Are there any flaws in the Theory of Evolution?

I would say traits can evolve that aren't useful. Those traits will survive in part of the population as long as they aren't detrimental. When they become beneficial then they start to spread throughout the population as those without the trait start to lose out.

genetic drift and adaptation and such things as protein "folding and rearrangement" are independent of each other mostly. Adaptation may act on genetic drift but , just as well, an individual could spawn an entire new sepecies. Genetic drift assumes a small population undergoing small changes over time . These changes are unrelated to environmentally driven benefits or detriments accruing to the genes in the population (Read-adaptation). I just quoted the tail end of the definition from the genetics and evolution tech glossary.

Oh. You were referring to the entire population drifting over time not the variations in the genetics within the population.

The lines get very grey when we start talking about traits that start to dominate a population but there is no specific benefit we can identify that drives that change. But that's kind of the whole point. Evolution doesn't need an intelligent design purpose for changes to occur.

I agree with your thesis; traits can evolve in cultures that may not be useful for their survival.

the new arena is Intelvolution which draws all its strength of purpose from some story of the "Creation" and it then stops with the progress of life as if to say, thats all God letting things happen until he needs to become involved.If the people who thought that was would keep to thmselves and not intrude into science education until they have some evidence to present. HOWEVER, evidence is, to them, merely some elitist creed.

SO, in most cases, scientists just ignore em and that doesnt help the situation, because they are busy with their little games of mendacity and fraud.

The title of "hopeful monster" was a trait that, once developed by reassembly or drift in an organism, was retained in the genome because it wasnt lethal , but it wasnt conferring any advantage . Once the environment changes then it perhaps becomes an adaptational and therefore beneficial trait.

I think thats what parados had in mind.

The only "flaw" with evolution is that fundamentalists simply can't figure out how to work their god into it.

The random character of the process scares the **** out of them boys . . .

Which theory of evolution do you man? There are many theories of evolution, some of which contradict each other---see, for example, the controversies between Richard Dawkins and Steven Jay Gould. Because they can't all be true, at most one of those theories will survive. All the other ones will eventually stand revealed as flawed; science will discard them when they do.

But whichever theory of evolution will prevail, it won't make creationists happy. All contenders are unanimous on the key points:

• The age of the Earth is measured in billions of years, not in thousands.
  
  
• All surviving life forms have common ancestors, which lived millions and billions of years ago.
  
  
• Ultimately, we humans are all Africans.
  
  
• More specifically, we humans are all African apes.

All these points are facts of history, established by evidence beyond all reasonable doubt. No flaw has been discovered in any of them.

You seem to have summed it up nicely. Id only add one more bullit.

5. No xcientific data or evidence exists that refutes any of the above.

Down feathers could develop that way but not flight feathers. Flight feathers would be worthless for insulation and the difference between them and down feathers is just gigantic.

The real question is, how the hell did the first flying bird "evolve" flight feathers only on his wings where he needed them, and not on his head, his dick, and his ass in the bargain??

Wrong again, Gunga. Non-flying ancestral dinosaur populations had both down feathers and "feather" feathers, not flight feathers but similar in structure, and the structures that would anchor feathers have evolutionary antecedents that can be traced all the way back to fish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_flight#Evolution_of_bird_flight

You will find that, even in the face of well documented and carefully reserched evidence, gunga will , for some reason, always default to the other side of an issue where there may be some myth or "campfire story" to provide him with a hypothesis. Despite all of the mounds of evidence about the development of feathers on saurichian dinosaurs and all birds, and the tons of fossil evidence for that interpretation, gunga acts like some alien who hasnt heard of any of it but has his own, evidence-free, homegrown stories to dissemenate among us.

Gunga thinks of science as some left wing plot to take over his precious bodily fluids. Ive been watching this "reality" show on the NAt Geo channel and its called "Doomsday Preppers". Its about folks who are building all sorts of storage cahes and defense perimeters to serve them when the entire world goes to hell. There was one guy who reminded me of gunga. He was quick to buy anything of an incredible nature and he made sure that his worldviiew would remain and be spread through the remainder of the population that may survive. He, thereofre, doesnt buy anything about evolution but he will avail himself of darwins mechanism when the dust settles.

YAzzah gunga is ourn

As usual, Gunga's idiocy assumes intent--as though saurians were bound and determined to learn flight, but had to "evolve" the mechanism necessary to the process. Any saurian which "evolved" pinions on their dick or their ass wasn't going to learn to fly--they would have been evolutionary dead ends. The ones on whom pinions grew on the arms were the ones who would eventually fly.

Gunga asks what he thinks are clever rhetorical questions because he constantly assumes intent. He can't imagaine a world without a guiding intellect, so he dismisses anything for which he can't imagine purpose.

I once sent a student some ideas for a paper using math to support the concept that evolution was not an infinite number of choices in a finite time period. It became a mathematical expansion which, according to thelaws of an expansion (it was a limits fiunction), the function actually became a "BAUPLAN" for something like evolution. The idea was that an infinite set of factors, becomes ever so less infinite as each successive step is made. SAy that an infinite set of numbers breaks into two subsets . These now have a declining balance of {(Infinite series A)}-1 and {(Infinite series B)}-1, SO (Infinite series A becomes infinite series A -1 and (-2) and also becomes INFINITE SERIES (A-n) - 1 [and so on and so on- a computer helps when you run tghis **** for a million years . so, initially both sets are no longer infinite series and each has its own separate declining balance or "BAuplan". Thats about as "Intelligent designable" of a way to make evolution an inevitability. As each successive descendant is appearing, that descendent starts an entirely new declining balance series where the actual number of morphological options to evolve become limited for that one guy.

It was as simple as I could make it and I used the methods by which "Bar codes " (the original versions) used to be put on things. Within each bar sequence the number symbols, were a bunch of series that could be changed and made to decline as , say, the number of varieties of beans or bean mixtures and preps became limiting. BUT the number of varieties of corn may be expanded so the bar code only had to change the bar that represented the SPECIES (or in this case corn instead of beans) Both were vegetables So a bar for vegetable , .
This is just like a bar for DINOSAURIAN and then a sub bar for SAURISCHIAN and another for ORNITHISCHIAN and so on.
SO the point was that all these "Infinite varieties " and infinite unrelated mechanisms that gunga is always bullshitting us about, are instread quite limiting. Once a body's type of skin is selected (muscular papillae or goose pimples) then the type of coverings become limitingFOR EXMPLE <YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE , our selectiions today include down or feathers) If you choose feathers you must CHOOSE ONE -- flight or general feathers ( if you choose flight feathers you must CHOOSE ONE--either feathers on yer dick or under yer armpits.
Of course Im being facetious and the choices werent available but had to be developed IN ORDER OF NEED but the declining balance and the ultimate limiting series of BAuplans is reached and only looks like its being "Directed" by an intelligence from a MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK pov. Yet the declining balance approach (this aint my thinking its been the way that evo/devo has been working for a long time) answers so elegantly two big manifestations of evolution. These are:

A. Look at all the dead fossils of forms that were "Sorta" the same yet different in some apparently minor manner. The dead fossils were the "trial balloons " or the "hopeful monsters" who didnt work for that environment. All were on some declining balance of morphological options presented them. (for example, once you started growing a beaklike labial area your teeth became kida useless so the declining balance approach lets teeth disappear (except for traces that still exist in the embryo where teeth biuds in chickens are quite common). THis answers the assertion that "If the Intelliegent designer ws so fuckin smart, whats all this **** littering up the fossil record. Weve really got a fossil record full of "biological Edsels".The very existence of the fossil record is the most powerful argument against a Creator


B. WHY, in totally different life forms, do certain features converge over and over
Like bats and flying squirrels and birds and flying dragons, and pterodactyls all evolved an answer to a problem slightly differently yet all to do the approximate same thing.

Like elephants, mastodons,m ammoths and male elephant seals and koati mundi all have proboscususus's that serve different purposes yet developed similarly. ALL have dense musculature and sense organs in their proboscii,
ALSO, and lastly, "sabre toothness" evolved locally in several lionine felids and carnivore marsupials.ALL were a solution to a similar problem for a different Bauplan.


The "Crazed designer" with a rubicks cube of a plan book is how I tell the story of apparent "Intelligent design" to students now. Instead of getting all fired up about a "perfectly designed world, and that mathematics denies evolution", I say that most all Mathematics, is " desired Outcome based" (except for game statistics) I can set up several arguments that use perfectly reasonable mathematics to prove a totally ridiculous outcome. MATH CAN EASILY BE CORRUPTED BY THE END USER . Its easy. All you have to do is set up a condition that starts out with a precept like"

A . Its impossible to "evolve a morphological functional as a flying bird because of all the independent STEPS required to achieve "flying birdness"

B The math then is easy, you just set up infinite decision trees and afinite time (Youll always lose when you stack a deck thusly). OR, more often, you set up a large number of "steps" and then assign "hit frequencies" as if each step were an independent decision (and you know that its not). Thats why these guys come up with some of these analyses that say to evelove a biord in flight is a possibility of a frequency of 1X 10 -39

ORRRR

You can look at the evolution of anything as a declining balance of options that, once set in motion each successive step is marching toward some unknown end point that is only a function of nat selection, environment mutation, and sexual selection .

Its not at all teleological in nature because most thinking people reject the concept of ultimate form or purpose. The CReationists are fond of the "watch on the heath presuming a watchmaker" bullshit. I ve a;ways countered that with another set of options. Lets look at the modern automobile. Did Henry Ford have any idea that hed be installing a GPS and computer controlled backup system or even air conditioning when he built his everymans car? NO, but the BAUPLAN of the car remains essentially this rolling box with 4 wheels and all the gizmos therein are TECHNOLOGICALLY EVOLVED with each step of advancing technology. A car is a perfect example of declining balance or expansion or limit theory driving the consequential forms. A car will become extinct when we discover a whole new means of transportation theory

Im just doing some early morning venting becasuse Im a bit dismayed that gunga, who appears smart (really hes no dummy) embraces this bullshit that, by his very own arguments, are totally demolisheable by his own methods (math doesnt deny evolution. Its The mathematicians who deny evolution" and then they jigger their math to make it say what they want it to say. Thats fraud its not science. The old grade school problem that we used to prove that 1 is equal to 2 is a problem that is based upon faulty reasoning that, once we see the error we all say OH YEH thats bullshit. Well, we need to remind gunga of the same thing about his worldview.
His worldview is one where His priests, not nature, have set the rules of his game.

I suggest that Gunga Dim's ideological blueprint is just that, ideology and not religion. I suspect he doesn't give a rat's ass about religion, but that he rants against evolution because it is anathema to extreme right-wing partisan policy.

yet he is a student of such idiocy as the Worldwide Flood, and a Yound Earth.

Do you even need to postulate an asymptotic limit? Depending on how you set up the original equations you still end up with evolution being inevitable, as long as the second law holds and any little Maxwell demons stay home. This article has a very elegant expression for evolution and the 2nd law.
http://www.physorg.com/news137679868.html

Funny you brought this up today - only last night I was testing some models for stability conditions and posted the illustration on Roberta's animal thread!
http://able2know.org/topic/89445-622#post-4903632

Aside from the fact that Wikipedia is worthless for controversial topics, there is no such thing as a "feather feather(TM)".

Flight feathers have structure which provides strength and this involves a complex interlacing pattern of barbs and barbules. They also rotate so as to open and close like Venetian blinds on upstrokes and down strokes and, without that system would be useless.

There is no decent explanation as to how anything could evolve those kinds of feathers only on the one part of his body which needs them.

There is a very decent explanation gunga. You just want to stick your fingers in your ears and yell "NA, NA, NA, NA" whenever anyone gives you that explanation.