Evolution is not observable admits Jerry Coyne

[Ouroboros]

"God does not exist" -- The Bible.

 

[*blank*]

macroevolution doesn't occur. the reason i know this is because the earth is a living organism and has a consciousness, its not possible for it to evolve like this way because there is an ectoplasm. Did you know even computers and google are alive?

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxCARDIFF-Google-Consciousnes

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I want you to image something for a moment. Imagine you have two groups of apes. Not unheard of, right? Apes travel in groups, they don't travel in one giant ape group.

So take Ape Group 1, and take Ape Group 2. They start in a similar area, but separate, maybe do to weather, maybe just following the food source around... Ape Group 1 more or less travels around in areas that are pretty similar to the original area. So, they have kids, the kids look like normal, and for the most part none of them die. Ape Group 2 go North into some mountainous area and stumble upon an elevated region where it's 40 degrees. Generally, the kids Ape Group 2 is having is having a harder time surviving the cold. However, one of the ape's is born with a random mutation where their fur is slightly thicker. The baby lives, and goes on to reproduce a bunch, and all of its kids have slightly thicker coats, and so none of them die in the cold. However, all the other kids in Ape Group 2 are dying. So any ape in Ape Group 2 with that gene for thicker coats, is going to reproduce more effectively, meaning the gene for the thicker coat is going to become more abundant then the original gene. However, in Ape Group 1, that same mutation for a thicker coat would a problem, because it's not actually colder there.

So you have Ape Group 2 with a different gene frequency than Ape Group 1, even though they all the same ancestor.

It's no different for brains... monkeys have different sized brains. The brain slowly grew bigger, allowing beings to get slowly smarter over time...

Thanks for the substantive reply!


So the theory goes. And it makes perfect sense to me, that's entirely logical, intuitive, satisfactory....
Just like classical physics.

And likewise the problems arise when you start scrutinizing the details of the mechanism in our 'ideal scenario'

First yes, you need a small group that for some reason isolates itself from the larger one, and a change in environment. As we see in horseshoe crabs and many other populations, large stable connected gene pools resist evolution,. Isolations happen and are essential to the theory yes, but right off the bat, we are introducing some modest improbabilities into the evolution of any particular population- we already drift from the immutable inevitable omnipresent process some assume.

Then this small group as in your scenario needs to be stressed. Needs to run into a more challenging environment than the one they left, and for some reason stay there instead of returning, again quite possible, but certainly a somewhat unusual non-default scenario, another improbability which is compounded with the first

Now assuming this small stressed group does not perish, from being small and stressed! (lose a few more probability points) . One individual must acquire an advantage. And what is crucial here, is that it must be a significant advantage. If it is not a significant advantage, that individual will not survive significantly longer, be significantly stronger, or reproduce significantly more, it will not alter the gene pool to any significant degree. No evolution has taken place here.

so the word 'slightly' in the 'slightly thicker fur' is the crux, what are the odds of one individual- in this narrow, small, stressed group- accidentally acquiring significantly thicker fur? and multiply this component of improbability with the rest

Also compare this lucky improbability occurring within our small stressed group - with the probability of inbreeding, malnutrition, injury, disease producing vastly more instances of significantly deleterious mutations..

And all this against the probability of merely one minor mundane evolutionary adaptation in an ideal scenario- thicker fur, never mind sentience, consciousness spontaneously developing the same way.
Not to mention millions upon million of other significant design modifications occurring concurrently in relatively short spaces of geological time


There's no slam dunk argument here, and I'm not assuming any numbers, it's simply not quite as easy and obvious when put to the test as I had once thought as a believer.
Trying to demonstrate the process to unbelievers in software simulations, is what created my first inklings of doubt.

 

[outhouse]

macroevolution doesn't occur.

Factually wrong

but thanks for only proselytizing , and refusing to debate anything here

the earth is a living organism

LOL POE

has a consciousness

LOL POE

 

[outhouse]

There's no slam dunk argument here

ONLY for people who refuse credible education and knowledge.

Many creationist make up false debates and arguments in severe desperation


Thanks for playing but you have in no way EVER substantiated anything you propose

 

[Sonofason]

First of all, if everything had to be supposedly created, then why not God? How could you or anyone else actually know that God is eternal? Are you eternal whereas you can tell? What objective evidence of any type can you provide us?

Well, first of all, no one has ever witnessed any thing coming into existence from nothing. That being said, we do see things taking new form, but when they do it is always caused to take on its new form. The Big Bang is the closest example of something coming into existence from nothing; however, no one was there to witness how the universe came into existence and whether or not it was actually caused to exist or not. So, we don't know. The Bible tells us that it was God that created all things. And I believe it.

And exactly how is it that you supposedly know that God had anything to do with creating our universe? Were you there? How do you know it wasn't "Gods" instead? How do you know that all doesn't go back to infinity, which is even older than I am.

Well, I experience God, and so I am certain that God exists. Whether or not He created the universe I cannot be sure. But I believe He did.

Finally, I don't have a problem with what you may believe as long as you recognize that this is what it is-- belief. But beliefs are not necessarily facts, so we should always temper our beliefs with some "I don't know".

Yes of course. I believe God created the universe.

 

[Sonofason]

Except they do, its an observed fact.

No, I'm sorry, without mankind, there would be no word "species". The word species is a human construct. Without the existence of human beings, there would be no such things as species.

 

[outhouse]

No, I'm sorry, without mankind, there would be no word "species". The word species is a human construct. Without the existence of human beings, there would be no such things as species.

Here is a word, I would like you to look up the definition and learn it before returning, BIOLOGY!

meanwhile all religions are a human construct

 

[metis]

Well, first of all, no one has ever witnessed any thing coming into existence from nothing. That being said, we do see things taking new form, but when they do it is always caused to take on its new form. The Big Bang is the closest example of something coming into existence from nothing; however, no one was there to witness how the universe came into existence and whether or not it was actually caused to exist or not. So, we don't know. The Bible tells us that it was God that created all things. And I believe it.


Well, I experience God, and so I am certain that God exists. Whether or not He created the universe I cannot be sure. But I believe He did.


Yes of course. I believe God created the universe.

That's fine that you believe as far as I'm concerned, but personal beliefs are not necessarily facts. Personally, I simply do not know if there is one, more than one, or none at all. However, I do believe that beliefs as such do have their value, and I also believe that religious institutions have a value as well, which is why I am still affiliated with one.

 

[dust1n]

Thanks for the substantive reply!

No problem.

So the theory goes. And it makes perfect sense to me, that's entirely logical, intuitive, satisfactory....
Just like classical physics.

And likewise the problems arise when you start scrutinizing the details of the mechanism in our 'ideal scenario'

First yes, you need a small group that for some reason isolates itself from the larger one, and a change in environment.

Well, it doesn't need to be a comparatively small group, and the group doesn't necessarily need to isolate itself (Pangaea splitting into continents is such an example of isolation needing no part of any any group), but yea, you generally got it there. A change in the environment really gets the selective process going. If the environment was continuously static, there would be little reason for things to change.

As we see in horseshoe crabs and many other populations, large stable connected gene pools resist evolution,.

Many things in the oceans maintain morphological shape for long periods of time. For one, a lot of that stuff isn't sexual beings. The ocean world experiences less dynamic variation than the general atmosphere. At least it has on this planet. But it would be mistake to think that horseshoe crabs aren't evolving. Not all change is aesthetically obvious. Not all genetic change is going to result in observable prototypical differences. Some DNA is more resistant to mutation than others. Comparative to your average flowering plant, humans resist evolution, whereas a flowering plant might lose up to 50% of its DNA cross breeding with different species.

Isolations happen and are essential to the theory yes, but right off the bat, we are introducing some modest improbabilities into the evolution of any particular population- we already drift from the immutable inevitable omnipresent process some assume.

Wait, why? There are some billions of populations of the planet that are currently isolated from one another right now.

Then this small group as in your scenario needs to be stressed. Needs to run into a more challenging environment than the one they left, and for some reason stay there instead of returning, again quite possible, but certainly a somewhat unusual non-default scenario, another improbability which is compounded with the first

The stress need not be greater, just different. And stressful and changing environments are not improbable; they are inevitable. I'm not sure if you have looked at the globe lately, but for most entities, survival and reproduction is a continual struggle requiring constant work to attain uncertain outcomes. I'm not sure what magic point on the Earth you think living things remain entirely unstressed, but I'd love to visit.

Now assuming this small stressed group does not perish, from being small and stressed! (lose a few more probability points) .

Which happens about 99.9% of the time.

One individual must acquire an advantage. And what is crucial here, is that it must be a significant advantage. If it is not a significant advantage, that individual will not survive significantly longer, be significantly stronger, or reproduce significantly more, it will not alter the gene pool to any significant degree. No evolution has taken place here.

Significance is a matter of opinion... all living things are acquiring changes. Only a small portion of them are advantageous. Something that might have been neutral could suddenly be useful in a different environment. The advantage only has to be slight. Some gene might only cause an increase of reproduction by some .000001%, over the course of ten million generations, that's going to yield a lot more individuals.

so the word 'slightly' in the 'slightly thicker fur' is the crux, what are the odds of one individual- in this narrow, small, stressed group- accidentally acquiring significantly thicker fur? and multiply this component of improbability with the rest

I don't presume to know the likelihood of grand scheme outcomes. What is the liklihood that God makes animals without physically touching them at all? I would think very little, but there is no way of knowing. But thicker hair:

"The mutation was found in a gene for ectodysplasin receptor, or EDAR, part of a signalling pathway known to play a key role in the development of hair, sweat glands and other skin features. While human populations in Africa and Europe had one, ancestral, version of the gene, most East Asians had a derived variant, EDARV370A, which studies had linked to thicker scalp hair and an altered tooth shape in humans.

The ectodysplasin pathway is highly conserved across vertebrates — the same genes do similar things in humans and mice and zebrafish. For that reason, and because its effects on skin, hair and scales can be observed directly, it is widely studied.

"There are three parts to this study" said Professor Mark Thomas of the University College London Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment and a co-author on the paper. "The first links the version of the EDAR gene common in East Asians to a set of traits including thicker hair and a higher density of sweat glands; the second uses computer simulation to identify where and when the mutation is likely to have arisen, and what its selective advantage was likely to be; and the third showed that when the East Asian version of the gene is inserted into a mouse, that mouse exhibited many of the same traits as those it is linked with in humans".

This evolutionary conservation led Yana Kamberov to reason that EDARV370A would exert similar biological effects in an animal model as in humans. Kamberov developed a mouse model with the exact mutation of EDARV370A — a difference of one DNA letter from the original, or wild-type, population. That mouse manifested thicker hair, more densely branched mammary glands and an increased number of sweat glands.

"This not only directly pointed us to the subset of organs and tissues that were sensitive to the mutation, but also gave us the key biological evidence that EDARV370A could have been acted on by natural selection," said Kamberov."

http://www.science20.com/news_artic...on_produced_thick_hair_30000_years_ago-103756

Also compare this lucky improbability occurring within our small stressed group - with the probability of inbreeding, malnutrition, injury, disease producing vastly more instances of significantly deleterious mutations..

So you mean, anything that wasn't killed off by inbreeding, malnutrition, injury, and disease would be left right? I wonder if the remaining portion of the population, being the only ones capable of surviving something like that, would have offspring that in general were more capable of surviving those same things..........

And all this against the probability of merely one minor mundane evolutionary adaptation in an ideal scenario- thicker fur, never mind sentience, consciousness spontaneously developing the same way.

I didn't say anything about consciousness spontaneously developing the same way, as it probably wasn't spontaneous at all.

Not to mention millions upon million of other significant design modifications occurring concurrently in relatively short spaces of geological time.

What, you mean for human sentience? There isn't really that many design modifications necessary. If you were trying to make a human brain, it would be a lot easier to modify a macaque brain than a chipmunk brain. And relatively short spaces in geologic time? 200,000+ years. Even if I assumed me and women produced 2 children, who produced 2 children, who produced 2 children every 20 years. In that 10,000 generation, you are talking about 1.99506311688.... * 10^3010 individuals... Yes, that is basically 200,000,000,000(with 3000 more zeros behind it).

There's no slam dunk argument here, and I'm not assuming any numbers, it's simply not quite as easy and obvious when put to the test as I had once thought as a believer.
Trying to demonstrate the process to unbelievers in software simulations, is what created my first inklings of doubt.

You try to demonstrate evolution in software simulations? Why would you think that would work on a normal PC computer? Do you disbelief in supernova because your computer can't simulate one?

 

[viole]

No, I'm sorry, without mankind, there would be no word "species". The word species is a human construct. Without the existence of human beings, there would be no such things as species.

Do you think that without human beings there would be no such a thing as a planet?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Unification]

Actually you're wrong Gravity is made of matter, subatomic particles called gravitons;

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/universe-gravity.html

Gravitons are still hypothetical, and if they exist, they are likely massless... signifying they are not matter. To be considered matter in the scientific community, there must be mass.

I believe that they exist though and are not matter.

 

[Unification]

It is not a force either. In orbit you feel no force whatsoever (if you are not too big) despite being under the influence of a gravitational field.

The force you feel on earth (your weight, basically) is mainly caused by the floor stopping you from following the natural path toward the center of the earth. Remove the floor and forces disappear.

Ciao

- viole

Yes, a lot of confusion there. Many believe it's a force.

 

[Unification]

Obviously Dawkins is not considered very credible to most people, but I'm talking about his observations, not mine.

'we find many of [the major invertebrate groups] already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear'

If you read the rest of the chapter you will find that he goes on to speculate on some hypothetical explanations- but he does not retract the unambiguous truth of the statement, nor do most evolutionists

Agree, many here can't decipher hypothetical from fact, the theoretical parts of evolution from the factual parts. It's fanatisicm and faith. It's not possible to reasonably debate with such folks. If all of the "hypotheticals" are not agreed with as fact, panties become moist.

Lyndon and Revoltingest hit this well.

 

[Parsimony]

Gravitons are still hypothetical, and if they exist, they are likely massless... signifying they are not matter. To be considered matter in the scientific community, there must be mass.

I believe that they exist though and are not matter.

Speaking of gravitons specifically, I suppose that we do not know for sure that they are there. We have plenty of good reason to suspect so, however, given that gravitational waves have been inferred to exist by studying the orbital decay of the binary neutron star PSR B1913+16 and quantization of gravity from experiments with neutrons. Real gravitons should technically have an effective mass imparted to them due to their energy content (following from E=mc^2). To be technical, gravitational fields and gravitational waves aren't quite the same thing, though.

 

[dust1n]

No, I'm sorry, without mankind, there would be no word "species". The word species is a human construct. Without the existence of human beings, there would be no such things as species.

Man, if that's what you think of word "species," I wonder what you think about word "God" or "is" or "love."

 

[Parsimony]

Man, if that's what you think of word "species," I wonder what you think about word "God" or "is" or "love."

He does have a point. The species concept is a blurry one. Ring species being one example of this, as well as the fact that you can sometimes get fertile offspring from two animals that are not usually regarded as being the same species (such as house cats and servals). Then you have chronospecies as well.

 

[dust1n]

He does have a point. The species concept is a blurry one. Ring species being one example of this, as well as the fact that you can sometimes get fertile offspring from two animals that are not usually regarded as being the same species (such as house cats and servals). Then you have chronospecies as well.

I don't disagree with him at all. What I'm wondering is the means by which he determines which words aren't human constructs and that don't only exist because humans are around.

 

[Unification]

I don't disagree with him at all. What I'm wondering is the means by which he determines which words aren't human constructs and that don't only exist because humans are around.

All words are constructed by human beings. Including "God," "science," "love," "species."

I understand what you mean though.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Agree, many here can't decipher hypothetical from fact, the theoretical parts of evolution from the factual parts. It's fanatisicm and faith. It's not possible to reasonably debate with such folks. If all of the "hypotheticals" are not agreed with as fact, panties become moist.

Lyndon and Revoltingest hit this well.

Yes, like this guy:

'Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact'

'It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane'

Richard Dawkins


Evolution is an interesting speculation, like classical physics, it takes the simplest superficial observations and attempts to extrapolate them into a unifying theory - which is a natural desire, we all want to know the answer- but one thing science has taught us, particularly through skeptics of atheism like George Lemaitre and Max Planck, is that there is more to reality than meets the eye.

If we accept that 'nature is the executor of God's laws' (Galileo) we are free to look beyond the simplest 'God refuting' explanation, and follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter how intellectually unfashionable that may be.