Stir in Natural Selection, yields one Theory of Evolution.
You’ve just described exactly how evolution works. Evolution is, as you put it, “selective breeding” with the selection occuring in nature.
HideHo–
Despite the general tone of the responses to your OP, I for one do get the impression that you are sincerely seeking an axchange on this matter. If that is the case, I’ll read Behe’s book, to try to gain a better understanding of your viewpoint, if you are willing to add to your knowledge base. Your statement that there is insufficient evidence to support evolution is simply, and emphatically, incorrect. Read a couple of the following titles, and then I’d sincerely be interested in your response.
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner
River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins
I’m gonna play stupid here.
We have fossil records of “man” in progressive stages of development. We have cro-magnum, neanderthal, etc. Okay, granted, there are some “missing links”, as it would be very difficult to create one harmonious set of steps in the very short period of time that serious investigation into fossil records has been done. What am I missing?
The burden of proof is not not necessary. Based on the evidence, what can we reasonably conclude?
I understand that the crux of the arguement is that interspecies change doesn’t occur. That must be the crux, so let’s stick to that point. Obviously, arguing that natural selection doesn’t exist would be foolish. The influenza virus prooves this every year, as it mutates to survive the previous years’ influenza vaccine created antibodies.
So, let’s say it’s the interspecies thing we are stuck on.
What would be looking for as “proof” of, or at least evidence of, interspecies evolution? What seperates species? If different creatures mate and their offspring can reproduce, bingo, new species. How do you “see” that transition in fossil records? How does it appear as evidence? We are down to the cellular level now. Digging up fossils is easy. We see extinction, and we see new species starting at different times. Getting at the matter as an issue of subtle changes that determine whether fertile offspring can be reproduced ain’t gonna be easy!
So many creatures are sooo closely related (aka Chimps and Humans). It is my understadning that no other animals are more closely related genetically than chimps and humans. Genetically speaking, the difference is frightingly small. We either have a very similar lineage with subtle changes over millions of years, or a creator put very little effort into separating the design of the two species. Less effort than went into seperating any other two species! Heck! If there is creator, he took some old blue prints and touched them up a teeny bit…and BAM…humans.
Transitions are terribly subtle, not sudden.
Well, I am glad to have real arguments against it. Thanks, DRS and pldennison.
Also, I’ve said from the beginning that this isn’t a creationist argument, just an argument against Darwin.
The book mentioned by pldennison from a quote on the Amazon.com Review "Rather, he argues that in a truly open-minded assessment of Darwin’s evolution, there emerges a living manifestation of the divine wisdom that made possible a universe of living creatures acting on unscripted impulses. "
For the sake of clarity, I’ve lurked for a long time, nothing will get people to read a thread like a line such as ‘who’s more evolved, the black or white humans?’.
Now, the main argument against Darwin isn’t that creatures change, as they do. Humans have less hair, more brains than we used to (so is assumed). But I have two problems with the Darwin theory, one which is the interspecies change (from say, ameoba to human). It’s not to say I think of myself too highly that I can’t come from an ameoba, as I resemble them greatly. It’s the fact that the sheer amount of changes needed are amazing, and that some changes are very infeasable from a chemical standpoint. The fact that many of the systems are interdependent make the possibilities of these changes happenening extremely slim (I’ve seen numbers as low as 1/10^46,000 on this, but I don’t have the source, so I won’t say that THIS is the number).
The other idea is that we are just a big accident from lightning hitting the sea or what have you. The possibility of this is even lower, as all of these chemicals and protiens happening to come together in the one exact configuration that would work is so low as to be statistically impossible.
What I am looking for is proof that ‘Yes, here is the missing link (any two separate species will do)’ or someone to setup a lightning machine in some distilled water and make life.
Screw that, what the hell was all that stuff with the Tortoise about?
Sorry, replys coming in faster than I can respond. Suffice to say, I’ll look into the books that I can, as I am curious about it.
Btw: tortis - sure, theoretically, a tortis can make it across the road. It’s chances are damn slim. IE, chances of evolution are damn slim (the author assumes you got the point and doesn’t spell it out like that in the book).
Anyways, the argument with the eyes was not only that a lense was needed, but that such a great chemical change was needed that it’s like saying that photosensitive cells were changing into livers. We’ve driven pldennison and lissener insane still using this, so I’ll refrain from this futher till I read the website listed.
A large part of evolution is at what point can a single species no longer mate with itself and become another species? There was the idea of two different species making a third. Are humans the offspring of Chimps and Dolphins? If we came from monkeys, why aren’t we backwards compatable? Who was the first person that couldn’t have sex with his peers? If it was a whole area that had it’s apes evolving into humans, why did there still seem to be chimps in the same areas as the first humans at the same time?
Also, glad to see a few people arguing in a serious matter, and the fact that no one here is a Biochemist, or God (right?) so we’re going on what we believe and others tell us, not our own experience, so you can’t make me take insults personally so nyaaaa 
I have some reading to do, so I’ll try to pick those up and check out the websites. I suggest you do the same.
You’re describing what is known as abiogenesis here (lit. “life from nothing”). And Chuck Darwin never ever discussed the ultimate origin of life on Earth. Evolution doesn’t generally deal with how live came about, it deals with how life behaves and changes.
You will never get a “missing link.” There is no one species that separates you from an amoeba. In fact, the term “missing link” is a falsehood in and of itself, used now by Creationists who refuse to understand that evolution is a process rather than a means to an end.
To continue to insist on emphasizing the A to Z leap rather than the A to B to C to D . . .* process* strikes me more and more as just plain dishonest. You’re willfully reframing it so as it make it more difficult to understand, rather than looking at it in such a way that you can understand it.
This is like saying your brain can’t encompass the leap from stone wheel to space shuttle. Well, then don’t skip so many freakin’ steps if you’re honestly trying to understand the process!
And this is like telling a lotto that there’s no way he could’ve won. He did, we did evolve. Now use that as a tool to understand the math, rather than using your inability to understand the math as an excuse to deny the existence of the lotto winner looking at you from the mirror.
I would think this image would sit pretty well with the denialists: the Hand of God and all that.
The Myth of the Missing Link has been covered and covered and covered and covered. Read this thread before you trot out this tired old red herring.
So, you won’t believe the fact of evolution until other branches of science have developed the technological advances that will allow them to create life? Great argument. :rolleyes:
What the…? It’s been an hour and a half and David B. still hasn’t shown up to fight his favorite fight against ignorance? Must be on a long lunch.
To address two points I see in preview:
There is no such thing as a “missing link.” You will never find one because every single thing is one. This is a red herring thrown out by evolution deniers. What qualities exactly are you looking for in such an animal anyway? What do you think a so-called missing link between humans and non-human primates would be like?
Also, biogenesis and evolution are separate, albeit related, theories. And as far as the number of changes being too large, might I remind you how many billions of years this took? There are over six billion humans on this planet, and we are just one species. If you look at how many billions of years the planet has been around, how many species there are and were (not that we have any kind of accurate account of this), and how many individuals comprised the populations of all these species, then you might have cause to rethink how unlikely it is that these changes could have occurred.
Again, this statement is about your lack of understanding; it’s not the weak link in evolution you think it is.
Species don’t evolve from each other in sequence; they don’t just replace one another. Evolution is like a branching bush, not a ladder: the common ancestor of chimps and humans, by parenting those two branches, is under no obligation to leave the stage. If they die out it’s because they are no longer the best suited to compete for their niche, not because they have evolutionary offspring.
**HideoHo wrote:
The other idea is that we are just a big accident from lightning hitting the sea or what have you. The possibility of this is even lower, as all of these chemicals and protiens happening to come together in the one exact
configuration that would work is so low as to be statistically impossible.
What I am looking for is proof that ‘Yes, here is the missing link (any two separate species will do)’ or someone
to setup a lightning machine in some distilled water and make life.**
An important point I think you’re missing HideoHo is that individuals DO NOT evolve. Species DO evolve, populations DO evolve. You say that for a particular mutation or chemical step to occur, the odds are very low for something like that to occur. Very true. But if I have 1 thousand or 1 million members of a species doing it, suddenly the chance of occurance becomes very probable.
Here’s a real world example. Take 4 6-sided die. What are the odds of you (by yourself) getting all of the 6s to show up on one throw? Pretty high, eh? Now take 100 people and give them all 4 6-sided die and let them toss them at the same time. You see my point?
It’s the same thing with the chemicals coming together to form the first living cell. At any particular instance, at any particular time, the odds are pretty low. Now consider a whole OCEAN full of those chemicals over a period of say 1 million years. The odds suddenly become favorable for it.
As for seeing a species in transition, I don’t have the site, but there’s a famous fossil that shows the body of a lizard with bird wings. Anyone know where a pic of that can be found on the web?
I think the aspect which , for one reason or another, you continue to misunderstand is simply this. It’s not that chances of life evolving from this prehistoric chemical soup are extremely small and infeazable (as you like to speculate). It’s that the lack of our current understanding of this ecology which spans millions of years in time does not immediately compell us to assume that supernatural forces are at play. Just because one does not understand something does not mean it is is un-knowable or devine. It just means we have not unlocked it’s sectrets yet. Give it time HedeoHo, give it time. Life did not evolve in one day (or six for that matter). It will take humanity some time to answer many of these questions.
So the missing link is a red herring? Personally, I can’t imagine the jump from amoeba to red herring let alone red herring to human.
HideoHo, I sense that you are seriously interested, but just ignorant and miinformed about evolution. Here are some of your misstatements and misunderstandings, which explain why it is that you probably don’t accept evolution.
First of all, I highly doubt that you have read Behe’s book. If you had, you would have known that Behe accepts common descent through natural selection. He simply believes that some structures are so irreducably complex as to require a designer. While Behe has greatly muddled the issue by voluntarily cozying up with creationists, he does indeed accept evolution.
Secondly, there is no such thing as more or less evolved. We are all equally evolved.
Thirdly, you say that breeding horses is not real evolution, just a change in percentage of traits. That’s exactly how biologists define evoultion! The exact definition is “a change in allelle frequency over time,” i.e., change in the percentage of traits! It may not be speciation, but it is evolution.
Okay, this is another problem. You truly fail to understand what evolution says. Humans did not evolve from amoebas. We share a common ancestor with them. The number of changes needed for evolution to occur is actually quite small. I believe that 100 darwins is the rate of mutation necessary to turn a mouse into an elephant in 10,000 years. Mutation rates of up to 80,000 thousand have been observed in the laboratory. So this is certainly not a problem for evolution.
Your numbers on abiogenesis are also b.s. We don’t know how abiogensis occurred, so we can’t peg odds onto it. See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html for how these calculations are done, and why they are specious.
This is such a misunderstanding of evolution I don’t even know where to begin to correct it. Speciation has been observed to occur in nature and in the laboratory, so arguing against it is rather futile. I’ve never heard of the idea that two species mate to make a third, except for hybrids like mules which are ususally sterile. Humans are not the offspring of chimps and dolphins. If that’s what your perception of evolution is, no wonder you don’t accept it. There was no first person who couldn’t have sex with his peers, because speciation is ususally a group, rather than individual thing. Think of language changes over time. Old English is practically unrecognizable and incomprehensible to us Modern English speakers. So, who was the first person who spoke so differently that he couldn’t communicate with his peers? Do you realize the absurdity of this question now?
I don’t understand your last question so I can’t answer it. It sounds like it has something to do with sympatric and allopatric speciation, but I’m not sure, so I’ll let you restate it more clearly.
Anyway, the point of all of this is to clear off your misconceptions, and learn what evolutionary theory really teaches before you reject it.
I’ma plagiarize that one. Very nice.
Unfortunatly, I have work to do, so this is the last post today.
The chances of the spontanious life occurance was calculated as 1/ largest number ever (number of times every hydrogen electron has gone around it’s nucleous since the beginning of time) and while this is still a chance, not a statistically possible one. Again, being at work, I don’t have which book this is from, though I can get that for you.
Another point of contention, I’m thinking in too large of a step. At what point does a single cell organism go to two or more cells? We’ve been working with bacteria for years, growing it and had millions of generations yet we’ve not seen advances in these bacterias other than having immunities to certain antibiotics. Why?
Anyways, I’ll see you later, try not to flame to so hard that I gotta look this thread up in the pit later.
It sounds like the typical questions of “if human evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?”. The answer of course, is that humans did not evolve from modern apes…humans and apes had a common ancestor.
Well, to be perfectly accurate, some of us are “going on” a huge body of evidence collected in a scientific manner by a large number of researchers. And others of us are attempting to “disprove” evolution based on an imperfect and inaccurate idea of the topic and one biased and flawed work by an author without substantive credentials and a reputation for deception and obfuscation.
Determining who is who is left as an exercise for the reader.
OK, then, using the same logic:
There are 26[sup]7[/sup], or 10,460,353,203 different combinations of 7 letters (not even counting capitals and lowercase as different, or including punctuation).
so the odds of you choosing “HideoHo” as your user name are incredibly small. Therefore, using the same logic, I conclude that it is highly unlikely that you are really “HideoHo”, and in fact, you probably don’t exist.
Now can you see how foolish this argument is?
. . . or, if evolution were true, why aren’t rabbits green?
To which I always say, “Why can’t they fly? or swim? why don’t they have humongous, venomous fangs? Because they work.” Or something probably a lot more well thought out and eloquent.