I also probably ought to say that discrediting evolution (even if that were really possible) doesn’t automatically prove any other view, such as creation, without evidence (not from a scientific POV anyway)
First, simply reuttering Darwin on Trial or another book will not get you that far around here. We jump through these hoops every week around here. Do you maybe have a new take on things?
Well, they did. We are here. Evolution is a theory entirely built on observations. It fits the observations. We won the lottery, now we have to figure out how it happened. To blame it all on a Creator who has never been observed is cheating. That is not how we do science. It is to acknowledge winning the lottery while denying ever buying a ticket.
An organism has many responses to environmental change. Evolution takes no sides as to which specific adaptation will occur. It just states that it will probably occur or the population will move or die. In the case of wings, look at the flying squirrel. It doesn’t look that different from a regular squirrel, yet it can hurl itself to a nearby tree using sail-like flaps of skin. If perhaps the environment changed that trees got farther apart, increased ability to sail to the next tree would be selected for. One of the possible outcomes to this is the evolution of better flaps of skin, perhaps followed by wings.
Again, this is an “imagined” scenario, but scenarios like this are supported by the fossil and genetic evidence. In fact, I am going to ask you for a cite where we can’t explain one of these scenarios based on either genetic or fossil evidence. Your “imagined” scenarios are my hypotheses supported by evidence.
My field, the genetic developmental program of the eye, shows that all eyed organisms probably shared an optic primordium. In the case of the eye, the fossil evidence supports this as well. Again, invoking an unobserved Creator is cheating. There is no evidence that a Creator plopped wings on mice to make bats, so why should we even resort to this? Because evolution defies “common sense”? Because you personally haven’t seen monkeys giving birth to humans?
The peppered moth is just one of hundreds of examples of population shifts that have been observed. Natural selection never claims to invent things de novo. That is left to “creation scientists” and their Creator. Evolution is all about descent with modification. Things can change so much, though, that we don’t recognize their common ancestry. But, by and large through nature, themes are conserved. Most human protein families exist in yeast. Mice and humans are something like 95% genetically similar, and chimps and humans are something like over 99% similar. I am sure that Ben, if not tired of the debate, will be along shortly to challenge you with a series of questions which includes being able to explain protein homology from a creationist world view.
That is correct: Lottery commissions never have to pay winners as winners in lotteries cannot exist. Oops!
As I understand it, a team of scientists created a simulated worm with computer algorithms representing genetic instructions. Last I checked it takes far more than a team of scientists to build an airplane. And it takes far more than a single law professor discussing why bumblebees cannot fly.
True. The theory of relativity does not require that we test it for it to be a functional theory. However, if we wish that theory to describe our universe, then indeed it does need evidence found in this universe.
I wasn’t aware that fossil records didn’t show evolution. I understood that there were gaps in any particular species’ evolution; this doesn’t constitute a lack of evidence. This constitutes a need for more digging so that the theory doesn’t need to fill the gaps.
Is that so? Then why did the previous quote accept that evolution describes the creation of new species?
(checks that there is no poster named Philip Johnson) Philip Johnson, you are an idiot.
Argument by assertion. No further discussion necessary.
All true except the last sentence. As is so often true with creationists, Johnson is projecting his own attitude on evolutionary biologists. Biologists imagine processes and go looking for evidence for or against those processes happening. For example, once one has imagined a sequence for eye or wing evolution, one looks for fossils and living organisms that possess the hypothesized intermediate stages. And … one finds them!
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Everyone who is knowledgable does not present the peppered moth as an example of “creating somehting that was not already in existence”. Johnson ignores the many examples of mutation and selection creating new functionality, such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria or A True Acid Test (which appears to be down right now).
There will always be a new evolution/creation thread started by a newbie active somewhere on the board.
First Corollary
If the OP supports creationism, the newbie will probably never be seen again.
Second Corollary
In any evolution thread wherein the OP is posted by a newbie creationist, the newbie will eventually be so crushed under the weight of evidence and logic that s/he will either claim the board is afraid to debate his straw man arguments, vanish, or will completely melt down.
The approximate number of posts needed for this to occur approximates the function P=Opl/20*(15+Jp)/0.5(Cp+Pwc-MHP) where
Opl = Original Post Length in lines
Jp = Joke posts
Cp = Collounsbury posts
Pwc = Posts with objectively verifiable cites or footnotes
MHP = Posts dealing with Moon Hoax theories
In any evolution thread started by a newbie supporter of evolution, the thread will collapse out of sheer disinterest within 25 posts.
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*Originally posted by erislover *
**
I wasn’t aware that fossil records didn’t show evolution. I understood that there were gaps in any particular species’ evolution; this doesn’t constitute a lack of evidence.
Err, yeah it does. Saying that humans evolved from ape like creatures and saying that bats evolved from mice like rodents means there SHOULD be clear fossil records that can be pieced together in a logical, evolutionary sequence. Evolutionists consistently drill in to the rest of us that “look, evolution can take MILLIONS of years!! MILLIONS!!”. That means we should be able to construct a completely logical and sequential evolutionary ‘timetable’ showing exactly when, where, and speculate on why those changes took place. But yet we simply can not turn around and find the path that leads back to where the chimps and we humans apparently shared ancestors. Why not? If evolution occurs over millions of years, the amount of evidence should staggering. Yet we can’t find the fossils that show it. Why not?
Well, the first reason off the top of my head is that fossilization itself is a pretty unusual event. Not every dead creature becomes a fossil. So, there is inference that goes on, but if you see fossils of two species, one predating the other, that are similar but with one or two differences, then it’s not unreasonable to assume there is some relationship between them. It’s like if you were to compare my DNA with someone and see there was a 25% match, and say she was my grandmother, because you know that grandparents and grandchildren share 25% of their genes. Even though you wouldn’t have access to him or her, you could assume that someone exists who is this woman’s child, sharing 50% of her genes, and my parent, who shares 50 of his or her genes with me. The existance of a parent is inferred.
Well, aside from the fact that we do have quite a few transitional forms (which Creationists always deny are “sufficiently” transitional), there is the small matter of what it takes to leave any fossil behind.
An animal (or plant) must at the time of death be almost immediately buried in a material that will prevent any scavenger animals from destroying the skeleton, eliminate aerobic microbes that cause decay, provide a chemical composition that will allow leeching into the skeleton so that the bones (and, rarely, hide) can actually become fossils.
There is a rare chance that an animal that dies in a desert may leave a body that is dehydrated before rotting, but it still requires that the body never be destroyed by scavengers and it still must be buried at some point to allow the mineral leeching and fossilization. Equally rare might be an animal or an animal that dies in a swamp sinking past the (bacteria-infested) muck to a level where it will be preserved.
The covering soil in each of these cases still needs to be the correct type to contain preservative minerals.
This means that the only animals that are fossilized are going to be animals that are buried by landslides or, occasionally, swept into an alluvial deposit by a flash flood. Got any idea what the odds are on the number of animals that die under the exactly correct circumstnces each year?
Part of the problem here is that evolution looks more like a bush than a tree. In the past, the picture of human evolution looked pretty minimal. As time has gone on, more fossils have been found and many more branchs have been added. Now, if you want to get into the old “lumpers” vs. “splitters” argument that is one thing, but ignoring the evidence of evolution isn’t doing anything.
As has been mentioned, the formation of fossils is rare, but there are species where the evolutionary path is quite clear. Horses, for example can be seen going from 5 toed animals in the distant past to the 1 toed animals they are today. If course modern evolution can be seen in drug resistant diseases.
That is actually a good question. How do creationists explain the emergance of drug resistant strains of, lets say, TB?
And we have copious fossil evidence, not complete fossil evidence. Really, the distinction is not so petty as you want it to seem.
We see microevolution occur, no contest.
We have a theory of macroevolution.
We have some very good evidence of macroevolution.
Complete evidence of macroevolution can never be found.
A more complete set of fossil records is being found.
Yes, millions of years of evolution. What, you expect us to literally unearth that amount of evidence in 150 years? AND study it?