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

Setanta wrote:

Before you showed up to hijack the thread--immediately before that event, we had been discussing what constitutes a species, and the subtleties of the Potassium/Argon dating method for geological samples. Since you showed up to hijack the thread, you have succeeded in making your ego the topic.

I suppose I could make the claim the "Spirituality & Religion" forum has been hijacked to discuss science!

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No , this thread was begun to refute the S&R spin on evolution. It was the authors choice and , as Set stated, it was going along quite well before we hear about you. We try to keep ourselves from becoming the point of the discussion. CF any post by a twit with a handle "spendius" . He too craves validation and affection, and he also tries to turn every thread into a discussion about himslef. Now we have 2 spendii. OY.

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farmerman wrote:

No , this thread was begun to refute the S&R spin on evolution. It was the authors choice and , as Set stated, it was going along quite well before we hear about you. We try to keep ourselves from becoming the point of the discussion. CF any post by a twit with a handle "spendius" . He too craves validation and affection, and he also tries to turn every thread into a discussion about himslef. Now we have 2 spendii. OY.

I looked back at where I came in on page 115. There were 3 posts prior to mine (by Wilso, neologist, and Setanta) that discussed the question of proof of the existence of God. That's where I chimed in. It seems that the discussion had already digressed at that point.

As for not discussing ourselves, that is too limiting. Spirituality and Religion should not be a forum solely for abstract intellectual discussion. If it doesn't allow discussion of personal experience, then it doesn't do justice to its subject matter.

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As for not discussing ourselves, that is too limiting. Spirituality and Religion should not be a forum solely for abstract intellectual discussion.

You can always go off and start a thread featuring YOU and what rows yer boat. Not here . This is not any abstract discussion. Its based upon concrete forensic evidence.

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You cannot "see" evolution as a whole, just as you cannot see tectonic plates moving. It happens over a long period of time. The time-span of human existance is a mere blip on evolutionary scale. It is near impossible for we as humans to conceive this.

I am fed up with ignoramuses doubting evolution. DO YOUR RESEARCH DAMMIT.

. This was the opening statement by the threads author. The occasional dips into the worldds of revelation and religion were specific to counter4ing points made by a few of the Creationists that contribute to the thread. Even they refrain from becoming the point of discussion.

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farmerman wrote:

Quote:

As for not discussing ourselves, that is too limiting. Spirituality and Religion should not be a forum solely for abstract intellectual discussion.
You can always go off and start a thread featuring YOU and what rows yer boat. Not here . This is not any abstract discussion. Its based upon concrete forensic evidence.

I guess I have as much right to post here as you do. If the discussion digresses from scientific evidence, so be it.

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I was given a copy of Keith Thompson's little book, "Living Fossil" , which is , as the dust jacket says, the story of the Coelacanth. The discovery of which , when viewed within the context of Global tectonics, is evidence of the speed with which continents in the Indian Ocean have spread out since the Cretaceous. Because only one species of this genera had remained since the Cretaceous(there had originally been over 30 different coexisting and separately evolving genera ofLatimeria. The apparent disappearance and "reappearnace " of the remaining species was a piece of good fortune only made able by fisherman off Madagascar. These fisherman were seeking the "oil fish" Ruvettus, which was a valuable source of a medicinal oil , hence giving the fish the title"the castor oil fish". Ruvettus, a large deep water fish was hunted using long lines (like cod-fishing). off the Comoros Archipelago. The :oil fish" was fished from long dugouts and, based upon the sea states that frequently occured in this part of the Indian Ocean, the fishery was only active about 2 months out of the year. The first coelecanth specimens were caught in the late 1930s(coincident with the rise of the use of the medicinal oil) and were apparently also used for their oil bladder (which, according to Thomson, was a bouyancy substance that Ruvettus and Latimeria carried to enable the fish to hop about as pelagic fish at the extreme depths that they were living (180 meters and more).
The long and short of it ws that, after 1980, and using plate tectonics, scientists predicted where more Latimerias could be caught on the other side of the Indian Ocean where the continents had separated in Post K times, as the karlsberg Ridge pushed the Seychelles West and India to the NorthEast. At that time the entire Panthalassa Sea was closed and "african fauna" became distributed as far west as the Sunda Sea. (This became known recently as Wallaces Line, where the fauna that rafted from Africa were pushed into close contact with Asian fauna within Islands only a few kilometers apart). So, Coelecanths, once considered a living fossil have been subjected to the same biogeographic tests and data verifications that only Continental Drift can dictate in paleontology. Scientists began finding coelecanth fossils and live coelecanths all the way across the Indian Ocean deeps and on islands where deep water K aged sediments were found.

LAtimeria, named after a South African school teacher named Courteney Latimer, was "decoded" and its significance ws found to be as a good "drift record". All along, it had never been a direct line of evidence for fish that evolved into land dwelling animals. Instead , its an interesting dead end group of lobe finned fish that had seen better days in the late Paleozoic and had continued on, precariously, into today. In that respect, they are as significant as sharks, rays, turtles, and rats.The only difference is that Latimeria has but one species and its heavily adapted to its deep water home.

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farmerman wrote:

No , this thread was begun to refute the S&R spin on evolution. It was the authors choice and , as Set stated, it was going along quite well before we hear about you. We try to keep ourselves from becoming the point of the discussion. CF any post by a twit with a handle "spendius" . He too craves validation and affection, and he also tries to turn every thread into a discussion about himslef. Now we have 2 spendii. OY.

To be correct, aperson's explanation of evolution seems to apply only to micro evolution. Or am I wrong again?

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neo, I dont believe the author had made any separation of the evidence for either micro or macro evolution. One is merely a time extension of the other, and to deny one and accept the other is kind of missing the point that Darwin had set out in his rules of natural election.

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The term 'microevolution' is an attempt to soft sell the evolutionary concept.

At it's core, the leap from the appearance of slight differences in features (i.e. different sizes and shapes of beaks in finches) to the development of whole new organs and systems and body plans is a huge one. And it doesn't happen.

To use the term 'evolution' to describe both is deceptive.

Critters have the ability to produce variations within a small range, but not because they 'evolved'.

The rearrangement of EXISTING genetic information is not the same of the wholesale production of entirely new genetic information needed to produce a new organ, a new biological system (i.e. circulatory system, nervous system, digestive system , etc) or a whole new body plan.

The chance production of complex and interdependent systems and organs within a very short period of time is something that doesn't happen.

And it has to happen if evolution is to be upheld. The emerging new organ or system must confer an immediate survival benefit, or the variation won't be spread from the individual to the population, right?

I just have to laugh when I hear the term 'microevolution'. Laughing

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farmerman wrote:

neo, I dont believe the author had made any separation of the evidence for either micro or macro evolution. One is merely a time extension of the other, and to deny one and accept the other is kind of missing the point that Darwin had set out in his rules of natural election.

Is that all it is? A time extension? I could never ascertain when the differences attributed to adaptation resulted in offspring unable to reproduce with parents.

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It is not simply the time scale, although that is important. Microevolution is the small-scale change of allele frequencies within a specific population over a few generations--change at or below the species level. Macroevolution, on the other hand, can operate at or above the species level, and involves large-scale changes in a broad range of alleles over a broad range of populations, and is usually only evident on geological scales of time.

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An excellent example of "geological scales of time" are the 14 Darwin finches.

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tiny modifications(microevolution) among species is often visible within our lifetimes, therefore the RL's of the world cant deny it because they can see it. However, macroevolution, the differentiation amonf species and higher taxa can easily be seen just by looking at the genetic makeup of animals and condiering the "common ancestor" effect.

Some degree of understanding is required to see macroevolution, howeever its not a huge jump of faith. When biogeographic isolation confers differences to species that jump upto genera and higher, thats macroevolution. An example is the existence of ratite birds ( flightless birds of the cassowary clan). We see that all these birds differ by small increments in their genomes and gret differences in their appearances, and we see fossils of their ancestral forms in the Holocene sediments of the Southern area of pre-pangean breakup.

Why the very existence of these many "half cousins" birds follows the Paranan/Deccan sutures upon which the Southern continents broke up. The fossils of these birds are found along side of evidence of the Southern Pangean coal fields that defined the swamps and plains of open areas similar to todays everglades. These ratites are not found anywhere north of a line that defines southern Pangea and this zone of expansion extends east to the Wallace Line in the Sunda Sea and South to Australia and new Zealand. These fossils evidence common descent, they are found in unique zones of the planet, and their fossils evidence that their ancestors "rafted off" in the same continental breakup event.

Biogeography of unique genera is a compelling example of dichopatric evolution(where a geographic barrier , such as open seas separates the ancestral types),its also a strong argument against any Creationist patter since we can see the first appearances of the derivative families through different geologic time. This is determined by both stratigraphy and by dating the separation times among the chunks of Southern Pangea.

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IT IS simply the time scale because there are no living examples of macroevolution that span a human lifetime and very limited examples that even span recorded history.
Cichlid fish macroevolution spans the shortest time that Im aware and for a cichlid to evolve from a small carp-like creature of one genera to a meat eating piranha- like fish of another genus or family , (due to geographic isolation of the rivers of te Madre de Dios, ) took something of a geologic time scale, say 100000 years .

Modern evolutionary synthesis does not preach saltation "theory" in acquiring new genes. There has to be a driving force in which various genetic differences are accumulated. Geographic isolation is the best measure of chnging adaptation and macroevolution. Other effects like "ring evolution" or genetic drift may take significantly longer to actually jump genera. Much of human evolution can be blamed on genetic drift because entire families can be representative of the entire population of a single species, and the existence of so many genera of hominids. This too took time.

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farmerman wrote:

IT IS simply the time scale because there are no living examples of macroevolution that span a human lifetime and very limited examples that even span recorded history.
Cichlid fish macroevolution spans the shortest time that Im aware and for a cichlid to evolve from a small carp-like creature of one genera to a meat eating piranha- like fish of another genus or family , (due to geographic isolation of the rivers of te Madre de Dios, ) took something of a geologic time scale, say 100000 years . .

That is very interesting. Thanks, farmer.

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real life wrote:

The emerging new organ or system must confer an immediate survival benefit, or the variation won't be spread from the individual to the population, right?

Wrong.

Relatively benign and neutral traits spread through populations all the time.

Traits which are subject to selective forces are the ones which spread through populatios (or don't spread) at a disproportionate rate, and change the proportion of a particular allele within a population.

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actually ci, the number of finch species is now approaching 18 and many of these new varietals and species have been seen occuring within the last 50 years as the weather patterns on the Galapogos islands has changed.. Theres an ongoing study at Princeton that has been recording these speciation events in the Galapogos..

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Additionally, traits which might be, in certain circumstances, lethal, can appear repeatedly in a population, in every generation, and those possessing the trait may prosper and reproduce for so long as environmental conditions do "trigger" the lethality. So, for example, mammoths could come in short-haired and wooly types, and the short-haired mammoths could be just as successful at reproduction as the woolly mammoths, for so long as the climate is sufficiently benign. Should the climate become sufficiently cold, short-haired mammoths would find it more difficult to survive and reproduce, unless they migrated to a more benign environment. Woolly mammoths would be prepared for such a change at the outset.

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ros, the slight changes in emphases and the initial premises used by RL have long been a source of his mispeaking. His misunderstandings of how minor variations in a genome can represent large changes in the phenotype are legion. He assumes that it takes a huge rearrange,ment of genes in the various genera when he only has to look at the minor variations in the actual chromosomal structure between humans and chimps.

Its cold up here in New England today.

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Setanta wrote:

Additionally, traits which might be, in certain circumstances, lethal, can appear repeatedly in a population, in every generation, and those possessing the trait may prosper and reproduce for so long as environmental conditions do "trigger" the lethality. So, for example, mammoths could come in short-haired and wooly types, and the short-haired mammoths could be just as successful at reproduction as the woolly mammoths, for so long as the climate is sufficiently benign. Should the climate become sufficiently cold, short-haired mammoths would find it more difficult to survive and reproduce, unless they migrated to a more benign environment. Woolly mammoths would be prepared for such a change at the outset.

This is exactly why changes in environment have such a dramatic effect on evolution. Lots and lots of trait variations can accumulate in a population, but when an environmental change happens, a disproportionate number of traits may be sliced out of the population. Several repetitions of this can result in populations which are radically different from their original population.

I think the selective force is sharper and more distinct as a result of extinction rather than adaptation.

In other words, evolution is driven far more strongly by selective removal than by selective adaptation.

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

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