Marley, forgive me if this belongs in ATMB, but I don’t think debating evolutionary theory is out of place here. From the OP:
The last sentence was merely intended to forestall a Xtians sucks! / Scientists are spawn of Mephistopheles! situation.
Why?
I’m ignoring the mod notice at this point, but I think I’m well within the intent of the thread.
(Taking from your original post)
Well there’s your poblem. That is not what the theory of evolution is. What you are talking about is your own interpretation of something that isn’t even evolution. As others have said, you seem to be talking about abiogenesis.
Because he has yet to show us what he does know about evolution-which is the initial purpose of this thread.
Silverstreak Wonder, please tell us what you know about evolution.
I saw Silverstreak Wonder’s topic as being separate from the one Skald the Rhymer proposed, but if everyone’s okay with it being included, I’m happy to waive it. Party on, Wayne.
Silverstreak Wonder, if you would post what you do know about evolution, it would be a helpful contribution to the thread.
Yes, he has. The knowledge he has is wrong, that’s all.
I’ve seen a bunch of misleading questions followed by dismissals galore(“Dismissals Galore” was the one woman Bond couldn’t get, btw), but I haven’t seen him post what he himself knows.
The theory of evolution also fails to talk about recipes for clam chowder. That’s because it’s not about recipes for clam chowder. It’s about evolution - about changes over time.
It’s the theory of evolution, not the theory of everything.
This has already been pointed out to you a dozen times, but maybe this rewording will make it get through.
Please quote this post just to demonstrate that you have actually read some of the words in this thread. You don’t have to respond to the content of my post, just click ‘quote.’ If you don’t quote this post, I’ll assume you’re not reading at all.
Nah - his first line was what he thinks he knows about evolution.
I think you’re unclear on what the word data means.
Let me try an analogy. Say the check engine light on my car is on. I take it to the mechanic and he uses the gizmo to check the computer readout; it says that there’s a fuel pump problem, but there are no clear symptoms of that, so the mechanic begins running tests to see if he can pin down the problem. At no point, though, does he ask me how I paid for the car, because it’s irrelevant to the issue at hand.
That’s basically what we mean when we say that the origin of life has nothing to do with the TOE. The TOE is about DIVERSITY of SPECIES.
To be fair to 007, he didn’t care if he got dismiss or datmiss.
<d&r>
It’s already known for sure that this isn’t true. Novel mutations can be and have been observed.
Might as well add my own perspective.
Life is essentially a vehicle for DNA to ensure its own immortality. The DNA’s genotype is a recipe for the phenotype, which essentially has the job of keeping the DNA intact until copies can be made. (That sounds so romantic!) On occasion copy errors are made, and on very rare occasions the error is beneficial to the phenotype. Evolution is when the improved phenotype can outcompete its peers for resources, which includes sexual mates. This propogates the “error” throughout the population, which as a whole gives the population an edge in the environment.
As to evolution vs abiogenesis is concerned, my own personal belief is that there’s not a huge dividing line. Can we create a cell in a lab? No, because a cell itself is a highly evolved form of life. It’s not the starting point of evolution, it’s the result of hundreds of thousands of years of it. Real abiogenesis was when a protein molecule figured out a way to make a copy of itself. The moment that happened, evolution took over.
Good example. In the early 1950s, there were two schools of thought on the origins of lunar craters - volcanoes were never the one accepted answer, but Arthur C. Clarke leaned to them, for example. But the discussion (and I have books from the period) always acknowledged that this was speculation, because the evidence was not in. When the evidence came in, pretty much everyone went with the meteorite hypothesis - and not aware of holdouts, but it could happen.
The evidence is in with regard to evolution. It makes no more sense to believe in creationism than it does to believe that volcanoes are predominantly responsible for lunar craters - but if there was a verse in the Bible about it, I bet there would a lunar vulcanism movement.
While acknowledging that my own (almost certainly flawed) first post to this thread mentioned abiogenesis too. But ::cough cough:: at least I acknowledged the difference.
::Looks furtively about to see if anyone else noticed the self-contradiction. Nope, think I got away with it. Phew::
So did mine. I don’t think it’s a any great problem to acknowledge that abiogenesis and evolution are in fact related topics (one’s the kick-start for the other, and you can’t discuss speciation very long without asking the inevitable question about what the first “species” was).
The problem is when people don’t seem to be able to separate the two as scientific topics. Abiogenesis is an active question: we really don’t know how things got started, although there are a number of plausible hypothesis. Further, because we’re unlikely to ever find “fossils” or other markers of the “first life,” we may never have the evidence to say for sure, even when we manage to do it in the lab (we might have found an alternative mechanism).
Evolution, on the other hand, is as proven as a scientific field can be: it makes active predictions that we can–and have–tested, and has falsifiability conditions that have been tested as well. It’s been witnessed, induced, and prevented in the lab. It’s evident from the fossil record. And as many folks have pointed out, if we assume mutation, reproductive success as a measure of fitness, and variability of fitness to various environments, it’s pretty much a required consequence: how could things NOT evolve under those circumstances?
Using nothing but my own brain, I know nothing about evolution, or math or science, or English.
Whiat I know without reference to other brains:
I am hungry.
I am tired.
I am horny.
I don’t feel good.
That’s it.
And here is the simple beauty of it. obviously nature did set up the right conditions to create life. That and the following evolutionary steps don’t actually depend on you believing it to be true.
Well put. It’s a logical conclusion, rather than a philosophical one.
I think what our friend is saying is that his comprehension of evolution is dependent on proving abiogenesis. But we could then say “hey, add God to the abiogenesis question if you like (for the time being, until contradicted by evidence) - now have a wee think about the mechanism whereby the rest of it arises.”