Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Also, it should be noted that mutation is not required for every stage of the process. If there is enough variability already in the genome of the creature, then simple selection of variable expression is all that is required to create a new structure.

Many people (creationists in particular) make the mistake of thinking that mutation is the only cause of variation within a species. The genome of most modern creatures contains a lot of code which can be used to alter the morphology of a creature without additional mutation. All that is required is for the old (or unused) genes to be expressed due to mixing (sexual reproduction), and selection. This was covered in a thread on Sabretooth Evolution. And also in a thread on Silver Foxes.

as ros said, natural selection can occur as a consequence of the normal genic complement tht organisms acquire in their own makeup. WHile mutations do occur in organisms at almost a fixed rate, they are not "criical occurences" in nat selection.

Nat selection is more of a populational reinforcement of what youve already got most of :wink:

Natural selection is a destructive force and not a constructive one, and is the basic cause of the stasis which you observe in the fossil record; it weeds out anything an iota to the left or right of dead center for a given species.

You could no more construct a new KIND of animal with natural selection than you could build a skyscraper with a wrecking ball.

Like Gallagher always said
"we didnt evolve from the cavemen whose fossils we found that were all torn up by sabre tooths, We evolvedfrom the fast little f***ers who made it back to the cave.

The fossil record shows adaptation and descent with modification just as Darwin predicted. To deny it is like denying gravity.
Evolution is so testable now that we can predict , based upon the exact ages of the sed rocks, what fossils we may expect to find.

Beats poofisticism and alien panspermia, neither of which provide ANY evidence.

But we do build skyscrapers with wrecking balls, by knocking down the old structures to make room for the new ones. And that's pretty much what Natural Selection does in the environment.

More of the same crap where an IDer makes an argument against only HALF of the theory of natural selection and pretends it negates the whole.

Natural selection is not just the creation of a new kind of animal. It is the survival of that new kind of animal.

The basic claim which evolosers make is that random mutations create new KINDS of animals, and that natural selection then weeds out the unfit from amongst the mutants and previous body of animals alike, leaving only the most fit.

In real life of course, the common English language term for mutation is "birth defect".

You might have noticed the women going door to door collecting money for the Mothers' March of Dimes? Ever notice that they are always collecting for research to PREVENT mutations, and not for research to CAUSE them?

Think there might possibly be a reason for that??

I mean, did you ever have a woman come to your door and say



I mean, I've never heard that, and I doubt anybody else ever has.

I live in the real world. The world of Darwinism and evoloserism is a fantasy world inhabited by losers more concerned with lifestyles than with reality.

I guess if gunga wants to argue against his made up evolosing that is his right but why don't you go start your own thread Gunga since you don't want to discuss evolution.

gunga makes up his own theories as he goes. You oughta hear the ones about the living stegosaurs that Great Lakes Indians saw.

Ignoring Gunga Din--which is always the best policy--i would like to point out some of the subtleties of natural selection of which creationists are ignorant, or which they sedulously ignore.

The first is that natural selection does not operate by killing off individuals. Natural selection applies to reproductive opportunity, and not to mere survival. The phrase "survival of the fittest" is misleading, and responsible for a great deal of bullshit from the anti-evolution crowd. Any individual which survives is fit, by definition. The crucial factor is reproductive opportunity. Any trait which confers upon individuals an advantage in reaching reproductive age, and successfully reproducing themselves will, eventually (and this can be over long stretches of time), establish itself as a dominant trait, which can lead to natural selection. Furthermore, said trait can confer an advantage in a particular ecological niche, or in exploiting a particular food source, which means that speciation can occur without the extinction of the species from which the new species arises. Darwin's finches are a particular example of morphological changes which are strikingly apparent, and which lead to the ability of new types of finches to exploit food resources, without the parent species of finches suffering extinction. It is not interspecific reproductive viability which distinguishes species either--it is sexual isolation, whether from the inability to produce fertile offspring, or simply from geographic segregation.

A trait does not need to be advantageous to appear repeatedly in a population, either--it simply needs not to be disadvantageous. Therefore, among the species of mammoths, those with long fur, the woolly mammoths, could survive along side the common ancestor, so long as that long fur did not produce a reproductive advantage. When climate change gave them a reproductive advantage, then they could come to dominate in a region. But this could occur in a number of ways. The original species could migrate from an area in which the climate was inimical to their physiology, leaving the woolly mammoth behind and creating sexual isolation. As well, the woolly mammoth could have migrated to colder regions and exploited food resources available in a climate to which other mammoth would not migrate--once again resulting in sexual isolation.

Finally, of course, significant variations in physiological morphology do not mean that individuals with divergent traits cannot live alongside and continue to exploit the same food resources as the common ancestor. This should be obvious in a number of cases, to those not busy trying to deny what is self-evident. Lions and cheetahs are hunting cats, and at some distant point in the past, have a common ancestor. The lion relies upon its great size, and cooperative hunting techniques, to bring down its prey, and that prey is often of too large a size to be exploited by a smaller cat such as a cheetah. The cheetah, a solitary hunter, uses its great speed to bring down smaller, swifter prey who can very easily, on most occasions, avoid the lion. Therefore, both the lion and the cheetah can exploit food sources in the same area. Neither effectively competes with the other for food, and it was not necessary for any species to become extinct to produce the lion and the cheetah. It was only necessary for the common ancestor to have produced individuals who were large, powerful and hunted cooperatively, while also producing individuals who excelled by the speed at which they could pursue prey.

So, no species needs be extinguished for new species to arise--common ancestors may "disappear" by the simple expedient of all of their descendants exploiting different successful traits which give rise to new species. Second, so long as a trait is not disadvantageous, it can appear in a population with leading to speciation, until such time as it confers an advantage in exploiting an ecological niche or a food source. Finally, new species arising from a common ancestor can live side by side in an environment, exploiting different traits in order to exploit different food sources.

An example of a mutation:

RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et al. 2002)

Antibiotic resistance in superbugs and MRSA.

Time for maggot therapy

So why do traits that are disadvantageous appear repeatedly in a population?

The same trait might not always be disadvantageous. Environments change over time, so too do the inhabitants.

If the lightly colored fill in the blank s, that were getting eaten more frequently than their darker cousins in a green, green forest, benefited from a change in the weather that brought years of frost and snow cover what changed? Not the light color trait. The environment.


Joe(and so it goes)Nation

It's called variety within the species. If the trait is truly disadvantageous as you claim then it will stop being repeated because those that have it will not be able to breed because they are disadvantaged.

What traits are you thinking of RL?

One of the most dramatic examples of the survival of negative traits comes from human beings. The people of west Africa have a genetic disposition to sickle-cell anemia (so do the Koreans). As the disease often does not debilitate the carrier until they are adults (and some carriers are never affected), and therefore after they have reached reproductive viability, the defect remains prevalent in the subject populations.

The quaternary stage of the life cycle of the malaria plasmodium colonizes the red blood cells in the bloodstream. Therefore, in the sugar islands of the West Indies, the west African slaves survived malaria more frequently than did the white bond servants, the Indian slaves or other African slaves (and even the Chinese coolies) who were imported to those islands. American slave owners bought their slaves in the West Indies, and eventually came to prefer that source, as the slaves there were "proven" (i.e., known to survive). By a simple but dramatic choice made by slave traders and slave dealers with absolutely no knowledge of the malaria plasmodium or of sickle-cell anemia, a propensity for sickle-cell anemia was established among Americans of African descent.

Why does evolution have to justify itself, yet creationism does not? Particularly when one is based on over a century of scientific observation and scrutiny while the other is the deluded ramblings of the frightened minds of children.

since the entire theory can only be as good as the evidence supporting it, to NOT seek the evidence would be just as arrogant as the Creationists.
Remember, there are as many credible scientists whose search for evidence is to, somehow, be able to change the rules of evolution and establish their own toe hold in a new synthesis entirely.

SCience is every bit as competitive as sport.

But sport has a referee. Who referees science and what are the rules that are to be enforced?