Yes. Nice picture.Dont laugh but is this accurate?
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Ask me anything about the science of Evolution :)
- Thread starter sayak83
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anonymous9887
bible reader
like I have mentioned before I believe in micro evolution, and I believe in the god of the bible, but with each day possibly representing an unknown period of time
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Whales, if i remember correctly, are the most well documented example in fossil records of continuous linked evolution.
Actually I think it's ape to human that is now most well documented.
But whales are excellent.
When whales walked: Fossils document the rise of the largest animals on earth
Axe Elf
Prophet
I am glad to hear that.
"For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks)." --Romans 1:20a (Amplified Bible)
God isn't hiding behind some smokescreen of faith that allows you to find Him by denying what science knows about the universe. God is manifest in His creation. It's no less marvelous because it didn't happen in a literal week, but look at those first few verses of Genesis 1. First there were swimmy things, then crawly and flying things, then animals, and then man--presto, evolution!
You don't have to abandon your faith in God to acknowledge Him and His creation in a rational way, and you don't have to check your brain at the door to be a Christian.
So please, keep seeking truth--and be honest about it with yourself AND with God.
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Scriptural accounts, when compared to natural history, seems to point to a day in Genesis1 as being God's time and not the universe's time. Hell, how are you supposed to tell time when a pocket watch hasn't formed out of the chaos and washed upon the beach yet. Or If there is no sun, moon, and stars, even.
It's like He woke up one the morning of His first day, saw our singularity, and said, "Right there is going to be heaven and earth. It was formless and void at the time.
The next day He woke up and saw that singulararity was a ball of plasma, so His Spirit moved on the face of this deep that would consist of everything in the universe and caused a brief acceleration in the the universe.
On the next day He woke up and said, "Let there be light." And so on and so forth.
His day was His day. Our days could have been fractions of a second or hundreds of thousands of years. His time ain't or time, in other words.
All of this has nothing to do with evolution directly. I guess I'm hopping down a bunny trail.
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
This is very similar to an early passage in Romans (maybe chapter 1) that states man changed the image of God into man, birds, fourfooted beasts and creeping things. Notice the reverse progression.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
But we have observed macro-evolution. Most creationists do not even understand the concept.
And there is no scientific evidence for you beliefs, where there are literally mountains of evidence for the theory of evolution. So why believe in something that is denied by the evidence. Are you saying that God is a liar?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Though the fossil record supports evolution and only evolution that is not the strongest evidence for evolution. It is only the most obvious to those that have not studied the sciences. For those that understand the science the biological evidence is undeniable. At least by honest people. There are several independent nested hierarchies that can only be explained by evolution. The genetic evidence alone is overwhelming.
As a scientist who closely follow the scientific research on biological evolution, I am in full agreement with 99% of US scientists that evolution is the mechanism by which all life has evolved into its current multifarious forms on earth.
Ask me any specific questions or clear any specific doubts you have about evolutionary science and its conclusions.
Also note that evolutionary science follow the scientific method. If you reject the scientific method as a means of knowing about reality, then this thread is not for you.
Otherwise ask away
I would love examples of tests that have been done and proven.
From Thoughtco. The steps of the scientific method.
Step 4: Test the Hypothesis
In other words, perform an experiment! Your data might take the form of numbers, yes/no, present/absent, or other observations.
It is important to keep data that 'looks bad'. Many experiments have been sabotaged by researchers throwing out data that didn't agree with preconceptions. Keep all of the data! You can make notes if something exceptional occurred when a particular data point was taken. Also, it is a good idea to write down observations related to your experiment that aren't directly related to the hypothesis. These observations could include variables over which you have no control, such as humidity, temperature, vibrations, etc., or any noteworthy happenings.
Hypothesis testing does not require one to perform experiments. For example how do propose to do an experiment testing that the moon causes solar eclipse? In this case, based on the trajectory of the moon around earth, one predicts, that an eclipse is going to happen in this time and place. The observation of this predicted eclipse constitute the required test for the hypothesis. See? No experiment required!
A prediction going back to Darwin was that fossils intermediate between ape and man would be discovered in Africa. The actual discovery of many such fossils much after this prediction was made constitute a successful test for this evolutionary hypothesis.
Zosimus
Active Member
Yes, Sayek -- I have a simple question about evolution.As a scientist who closely follow the scientific research on biological evolution, I am in full agreement with 99% of US scientists that evolution is the mechanism by which all life has evolved into its current multifarious forms on earth.
Ask me any specific questions or clear any specific doubts you have about evolutionary science and its conclusions.
Also note that evolutionary science follow the scientific method. If you reject the scientific method as a means of knowing about reality, then this thread is not for you.
Otherwise ask away
How and why did sexual reproduction evolve? Asexual reproduction is an extremely effective method of reproducing. Yet 99.99% of eukaroytes engage in sexual reproduction. However, there is good reasons to believe that sexual reproduction is worse.
First, the organism must switch from mitosis to meiosis. This is a costly biological endeavor. Then, the organism must find a willing mate. The organism risks exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. As its reward, it is only able to transmit half of its genes on to another generation. Furthermore, parents that survive tend to have genomes that are well adapted to the environment. That is to say, the parents have a combination of genes that work well together in the environment in which the parents find themselves. Yet, sexual recombination tends to destroy those combinations in favor of purely random ones that may destroy the very synergy that has made the parents well suited to their environmental niche.
1)Many organisms switch between sexual and a sexual reproduction. This mixed strategy is found to optimal in an environment with period times of plenty and stress. Excerpt:-
Hadany and Otto created a mathematical model of eukaryotes in which most of the organisms were asexual, but some carried genes that let them reproduce sexually when under stress. This reflects real life: Today, yeast and many species of plants reproduce sexually only during times of stress and reproduce asexually the rest of the time. The researchers found that over the generations, from one crisis to the next, the sex genes spread. By triggering organisms to reproduce sexually, these genes could become combined with new sets of genes that were better able to withstand the crisis, leading to the greater proliferation of the “sexual” individuals. Once the crisis was over, the sex genes turned off, allowing the advantageous combinations of genes to remain intact.However, this strategy “doesn't happen because sex is good for the population,” Hadany points out. Instead, the model suggests that genes for sex spread thanks to their own self ish drive to generate ever more copies of themselves.
2)Sexual reproduction leads to faster adaptability and hence increases survival rate. Excerpt:-
If an asexual organism picks up a beneficial mutation, it can only pass the mutation down to its direct offspring. If another organism picks up a different beneficial mutation in a different gene, then there's no way for it to be combined into the same genome as the first mutation to make a more optimal genome. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, splits up genes and recombines them into new arrangements, joining beneficial mutations.
In this way, sexual reproduction may improve the fitness of a population faster than asexual reproduction. In 2005, Matthew Goddard and colleagues at the University of Auckland in New Zealand genetically engineered some yeast that could only reproduce sexually and others that could only reproduce asexually. (Typically, yeast can do both.) When Goddard raised both mutants on a near-starvation diet, the sexual yeast were able to adapt faster. As they evolved, their growth rate increased 94%, while the asexual strain increased only 80%. The difference in growth would allow the sexual yeasts to rapidly take over a population.
3) Sexual Mutation is more able to purge the genome from its ever growing load of slightly deleterious mutations, that natural selection often fail to weed out.
Over time, a population of asexual organisms may pick up mutations that slow their growth rate. Each mutation may be only slightly deleterious, and so natural selection fails to eliminate it from the population. As generations pass, more and more harmful mutations accumulate, dragging down the expansion of the population. Eventually, these slightly deleterious variants may replace all the undamaged versions of these genes in a population, permanently compromising fitness. Sexual organisms, on the other hand, can trade in a defective version of a gene for a working one through recombination, keeping healthy genomes intact.
Real examples that celibacy can be bad for the genome exist. In 2006, for example, Susanne Paland and Michael Lynch of Indiana University, Bloomington, looked at mutations in Daphnia pulex, a species of water flea. Populations of asexual water fleas carried more harmful mutations than sexual ones.
4) Parasites and pathogens specialize on hosts and their specific DNA signature. Since asexual organisms do not vary in genetic make up much from generation to generation, they are much more vulnerable to being decimated by parasites and pathogens. Bigger organisms reproduce slowly anyway and are especially vulnerable to complete decimation by a virulent pathogen. Sexual reproduction continually shuffles the deck, making the host far more resistant to pathogens due to high inter generational variability.
Excerpt:-
Curt Lively of Indiana University, Bloomington, and his colleagues have spent nearly 30 years painstakingly studying the snails and one of their parasites, a fluke that can sterilize them. In a paper in press at The American Naturalist, Lively and collaborators Jukka Jokela of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Mark Dybdahl of Washington State University, Pullman, present some of the most compelling evidence gathered so far for the Red Queen at work.
Over the course of the past 15 years, Lively and his colleagues have documented a parasite-driven boom-and-bust cycle in asexual snails, a cycle just as the Red Queen would predict. In a New Zealand lake in 1994, the most common strains of asexual snails were initially resistant to the most common flukes. Over time, the snails became more and more vulnerable, as a well-adapted fluke strain infected them. By 2004, the snails had all but disappeared. Meanwhile, a rare strain of asexual snails in 1994 became the most common, apparently because it was resistant to the fluke strain sickening the previous dominant strain of snails. “We didn't expect to see such a dramatic shift in our lifetimes,” says Lively.
On the Origin of Sexual Reproduction
https://phys.org/news/2016-12-sex-evolved-future-infection-scientists.html
james bond
Well-Known Member
Do you think GMO foods are safe and if so, why?
Here's what my evolution website states:
"Genetic engineering vs. evolution
April 2014
The western corn rootworm chews into a plant.
In the late 1990s, a new weapon in the fight against agricultural pests was introduced: Bt corn. The new maize variety was genetically engineered to carry genes from the bacterium Bacillus thurinigiensis (hence the moniker "Bt") that cause the crop to produce an all-natural pesticide. This meant that growers could get good yields from their cornfields without spraying on so many toxins. Since then, many farmers have jumped on this bandwagon. In 2012, more than 69 million hectares were planted with Bt crops — an area about the size of Texas! There has been much debate over the risks of this technological advance, but now it appears that the downfall of Bt corn might be the very problem that it was supposed to solve in the first place: agricultural pests, in particular the western corn rootworm. These beetle larvae eat the roots of corn plants potentially ruining the crop. In recent years, more and more larvae that are resistant to the effects of the Bt toxin have been showing up in fields and chewing their way into plants. How and why did this happen? It all comes down to evolution."
Genetic engineering vs. evolution
Here's what my evolution website states:
"Genetic engineering vs. evolution
April 2014
The western corn rootworm chews into a plant.
In the late 1990s, a new weapon in the fight against agricultural pests was introduced: Bt corn. The new maize variety was genetically engineered to carry genes from the bacterium Bacillus thurinigiensis (hence the moniker "Bt") that cause the crop to produce an all-natural pesticide. This meant that growers could get good yields from their cornfields without spraying on so many toxins. Since then, many farmers have jumped on this bandwagon. In 2012, more than 69 million hectares were planted with Bt crops — an area about the size of Texas! There has been much debate over the risks of this technological advance, but now it appears that the downfall of Bt corn might be the very problem that it was supposed to solve in the first place: agricultural pests, in particular the western corn rootworm. These beetle larvae eat the roots of corn plants potentially ruining the crop. In recent years, more and more larvae that are resistant to the effects of the Bt toxin have been showing up in fields and chewing their way into plants. How and why did this happen? It all comes down to evolution."
Genetic engineering vs. evolution
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
As a scientist who closely follow the scientific research on biological evolution, I am in full agreement with 99% of US scientists that evolution is the mechanism by which all life has evolved into its current multifarious forms on earth.
Ask me any specific questions or clear any specific doubts you have about evolutionary science and its conclusions.
Also note that evolutionary science follow the scientific method. If you reject the scientific method as a means of knowing about reality, then this thread is not for you.
Otherwise ask away
I'm shocked to see how little actual forensic evidence was used to construct an ambulocetus link, as at: A whale of a tale? - creation.com
How might you respond to critics of this sort of paleontological "deduction"?
That is not the scientific method as defined by scientists.
Zosimus
Active Member
It would be helpful if you read the question, understood it, and then responded appropriately.
The question has two parts:
1. HOW did sexual reproduction evolve
and
2. WHY did sexual reproduction evolve
Even assuming that your long cut-and-paste answered the latter part of the question, it fails miserably at answering the first part.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is some species of animal (I'll call it a bibbab) that only reproduces asexually. Let's also assume that one single point mutation is sufficient to make the bibbab reproduce sexually. Obviously, this is an extremely generous assumption! Let's also assume that the bibbab will spend the first half of its life reproducing asexually and the second half reproducing sexually. We will assume that the bibbab has a four-sexual-cycle lifespan.
So, during the first two cycles, the bibbab reproduces asexually producing one copy of itself that survives the first year, and each of these bibbabs produce surviving copies. So when the first sexual bibbab becomes sexual, there are four bibbabs floating around that are theoretical sexual partners. However, none of these bibbabs have gone sexual yet, so the bibbab foregoes a cycle of reproduction. In the final year of its life, the initial bibbab is able to find a sexual partner, that is to say, it's asexual offspring from the first year. So all the genetic combination and recombination results basically in recombining two genomes that are 99.999% the same. In the fourth, and last cycle, of the original bibbab's life, it produces one offspring through sexual reproduction whereas had it stuck to asexual reproduction, it would have done better because in cycle 3, it would have reproduced asexually (but did not) whereas in cycle 4, both it and its direct offspring would have reproduced asexually (producing 2 offspring) whereas in fact, together they produced merely one sexual offspring.
So you require me to believe that this inefficient system survived long enough for additional mutations to convert said system into a system in which the sexual genes turn on and off depending on the situation in the environment that made them beneficial or not?
Excuse me for being blunt, but do you take me for a fool?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Easy answer: They lied:
A favorite creationist tactic is to focus only on the first fossil found of a new species and ignore the fact that a more complete skeleton can be reconstructed by finding others of the same species. Much more of Ambulocetus has been found than creation.com is willing to admit. But then this is one of the sites that require their workers to swear not to use the scientific method.
They are quite accurate. Just as an expert tracker can determine the weight, height, speed or sex of a lion from just its footprints... just as a forensic expert can determine the cause of death from slight indentations in bones.. just as I can determine the chemical composition of any gas from a few electrical lines in a specteogram.......paleo-anatomists like all scientists are trained for 15-20 years regarding how to reliably extract immense amounts of accurate information from what to laymen appear meager evidence.
These articles simply exploit the lack of training of ordinary folks to cast doubt on legitimate scientific expertise. If they had real substantial objections, they would have been able to write and publish a paper to challenge the interpretation. They can't, because they are dishonest liars.
Further, they are wrong. The skeleton as uncovered was 80% complete. See below,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0405:AHROAN]2.0.CO;2
Continued excavation at the type locality of Ambulocetus natans led to the recovery of a majority of the axial skeleton of the holotype of this early Eocene cetacean, including both innominates, the sacrum, and most of the thoracic cage and thoracolumbar vertebral column. Additional appendicular, caudal, and cranial materials were also recovered, resulting in a specimen that is now approximately 80 percent complete. This new material allows refined interpretations of its functional morphology. Ambulocetus has a longer thoracolumbar column than that reported for later remingtonocetid and protocetid genera, suggesting that previous estimates of spinal length derived from models of mesonychid ancestry may be inaccurate. Ambulocetus also possesses a co-ossified ecto–mesocuneiform, a character found in some early and middle Eocene artiodactyls, but not mesonychids. New postcranial material provides further evidence of a systemic shift to aquatic locomotion.
Furthermore, over 10 fossil specimen of the same species have been discovered, so that the entire animal is known from one fossil to another.
Excerpt:-
Ten fossils of ambulocetids have been discovered, but one of these is a relatively complete skeleton of Ambulocetus natans(Fig. 15), the walking and swimming whale (ambulare is Latin for to walk, cetus is Latin for whale, and natans for swimming; Thewissen et al. 1994, 1996; Madar et al. 2002). The bones of one individual were found together, partly articulated. This skeleton includes the skull and the vertebral column, one forelimb and parts of both hind limbs. Only a few tail vertebrae have been discovered. Fossils of ambulocetids can be classified in three genera, and remains of these have been found in Northern Pakistan and northwestern India. Ambulocetid fossils are approximately 49 million years old (middle Eocene).
From Land to Water: the Origin of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
What makes you say that? I am pretty sure that you lack an understanding of the method.