# Non-creationist Legitimate Arguments to Charles Darwin's Theory Of Evolution **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 12, 2004, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796 "2004-02-12T05:08:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/41 "2004-02-16T17:11:36Z")
> [@Who Stole My Name?](#): > > What response do you have to this guy? > [Lloyd Pye](http://www.lloydpye.com/A-Literal.htm) This Pye guy’s not for real, is he? He displays such a dearth of knowledge of what he’s talking about I’m surprised his brain hasn’t died from starvation. Let’s look at his pathetic attempt at Socratic Dialogue on the topic: > [@](#): > > In any population of plants or animals, over time random genetic mutations will occur. Most will be detrimental, some will have a neutral effect, and some will confer a selective advantage, however small or seemingly inconsequential it might appear. > > Really? But wouldn’t the overall population have a gene pool deep enough to absorb and dilute even a large change? Wouldn’t a small change rapidly disappear? How quaint, interpreting the “gene pool” to be an actual body of liquid. What exactly is this absorption and dilution he talks about? I will go out on a limb and venture that he means any mutation will disappear through interbreeding with non-mutated specimens. Really? So mutations always result in recessive traits. What an interesting non-fact! He also has no idea what the hell natural selction is about, as I mentioned in my previous post. Whatever he interprets having a “deep gene pool” to mean, if the mutated version offers an advantage to the organisms in living long enough to breed, particularly if they breed first and exploit the local environment more successfully, then no, a new trait will not be “absorbed and diluted.” > [@](#): > > What kind of mutations were you talking about being absorbed? > > Small, absolutely random changes in base pairs at the gene level. > > Really? Why not at the chromosome level? Wouldn’t change at the base pair level be entirely too small to create any significant change? Wouldn’t a mutation almost have to be at the chromosome level to be noticeable? Changes at the base pair level are too small to create a noticeable difference? If Watson and Crick weren’t both inconveniently alive, they’d be rolling in their graves! Depending on which base pair is altered, you may end up with a completely different protein, which may result in an entirely revolutionary chemical reaction, which may or may not result in EXTREMELY noticeable differences in the organism. Pye has not the first clue about the topic at hand. Once you display that, your arguments are worthless. ---
**Author:** ![olanv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3ec8ea/32.png) [@olanv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/olanv)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2004, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/42 "2004-02-16T20:05:26Z")
Survival of the fittest… Is survival fit? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2004, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/43 "2004-02-17T04:02:25Z")
> [@Darwin's Finch](#): > > … In good times, there can be a great deal of overlap in the diets of, for example, the small, medium, and large ground finches, making those specializations less important. In lean times, the beak size of one of those finches plays a major role in the bird’s fate. Those that survive live to pass on their traits to further generations, and the ebb and flow of those changes in a population has likewise been documented. Isn’t it the case that for birds and other animals with short maturation times, it’s always pretty much “lean times?” In other words, it there is a lot of food the survival rate of young is high and the animals, population quickly builds up to the capacity of the niche to support it. Wasn’t this the theme of Malthus which started Darwin, and Wallace, thinking about the effect on survival of the “fit” of characteristics to the environment? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2004, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/44 "2004-02-17T08:30:35Z")
> [@](#): > > How quaint, interpreting the “gene pool” to be an actual body of liquid. What exactly is this absorption and dilution he talks about? I will go out on a limb and venture that he means any mutation will disappear through interbreeding with non-mutated specimens. Really? So mutations always result in recessive traits. What an interesting non-fact! Actually, he’s wrong for a much more fundamental simpler reason. It’s a mistake to think of a few mutants surviving and then breeding their traits into the rest of the population. What the major mechanism isn’t based on mutants at all, it’s based on a skewed selection of wide variation. i.e., in a single population, there is a wide range in the length of a beak. If a longer beak is advantageous, then the next breeding generation will be skewed towards those birds with longer beaks. The birds with longer beaks aren’t special “mutants” (though variation often originally comes from small mutations), and in fact are not necessarily any more mutants than any other bird. They are just on the advantageous end of a wide and diverse range. So there is no “dilution effect” to worry about in the first place, because it’s the entire POPULATION that moves in a particular direction, not just a few mutants leading the way and hopefully coming to dominate the breeding population. A chance beneficial mutation isn’t impossible as a mechanism for advancement, but it’s very unlikely, and evolution does not in any sense rest on that sort of pathway. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2004, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/45 "2004-02-17T20:48:55Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > Isn’t it the case that for birds and other animals with short maturation times, it’s always pretty much “lean times?” In other words, it there is a lot of food the survival rate of young is high and the animals, population quickly builds up to the capacity of the niche to support it. Wasn’t this the theme of Malthus which started Darwin, and Wallace, thinking about the effect on survival of the “fit” of characteristics to the environment? This is correct. The main point of that section of my post, however (which I may not have made too clear) is that the on-and-off hybridization of the finches is consistent with a recent speciation event, rather than mere specialization based on beak size. ---
**Author:** ![KJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b2d939/32.png) [@KJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KJ)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2004, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/46 "2004-02-17T23:02:51Z")
I believe in natural selection (although I won’t claim to be an expert about it) but I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment and talk about a discussion my environmental science class had during my senior year in high school. Somehow, we got to talking about poison dart frogs that kill their predators when they are eaten. Having this particular trait would technically ensure the survival of the species as a whole (once the predators learned to avoid the frogs…or rather, once the predators who _didn’t_ learn to avoid them got “selected out” by eating them.) But the dilemma that sparked the class discussion was, even if it benefitted the species, there was no way this could benefit an individual frog. Whether the frog got eaten before or after it reproduced, it made no difference to its future offspring. I tried to come up with a counterargument in class, but I wasn’t able to come up with more than a vague hypothetical scenario in which the frogs happened to evolve this poison hormone by chance, before there were any predators in the habitat. I don’t know if that argument has any merit, though. So, does this one have a rational explanation? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2004, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/47 "2004-02-17T23:55:10Z")
> [@KJ](#): > > Somehow, we got to talking about poison dart frogs that kill their predators when they are eaten. Having this particular trait would technically ensure the survival of the species as a whole (once the predators learned to avoid the frogs…or rather, once the predators who _didn’t_ learn to avoid them got “selected out” by eating them.) But the dilemma that sparked the class discussion was, even if it benefitted the species, there was no way this could benefit an individual frog. Whether the frog got eaten before or after it reproduced, it made no difference to its future offspring. > > So, does this one have a rational explanation? This one is easy. The frog who dies shares a lot of genetic material with its brothers and sisters. If it eliminates a predator while dying, there is greater chance that its siblings will survive than if the predator is still around to eat some more. Read _The Selfish Gene_ for a lot more on this. ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2004, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/48 "2004-02-18T05:52:01Z")
> [@KJ](#): > > I believe in natural selection (although I won’t claim to be an expert about it) but I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment and talk about a discussion my environmental science class had during my senior year in high school. Somehow, we got to talking about poison dart frogs that kill their predators when they are eaten. Having this particular trait would technically ensure the survival of the species as a whole (once the predators learned to avoid the frogs…or rather, once the predators who _didn’t_ learn to avoid them got “selected out” by eating them.) But the dilemma that sparked the class discussion was, even if it benefitted the species, there was no way this could benefit an individual frog. Whether the frog got eaten before or after it reproduced, it made no difference to its future offspring. > > I tried to come up with a counterargument in class, but I wasn’t able to come up with more than a vague hypothetical scenario in which the frogs happened to evolve this poison hormone by chance, before there were any predators in the habitat. I don’t know if that argument has any merit, though. > > So, does this one have a rational explanation? Another explanation - initially, the “darts” aren’t really _poisonous_. Just _nauseating_. So predators may still eat these frogs, although they may be somewhat sick after their meal (about the evolutionary stage McD is at, actually ;)). However, in areas where the stuff is even slightly more potent, predators will be somewhat more leery of eating the frogs. Over a long time, an advantage to “stronger” poison accrues - until all that’s left is really poisonous frogs. Dani ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/49 "2004-02-19T19:38:54Z")
> [@KJ](#): > > Somehow, we got to talking about poison dart frogs that kill their predators when they are eaten. The resolution to your problem is likely much simpler than what has thus far been presented: poison dart frogs don’t poison predators upon being _eaten_, merely by being put in a predator’s mouth. You taste a PDF, you get a dose of nasty poison and spit the sucker out. If you survive, you learn, based on the frog’s bright coloring, that “bright colored frogs = bad”, and leave other such frogs alone. If you die, well, you also leave other such frogs alone. The poison dart frog’s poison is a contact poison, not an ingestion poison, which is why they are used to coat poison darts in the first place. This is also why these frogs are handled with much care (often by using leaves to pick them up) by those who use them to poison their darts. The poison thus serves as an effective deterrent and survival aid to an individual frog. ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2004, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/50 "2004-02-19T23:31:08Z")
> [@](#): > > The poison dart frog’s poison is a contact poison, not an ingestion poison, which is why they are used to coat poison darts in the first place. This is also why these frogs are handled with much care (often by using leaves to pick them up) by those who use them to poison their darts. The poison thus serves as an effective deterrent and survival aid to an individual frog. Of course it is also possible they have always been poisonus, but didnt have any predators until a recent event brought them together. They may have always existed as peacefull poisonous frogs, its just that nothing around them was trying to eat them 🙂 However, im with Wendell (I think that was his name) from Bloom County: “the universe is just to orderly to be unplanned!!” ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2004, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/51 "2004-02-20T01:34:36Z")
If one is talking about active arguments in the evolution field, I read papers about them every day. Diversity of gene orthologs and homologs, large scale chromosome reorganization in speciation, barriers to speciation, divergence of noncoding DNA, roles of noncoding apparently nonfunctional DNA, especially heterochromatin, the origins of genomic complexity, etc. The list is very long, and if you have questions about these fields I would be glad to read them. It is conceivable that discoveries in any of these debates may give us an insight to how species change, or may even overturn the entire school of the molecular mechanisms behind neo-Darwinism. Darwin just stated that species do change with time. This is a simple fact that has been observed over and over again. To ask if there are any arguments that will overturn this is like asking if there are any arguments that will overturn the theory of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. If anyone is interested and has a bit of a scientific background, I read a pretty interesting review today about the evolution/developmental biology of the eye. It doesn’t report anything stunning, but it is a good summary that thoroughly trashes any concept that the eye is too complex to have evolved using standard principles. Here is a [link](http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/ijdb20034778/ft563.pdf) to the PDF. It is from a special issue of International Journal of Developmental Biology devoted to evo/devo. The same issue has two other free articles about the origin of the nervous system [here](http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/ijdb20034778/ft555.pdf) and [segmentation](http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/ijdb20034778/ft583.pdf) – I haven’t read these but I plan to. ---
**Author:** ![Belrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e56c9b/32.png) [@Belrick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belrick)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/52 "2004-02-20T02:36:21Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > “the universe is just to orderly to be unplanned!!” If you took a glass jar full of dirt and stones and shook it then the stones will arrange themselves into piles. Sign of god? I actually believe the orderly world we live in is proof of lack of ID. The world changes. We know this. If a God had created world A and filled it with lifeform range B then the world C were living in today would be chaos with many means of existance unfilled etc. ---
**Author:** ![JS\_Princeton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/57b2e6/32.png) [@JS\_Princeton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JS_Princeton)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/53 "2004-02-20T23:23:24Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > However, im with Wendell (I think that was his name) from Bloom County: > > “the universe is just to orderly to be unplanned!!” Depends on what you mean by planned. It’s a fallacious anthropomorphic conceit to claim that because the universe is understandable it must be designed in the same way we as human beings design environments. This is a horrendously undistributed middle. Being part of the universe means that you are going to be able to interact with it. In other words, a universe that follows physical laws indicates not a design but rather a lack thereof. Your ability to design is a feature of the universe: your universe is not a feature of ability to design. Or, to put it another, what Belrick said. ---
**Author:** ![Blornx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@Blornx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blornx)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/54 "2004-02-21T02:00:44Z")
I wouldn’t consider meteorites smashing into the Earth to be very orderly. In fact some of them have made quite a huge mess of things such as life. But the Earth, being less than perfectly stable, keeps on shaking its booty (via weather, geologic events, etc) and gradually things such as life settle back to relative conformist orderliness. Keep it shaking, Earth, we love you. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2004, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796/55 "2004-02-21T07:17:47Z")
I think the OP isn’t going to get very far, in that asking for counter-Darwinian arguments here on the Boards is ever so slightly akin to asking the Pope for his doubts about the New Testament. However, with an exciting leap of imagination which would never occur to anyone else I went to (gasp!) Google and searched on “Non-creationist opposition Darwinism”. Up popped this site: [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html) which attempts to classify the spectrum of opinion from Creationism to Darwinism and provides ‘Further Reading’ links for most. Fill your boots. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-creationist-legitimate-arguments-to-charles-darwins-theory-of-evolution/228796.md?page=2)