Evolution has been observed... right?

[Wildswanderer]

Why is it that those that oppose evolution never bother to understand it?

The environment is what does the 'selection'. Those organisms that have traits that are an advantage to survival and reproduction (in the context of the environment) are the ones that survive and reproduce more than the others (amazing, isn't it?) Their genes come to dominate.

It's directly comparable with artificial selection, where a human decides what they like and those individuals get to breed. The environment does the same sort of thing by killing off those who aren't suited to it and letting those that are survive and reproduce.

The environment doesn't have a brain. Unless someone is guiding the selection, it's not the same at all.

 

[AlexanderG]

You aren’t describing evolution. You are describing adaption.

Adaptation is epigenetic in nature. It is essentially just a flipping of switches that are already in the DNA. Meaning: the organism already has the contingencies built into it’s code to adapt to different circumstances by undergoing change.

Evolution, in contrast, is claimed to be capable creating new genetic code to unlock new capabilities that do not currently exist in that organisms DNA.

There is no observation of this ever happening. It is just speculation.

You can produce a great degree or variation by breeding dogs for certain traits - but no matter how much you try you will never be able to turn that dog into something resembling a monkey, lizard, fish, or bird.
The genetic information for it to express those kinds of traits is simply not it it’s genetic switchboard.

And we have no evidence to conclude this must be something that can happen if given enough time. That’s just speculation. The only reason that speculation is assumed to be true is because of an a priori commitment to materialism that leaves you with no other mechanism to explain how life came to exist. But you can’t prove materialism is the right way to view the world so you can’t assume you must find a materialistic cause for life.

You're absolutely wrong. We have observed new mutations creating new functions, whether by adding, changing, or removing prior DNA. We have observed this hundreds of thousands of times, in reliable, repeatable ways that anyone with a thousand dollars could do on their own in their home. Like I said earlier, mechanisms for adding DNA by mutation are well understood. Some examples are polyploidy, horizontal gene transfer, plasmids, VNTRs, endogenous retroviruses, and many more. We have mountains of evidence that species have evolved into other species over long epochs of time. This is trivially easy to read about if you're actually interested in knowing.

You are profoundly miseducated about biology. I can't be the first person who has told you this. Please, for everyone's benefit, crack open a book written by a professional biologist instead of by an apologist.

Also, you seem to have the common apologist misconception that evolution has anything to do with the origin of life. It does not. Whether or not we can explain the origin of life has no bearing on the facts of evolution. Again, please read actual books on this topic, not the biased propaganda written by people who have openly admitted that it is acceptable to lie if it brings more people to Christianity.

 

[ratiocinator]

The environment doesn't have a brain. Unless someone is guiding the selection, it's not the same at all.

It doesn't need to have a brain in order to allow some individuals with certain traits to live and reproduce more than others. That's all human selection amounts to. In the former case the traits that are 'selected' are the ones that are useful for survival and reproduction in the environment, and in the latter, it's the whim of the humans. The upshot that some survive and reproduce and others don't, and that there is some consistent pattern to the 'selection' is identical.

This isn't rocket science - it's really rather simple.

 

[Valjean]

Which is totally different than it happening by chance, no matter how you spin it.

I can't decide if you're just supporting your team, or are really unable to grasp these basic mechanisms.

The environment doesn't have a brain. Unless someone is guiding the selection, it's not the same at all.

Why would a brain be needed? The sun rises, the seasons change, water runs downhill, birds eat the bugs they can see -- no intention or intervention needed.

Natural selection is a simple and obvious mechanism. A six year old child could understand it. Why do you find it so hard to grasp?

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

But not by magical transformation of monkeys into people.

Almost all the post I see against evolution share one common factor. They are clearly written by people that either do not know the science or intentionally mischaracterize the science. I realize that some people are members of groups that force their membership to repeat doctrine whether they believe that doctrine or not, but most anti-evolutionists just have no clue about science, theories or evolution. I see that well illustrated here.

It has generally been defined on here by others, but it is basically a change in the gene frequency of a population over time. It is the result of natural, heritable variation arising in a population that can be acted on by natural selection. The variation is random, but the selection is not.

It seems that the difference between science and magic is a question of time. If a population of animals changed in a very short time, it must be magic. But if the same changes took millions of years, then it was science. Science says all living things evolved from a single cell in some primordial swamp millions of years ago. That is what sounds like magic.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It seems that the difference between science and magic is a question of time. If a population of animals changed in a very short time, it must be magic. But if the same changes took millions of years, then it was science. Science says all living things evolved from a single cell in some primordial swamp millions of years ago. That is what sounds like magic.

If the changes are not supernatural, then it isn't magic. Change without explanation is just unexplained. Change beyond nature is supernatural.

Knowledge has a magic all it's own.

What scientists propose is based on what we can observe and our existing knowledge of the natural world. Scientists cannot propose solutions that cannot be tested or are at least potentially testable. Magic is something that cannot be tested. Magic is something that is claimed to have been seen, but there is no evidence of this outside of claims.

 

[tas8831]

I suppose what I’m talking about is selective breeding. I have a very specific belief system (well we all do), but anarchism is central to what I believe. I believe the government is selectively breeding us to reduce our brain capacity, like pugs.

Well, it seems that the government has been doing so solely to one particular group of people.

 

[tas8831]

Supposedly. But you also have genetic drift. The fittest don't always survive in reality.

Non sequitur.

 

[Rise]

You're absolutely wrong. We have observed new mutations creating new functions, whether by adding, changing, or removing prior DNA. We have observed this hundreds of thousands of times, in reliable, repeatable ways that anyone with a thousand dollars could do on their own in their home. Like I said earlier, mechanisms for adding DNA by mutation are well understood. Some examples are polyploidy, horizontal gene transfer, plasmids, VNTRs, endogenous retroviruses, and many more. We have mountains of evidence that species have evolved into other species over long epochs of time. This is trivially easy to read about if you're actually interested in knowing.

You have failed to provide any logical arguments for why your "examples" meet the criteria of evolution rather than the concept of adaptation.

Merely asserting they do doesn't demonstrate with logical reasons or evidence why you think they do.
If you can't provide such argumentation, then you are merely committing the fallacy of argument by assertion.

We know that you are falsely attributing to evolution what would be called mere adaptation when you cite moths changing color in response to environmental changes. The genetic ability for moths to express different colors is already in their code. They didn't need new code introduced in order for that expression to happen.

That is the false claim of yours that I am refuting: The idea that adaptation proves evolution. Those two concepts are not the same thing.

You are committing the fallacy of false equivalence by trying to pretend they are the same concept.


Since your confusion seems to come out of making no definitional distinction between adaptation and evolution, let me define for you how I am using these terms:

Adaptation is using the information already in the genetic codes to express changes in an organism.

Evolution is the introduction of new information, new code, that allows for doing something that the organisms previous genetic code did not have the ability to express through epigenetic adaptation.

An example of adaptation would be a cat changing fur colors to adapt to an environment. The code for that adaptation to happen is already there as something all cats carry around with them wherever they go. It's just waiting to be expressed.

An example of evolution would be the cat gaining the genetic information to express the growing of lizard-like scales instead of fur or a pair of wings on their back - doing something it currently doesn't have the genetic blueprints to be capable of building.

No amount of selective breeding will ever allow you to get lizard-like scales or wings on a cat - because the genetic information for that simply isn't there.

And you can't explain how the cat would ever get that information infused into it.

Chance doesn't sufficiently explain it because of the size and complexity of the informational code. You would need to introduce too much code all at once to get a functional change in the organism for it to be feasible to explain by random chance.

Because even if you could come up with a mechanism by which random code could be injected in, you can't feasibly expect to inject enough random code in just the right sequences by chance to result in the programming of a new function that is significant enough to confer a survival advantage so that function is then passed down and added to with more random chance over time.

If you don't introduce enough code to result in a change then you don't get a function that can be expressed and selected for by nature.

But the more code you try to introduce by chance, in order to program a survivally significant function, the odds of being able to achieve functional arrangement of the random code is basically a statistical impossibility.

So you do end up with what is functionally an irreducible complexity within code. Irreducible in the sense that you have no mechanism that would allow you to go from no code in an organism for a particular function to then having the code for a particular function.

You can't appeal to evolution to solve that problem for you because if you don't first have the new code to express a new function then there is nothing for nature to select.


To use an analogy:
Believing that new information can be introduced into an organism's code sufficient enough to result in previously impossible expressions would be like finding an coded application sitting on your computer desktop and concluding that this must have assembled itself by the random chance of glitches in the software and hardware of your computer. It's a logical absurdity. No matter how much time you let your computer sit there turned on you have no reason to believe such a thing could ever happen. Because we have no reason to believe based on our uniform experience, knowledge, and observations about computers that such a thing would be a possible no matter how much time you introduced into the equation. The processes by which that could happen simply don't exist within the computer as far as we know. And appealing to a great quantity of time doesn't change the fact that as far as we know the processes aren't there to make such a scenario ever happen.

Plus, generally all of our observational experience with changes happening to genetic code involves the losing of information rather than the gaining of information.
Which is why any random glitches or code changes in your computer are more likely to result in the failure of your computer and the losing of function rather than the gaining or improving of function

Also, you seem to have the common apologist misconception that evolution has anything to do with the origin of life. It does not. Whether or not we can explain the origin of life has no bearing on the facts of evolution.

You are committing the logical fallacy of a red herring or strawman.

I never said anything about how one goes from non-life to life. Which means you are either misrepresenting what I argued or you are trying to distract from what I argued with a change of topic.

I talked about how one supposedly goes from one form of life to another.

You are profoundly miseducated about biology. I can't be the first person who has told you this. Please, for everyone's benefit, crack open a book written by a professional biologist instead of by an apologist.

...

Whether or not we can explain the origin of life has no bearing on the facts of evolution.

Logical fallacy, ad hominem and appeal to authority.

You are trying to shore up the weakness of your ability to argue your point by appealing to authority and ad hominems

You don't seem to be confident in your ability to prove your claim based on using arguments and evidence. Which is why you just threw out concepts and names of things and merely asserted they prove your claim is true without giving reasons why you think it does.

Merely telling someone to read a book doesn't logically prove your claims are true.

If you knew as much about those books as you seem to claim you do, and those books do in fact prove your claim, then you should be capable of giving an actual argument in defense of your claim.

 

[Wildswanderer]

It doesn't need to have a brain in order to allow some individuals with certain traits to live and reproduce more than others. That's all human selection amounts to. In the former case the traits that are 'selected' are the ones that are useful for survival and reproduction in the environment, and in the latter, it's the whim of the humans. The upshot that some survive and reproduce and others don't, and that there is some consistent pattern to the 'selection' is identical.

Yes because nature is concerned about keeping an animal safe and protected... just like people are!

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Is that a joke?

In this context, I do not think so.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Which is totally different than it happening by chance, no matter how you spin it.

And life does not evolve willy nilly by chance. The theory doesn't claim that it does.

It would serve you better to learn science rather than this appalling nonsense you have been indoctrinated to believe is science or what is said in science.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Which is totally different than it happening by chance, no matter how you spin it.

Natural selection is not chance.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yes because nature is concerned about keeping an animal safe and protected... just like people are!

You say some irrational things at times. Is that going to be the height of your arguments here? I think it is clear you are emotional about all of this. But it would be more useful to you to channel that emotion into learning. It does a body good.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If we do that, I might have to rethink my hard line literalism

Lots of things have challenged that view that I learned as a child. I no longer view the entire Bible as literal.

 

[ratiocinator]

Yes because nature is concerned about keeping an animal safe and protected... just like people are!

Seriously? Have you really thought so little about this or did you just not read what I said?

'Nature' doesn't care, that's kind of the whole point.

Those individuals that survive and reproduce despite the environment's indifference, are the ones whose genes get to dominate over time. Hence we have a 'selection' criterion that is equivalent to human selection that also chooses certain traits to contribute to the next generation.

As I said, this isn't rocket science, but perhaps I should have pointed out that it does take some basic level of thought....

 

[AlexanderG]

You have failed to provide any logical arguments for why your "examples" meet the criteria of evolution rather than the concept of adaptation.

Merely asserting they do doesn't demonstrate with logical reasons or evidence why you think they do.
If you can't provide such argumentation, then you are merely committing the fallacy of argument by assertion.

We know that you are falsely attributing to evolution what would be called mere adaptation when you cite moths changing color in response to environmental changes. The genetic ability for moths to express different colors is already in their code. They didn't need new code introduced in order for that expression to happen.

That is the false claim of yours that I am refuting: The idea that adaptation proves evolution. Those two concepts are not the same thing.

You are committing the fallacy of false equivalence by trying to pretend they are the same concept.


Since your confusion seems to come out of making no definitional distinction between adaptation and evolution, let me define for you how I am using these terms:

Adaptation is using the information already in the genetic codes to express changes in an organism.

Evolution is the introduction of new information, new code, that allows for doing something that the organisms previous genetic code did not have the ability to express through epigenetic adaptation.

An example of adaptation would be a cat changing fur colors to adapt to an environment. The code for that adaptation to happen is already there as something all cats carry around with them wherever they go. It's just waiting to be expressed.

An example of evolution would be the cat gaining the genetic information to express the growing of lizard-like scales instead of fur or a pair of wings on their back - doing something it currently doesn't have the genetic blueprints to be capable of building.

No amount of selective breeding will ever allow you to get lizard-like scales or wings on a cat - because the genetic information for that simply isn't there.

And you can't explain how the cat would ever get that information infused into it.

Chance doesn't sufficiently explain it because of the size and complexity of the informational code. You would need to introduce too much code all at once to get a functional change in the organism for it to be feasible to explain by random chance.

Because even if you could come up with a mechanism by which random code could be injected in, you can't feasibly expect to inject enough random code in just the right sequences by chance to result in the programming of a new function that is significant enough to confer a survival advantage so that function is then passed down and added to with more random chance over time.

If you don't introduce enough code to result in a change then you don't get a function that can be expressed and selected for by nature.

But the more code you try to introduce by chance, in order to program a survivally significant function, the odds of being able to achieve functional arrangement of the random code is basically a statistical impossibility.

So you do end up with what is functionally an irreducible complexity within code. Irreducible in the sense that you have no mechanism that would allow you to go from no code in an organism for a particular function to then having the code for a particular function.

You can't appeal to evolution to solve that problem for you because if you don't first have the new code to express a new function then there is nothing for nature to select.


To use an analogy:
Believing that new information can be introduced into an organism's code sufficient enough to result in previously impossible expressions would be like finding an coded application sitting on your computer desktop and concluding that this must have assembled itself by the random chance of glitches in the software and hardware of your computer. It's a logical absurdity. No matter how much time you let your computer sit there turned on you have no reason to believe such a thing could ever happen. Because we have no reason to believe based on our uniform experience, knowledge, and observations about computers that such a thing would be a possible no matter how much time you introduced into the equation. The processes by which that could happen simply don't exist within the computer as far as we know. And appealing to a great quantity of time doesn't change the fact that as far as we know the processes aren't there to make such a scenario ever happen.

Plus, generally all of our observational experience with changes happening to genetic code involves the losing of information rather than the gaining of information.
Which is why any random glitches or code changes in your computer are more likely to result in the failure of your computer and the losing of function rather than the gaining or improving of function



You are committing the logical fallacy of a red herring or strawman.

I never said anything about how one goes from non-life to life. Which means you are either misrepresenting what I argued or you are trying to distract from what I argued with a change of topic.

I talked about how one supposedly goes from one form of life to another.



Logical fallacy, ad hominem and appeal to authority.

You are trying to shore up the weakness of your ability to argue your point by appealing to authority and ad hominems

You don't seem to be confident in your ability to prove your claim based on using arguments and evidence. Which is why you just threw out concepts and names of things and merely asserted they prove your claim is true without giving reasons why you think it does.

Merely telling someone to read a book doesn't logically prove your claims are true.

If you knew as much about those books as you seem to claim you do, and those books do in fact prove your claim, then you should be capable of giving an actual argument in defense of your claim.

Telling you that you are ignorant about the field of biology is not fallacious, or an attack on your character. It is a statement that warrants belief, based or your comments that indicate no understanding. Comparing your statements to the consensus of qualified experts in the field of biology is not a fallacious appeal to authority, either. Your character may be wonderful, but you happen to be miseducated about scientific facts, theories, concepts, and definitions. (I also suggest you look up definitions of the informal fallacies and how they are often misused.)

A few points:
1. Evolution doesn't suggest we can purposefully cause a population of cats to evolve into lizards. We could get them to look very lizard-like, but would they be identical to other lizards species? No, the randomness of mutations means evolution predicts that this would not be an expected outcome. So there is no problem for me here, only for your poor understanding of what evolution predicts.

2. Maybe you should define adaptation. Based on the dictionary.com website, adaptation is a way of describing evolution by natural selection. So I'm not sure what your distinction is. My original point is that the way you defined adaptation is also consistent with the definition of evolution. Dictionaries seem to agree. Perhaps reflect on whatever reasons you have to relabel evolution with other words in order to deny the facts of evolution by calling it something else?

3. Your idea that we are "losing genetic information" is completely, demonstrably false. This is a canard that apologists pass around between each other, and is untethered to anything observable in actual science or reality.

4. Irreducible complexity has been entirely debunked. It was effectively abandoned over a decade ago. You should stop raising this issue, and redirect your attention to the comprehensive, evidence-based, scientific explanations for every supposed example that apologists have raised, like the flagellum, the eye, etc. Biologists understand this process extremely well. Again, it is a function of your misunderstanding of biology, rather than a problem for biology.

5. You seem to have the fundamental misconception that evolution happened intentionally, and then by assuming this intentionality you therefore conclude that it is so unlikely that humans for example could have happened randomly. But such teleological considerations are outside the scope of the theory of evolution. We simply observe that evolution takes whatever beneficial mutations occur and then it runs with them. For example, evolution predicts (and observes) that two identical populations of rodents would evolve differently when placed in identical environments, such that one might end up going down the path of camouflage and the other might evolve a burrowing strategy, or a better mouth for eating new plants, or countless other possibilities. It would simply depend on which mutations cropped up first. There is no prediction that any one specific mutation will occur in any given case, only that some beneficial mutation will arise in some way. This is what we observe. Can you understand this? No intentionality, and no need to account for such, nor the probabilities of one outcome over another.

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

If the changes are not supernatural, then it isn't magic. Change without explanation is just unexplained. Change beyond nature is supernatural.

Knowledge has a magic all it's own.

What scientists propose is based on what we can observe and our existing knowledge of the natural world. Scientists cannot propose solutions that cannot be tested or are at least potentially testable. Magic is something that cannot be tested. Magic is something that is claimed to have been seen, but there is no evidence of this outside of claims.

Does your knowledge of the natural world really tell you that over a million years a population of one cell creatures can become fish and birds and insects? That certainly seems like something that has no evidence outside of the claims of science. Your definition of magic.

 

[metis]

Does your knowledge of the natural world really tell you that over a million years a population of one cell creatures can become fish and birds and insects?

How about 3 billion years, which is slightly older than I am.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Natural selection is a simple and obvious mechanism. A six year old child could understand it. Why do you find it so hard to grasp?

I don't. But comparing it to human intervention is dishonest.