you provide and the more outrageousclaims you preforate, the more they go in for hand-waving and tail-chasing. Intellegent Design and Irreducible Complexity, to use more thoughtful creationist arguments, have been repeatedly challenged and demonstrated unnecessary; see, for instance, Gould’s Ever Since Darwin, or Dawkins’ somewhat more technical The Blind Watchmaker, for counterarguments. Nontheless, it is being inserted into the curriculum of high school biology in some states on the presumption that “Evolution [sic: natural selection] is only a theory”.
Note, however, that mere change in allele frequencies, in itself, is not suffcieint to demonstrate that natural selection occurs (or that NS represents the creative force of evolution). Genetic drift, for example, can produce allele frequency shifts, but does not result in adapation.
Your number 4 would more properly be:
Thus, those individuals which are better able to survive and reproduce, on the basis of their particular heritable genetic traits, will be more likely to pass those traits on to future generations. The frequencies of favored alleles within a population will thus tend to increase (while disfavored alleles will tend to decrease).
And the ultimate insult to science is when some time in the future one of the Nolies or one of his friends or family has a serious medial emergency. This will be treated by methods arising out the of the work of evolutionary biologists, medical reserchers, et al, and by doctors and nurses working long hours to apply those methods. When the outcome is positive the Nolies will thank God, when it’s negative they will sue for malpractice.
.