Why do people deny evolution?

@parados,

I get it Io think. The males changed back in forth by temperature from male to female so they could evolve asexually and sexually, until the males evolved to a point we observe in mammals where they reproduce strictly sexually.

1 Reply

@brianjakub,

That could be part of it. But there are also several other ways to get there.

There is the option of both male and female organs being in an organism that eventually develops over time a dominant male organ and dominant female organ in separate branches of development. Why would it do that? Because an organism that is putting more resources into reproducing as only one sex could be able to have more offspring. This would allow a period of time where there are hermaphrodites and males and at a later time the hermaphrodites could be overtaken by females who have an advantage in reproduction.

Then there is simply the male and female organisms move the fertilization from outside the body to inside the body over time. Females that carry their fertilized eggs in a pouch could have an advantage over ones that don't. Males that develop an appendage that delivers sperm end up having an advantage.

You keep forgetting we are talking about quadrillions upon quadrillions of organisms over millions and millions of years. Nature is merely acting as the force that decides which ones get to reproduce. There is no pattern for why or what has an advantage. It simply is which ever one can survive the current environment the best.

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@parados,

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There is the option of both male and female organs being in an organism that eventually develops over time a dominant male organ and dominant female organ in separate branches of development

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This would allow a period of time where there are hermaphrodites and males and at a later time the hermaphrodites could be overtaken by females who have an advantage in reproduction

Is there a fossil record of this progression, where we can say this animal evolved to this animal which evolved to so on

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You keep forgetting we are talking about quadrillions upon quadrillions of organisms over millions and millions of years

Sounds like it should be easy to find an evidence of the evolutionary path in the fossil record from asexual, to partial of both sexes, to hermaphrodites, to strictly sexual. Even if the fossil record has big gaps lets take what is there and fill in the gaps ourselves with what should be there. I would like to see what these animals looked like. Has anybody sorted the fossils from quadrillions of organisms over millions of years, to trace this path of evolution in actual physical evidence? If not let's get a grant. We can get paid to argue while we sort.

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@brianjakub,

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You keep forgetting we are talking about quadrillions upon quadrillions of organisms over millions and millions of years

Sounds like it should be easy to find an evidence of the evolutionary path in the fossil record from asexual, to partial of both sexes, to hermaphrodites, to strictly sexual. Even if the fossil record has big gaps lets take what is there and fill in the gaps ourselves with what should be there. I would like to see what these animals looked like. Has anybody sorted the fossils from quadrillions of organisms over millions of years, to trace this path of evolution in actual physical evidence? If not let's get a grant. We can get paid to argue while we sort.

That's an excellent point, but I can hear the 'true believers' in evolution thinking 'oh here we go, he's making the 'God of the gaps' argument.

No, it's Darwin's 'Evolution is very gradual' argument. So where are the transitional fossils ?

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@brianjakub,

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Even if the fossil record has big gaps lets take what is there and fill in the gaps ourselves with what should be there. I would like to see what these animals looked like.

You have been shown animals living today with all those features. Why do you need fossils telling you such creatures exist? Fossils are rare when compared to a population. The likelihood of finding all that you demand is zero. That is why you are demanding it because then you can justify not accepting facts by simply claiming they aren't complete.

You aren't going to change from your idiotic beliefs. We understand that. I also understand that anyone that bothers to read this exchange will realize your beliefs are idiotic because you demand every answer before you will change your mind. Science works on a preponderance of evidence. It doesn't require everything be known. It also allows for tweaking theories when new facts become available. You, on the other hand, deny facts and rely on your biases. You could be shown every fossil in a sequence and you would still deny the facts.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

That's an excellent point, but I can hear the 'true believers' in evolution thinking 'oh here we go, he's making the 'God of the gaps' argument.

No, it's Darwin's 'Evolution is very gradual' argument. So where are the transitional fossils ?

Perhaps you need to reread what you wrote.

You claim you are not making a "gaps" argument at the same time you are making an argument that there are gaps.

It's quite clear that you are doing nothing more than making an argument that because their are gaps then it can't be true. That is a "God of the gaps" argument, plain and simple and easy to see in your statement.

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@parados,

Perhaps you need to reconsider what you are saying. You can't have it both ways. You say there is zero chance of finding those fossils but asking us to believe they were there.

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@Leadfoot,

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No, it's Darwin's 'Evolution is very gradual' argument. So where are the transitional fossils ?

Try some of the following and youll learn grsshopper (that is, if you can reopen your otherwise snapped shut mind). Every time Ive suggested reading material youve snubbed it implying that your minds made up. Thats hardly scientific.

"Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology" roughly 26 vols AND its on the web for those who work in the field
www.vertpaleo.org The website of the Society of vertebrate paleontology
benton, m. j. introduction to paleontology and the fossil recordWiley-Blackwell,2009.
prothero,d.r. Evolution, what the fossils say and why it mattersColumbia Press,NY 2007

There are tons more , mostly individual papers that provide evidence of the dendritic line of evolution and such things as "punctuated Equilibrium" (which, no matter how you view it, DOES display many transitional fossils. If there were no transitional fossils, then there would be a new qnd sepqrte "creation" of a species that lived in a next chronostratigraphic era.
While I cannot argue 100% against such an occurrence, it just does not appear scientifically logical to kill off a species, make a few minor changes, and then "Reinvent the species"> Anything else that occurs is actually evolution.

Evolution of animals and plants is something like development of car models where, in the aspect of cars, we see that time reveals new marketing and technology opportunities and popularity trends change with "amrketing time".

Ive always wanted to do a paper comparing the two (Made especially for deniers)

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@brianjakub,

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Sounds like it should be easy to find an evidence of the evolutionary path in the fossil record from asexual, to partial of both sexes, to hermaphrodites, to strictly sexual.

I think your basic problem is that you are defiantly ignorant of the fossil evidence that is out there. YOU assert things that you have no idea whether they exist or not, then, when pesented with the data, you neatly ignore them.

Going from "Asexual to hermaphroditic to sexual" is an idiotic assertion since there is plenty of data in Moore Lalicher and Fisher of the advance of sexual reproduction in invertebrates from the late precambrian through the early Paleozoic.
Going from asexual to hermaphroditic is logically a step that has NOT occured. (The fossil record records hermaphroodotic species in amber and from holocene parasites)

Insects in id-Paleozoic amber clearly show sexual organs an therefore allows us to conclude that sexes were established ed in those species at least.

Itd be much easire discussing this if you at least would take the time to spend with some papers or books and then formulate positions based upon knowledge and not bullshit guesswork that relies on noone challenging your dumass positions.

There, Im going fishing and you can continue being as stupid as you wish

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@farmerman,

I'm not ignoring your sources but they still depend a lot on things like 'punctuated equilibrium' and vestigial evidence. Cetaceans for example. I don't deny that there is some fossil evidence but it does not quite convince me. I lack the assumption that it had to have happened that way - just the opposite of 'mind snapped shut' as you call it.

In the big picture it's the gratuitous optimization I see in the entire universe that won't let me see it as accident. In the bio world I know you have a ready answer - Evolution baby! In the non bio world it's even harder to sell. Put the two together and the odds are impossible to sell, without multiverses that is.

BTW, I got a kick out of the LHC results on Higgs bosan. The two camps were betting on two possible energy levels - 115Gev and 140Gev. The 115 would point to Super Symetry as explaning physics. 140 would support multiverse theory as correct. The final value was 125.Gev. I could almost hear God laughing.

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I just love this reasoning:

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Writing in The Guardian, developmental psychologist Nathalia Gjersoe laments, "Although it is part of the compulsory science curriculum in most schools in the UK and the USA, more than a third of people in both countries reject the theory of evolution outright or believe that it is guided by a supreme being." Her solution is simple.

According to developmental psychologists, children have an intuitive bent toward intelligent design. Thus schools should begin evolution education at younger ages -- one advocate says five to eight years old. Disrupting this natural inclination will pave the way for greater scientific understanding.

Brainwashing or education?

This must be my problem farmerman. They just didn't get to me soon enough. :-)

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Perhaps you need to reconsider what you are saying. You can't have it both ways. You say there is zero chance of finding those fossils but asking us to believe they were there.

I never said there was zero chance. I only pointed out that there was zero chance of finding what brianjakub was asking for because he, like you, is determined to deny evidence and find every gap you can.

If I show you 1 and 3 you will ask where is 2. If I show you 2 you will ask where is 1.5. If I show you 1.5 you will ask where is 1.25. This isn't a case of not finding enough fossils. It is a case of you denying that you are being given evidence and can only find gaps after the first gaps are filled.

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@parados,

Actually no. I do want better than " 'since we know mammals evolved on land and whales are mammals, they had to have evolved from land animals by natural selection and mutation." The fossil record is not enough to convince me that it happened that way. But you are right in one respect. Showing me step 1.5 wouldn't do it either. So don't waste your time. Have a beer on me instead.

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@Leadfoot,

Keep on looking for your gaps so you don't have to actually look at evidence.

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@Leadfoot,

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BTW, I got a kick out of the LHC results on Higgs bosan. The two camps were betting on two possible energy levels - 115Gev and 140Gev. The 115 would point to Super Symetry as explaning physics. 140 would support multiverse theory as correct. The final value was 125.Gev. I could almost hear God laughing.

I think super symmetry and multiple layers of embedded universes containing 11 dimensions are both right. Only way you can get gravity and atomic orbitals.

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@brianjakub,

Atomic orbitals tell us that quarks don't change places with electrons. It also tells us that electricity is the movement of electrons not the alignment on axes of individual atoms.

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@brianjakub,

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I think super symmetry and multiple layers of embedded universes containing 11 dimensions are both right. Only way you can get gravity and atomic orbitals.

I think there is a lot of embedded wisdom in one Lt. Callahan's (Dirty Harry's) sayings. I use it along with one of my own. These two go together and must be inseparable.
1. Rules are for those not wise enough to make up their own.
2. A man's got to know his own limitations.

I know enough to see that even our best scientists sometimes miss the obvious, so I don't begrudge you your theories on physics. But I also know I don't know enough to finish Einstein's work and come up with his Grand Unification Theory. My best guess is that we will either come to the end of physics and complete the Standard Model but remain perplexed about where it came from, Or, come to a dead end due to our inability to build a LHC large enough to explore the next fundamental particle. It will then be declared 'unknowable' (some are already saying this) but the belief that it's all a result of natural processes will remain intact.

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@Leadfoot,

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How do you convince a creationist that a fossil is a transitional fossil? Give up? It is a trick question. You cannot do it. There is no convincing someone who has his mind made up already.

-Ray Sutena 2001.(Man was he right)

The very visible fact that whales and dolphins and sireneae share the same evolutionary path is one of the magical things about the fossil record as a "road map" of specific species. The body structures that morphed from a hoofed land mammal to a water dwelling flippered one is one of the very complete records of fossils v time. (And it took less than 20 million years as the "original sites" of this family began to become inundated and separated as Pangea was in its final throes of separation. )

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@farmerman,

Pakicetus the would-be whale? Thats an amazing transition...
I wouldn't waste my time with people who expect magic wands in order to exist and evolve...

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@Amoh5,

whatever .
Since the late 1980's scientists have discovered about 20 new individual transitional fossils in the Indohyus, Protocetus and paleocetus and pelagicetus clans. (Not all were direct lines to whales and sirenaeae). Pakicetus was kinda far up the stratigraphic column. Weve even got fossil protowhales from Georgia USA and SOuth Carolina.
However ALL had some unique features in their skulls and feet that persisted through geologic time and enable the not so brilliant paleoanatomist to make the connections. These features are UNIQUE to the cetacian clade and exist in NO OTHER animal lines
Its like the origin and development of the hoof and hip defines the fossil horsie clade , or the hand and skull defines that of the primate clade that split from a common ancestor to pongids and hominids and hominims.

Being able to discern these bits of information and evidence does, Im aware, take some effort . Its much easier to deny these facts and then act like denial somehow confers credibility in knowledge. (IT DONT). An argument based upon information and familiarity is always welcome. One thats based upon "I dont believe in..." is gonna be rejected as just ignorance and a myth based belief system

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Why do people deny evolution?

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