Evolution My ToE

[dad]

But, for example, there were no modern giraffes 10 million years ago. They simply did not yet exist. Instead, there were animals related to the giraffe (which we can tell by bone structures, teeth, etc) with shorter necks, etc..

There were no modern giraffes that could fossilize or leave remains. It is unknown whether similar-looking creatures that did leave remains were what giraffes came from. Or perhaps those creatures adapted short necks for whatever reason from the giraffe kind!? Ha. You base all things on the belief that nature was the same an, therefore, all creatures that lived would be equally represented in the fossil record if they lived at all.

 

[YoursTrue]

A lot. Millions of years worth of generations, each generation consisting of thousands to millions of couples.




Actually, that's not really true.
They look like definite boundaries, because each of these species has been on their own evolutionary path for a long time. So they had a lot of time to diverge.

As you wind back two distinct populations of two distinct species with "definite boundaries", those "definite boundares" are going to get blurred more and more as you approach the common ancestral population.

This is the nature of gradualism.




Rather: "ON this observable day". Not "until". Because as you approach the ancestral population, those boundaries get blurred more and more and gradually evaporate.





Why would you expect that?
Such visible change would take a lot more time then a couple of millenia.
On the scale of a human lifetime and certainly without modern technology, it takes quite rigourous and discplined observation, data collecting and data analysis, to detect and work out biological evolution.





Populations evolve, individuals don't.
It's through individuals that variation is introduced, but for that variation to become part of the common genepool, it needs to spread throughout the population, which takes quite a few generations, obviously. And that's what evolution is: the cross generation spread of variations through inheritance with reproduction.




All of evolution is gradual.
Every individual ever born, was of the same species as its parents.


In terms of how speciation happens, it's an entire population.



That's indeed not how it happens.
Instead, the entire population gradually changes through the accumulation of variation / change in the common genepool.

No non-human ever gave birth to a human.
Just like no latin speaking mother has ever raised a spanish speaking child.
Instead, the latin spoken by an entire population gradually morphed into spanish spoken by an entire population.

Spanish isn't the product of a single individual or a single lineage within the latin speaking population. It's rather the result of accumulation of small changes over generations in commonly spoken language by the entire population.

Biological evolution is the same in that regard.

Ow and also: chimps and humans are cousins on the species level. We share ancestors. Humans didn't evolve from chimps. Rather both humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestral species.

At some point in the past, an estimated 8 million years ago if memory serves me right, this ancestral population split into two distinct populations. This can have lots of causes. Migration of a group to other regions is one. Geographic changes can be an another (like the formation of a river, through a population, "trapping" both groups on either side).
...
Again, timescales are different. Also note that the breeding of dogs is largely a human undertaking. The evolution we see there, isn't something that would occur naturally.

In fact, many of the dog breeds we created this way, couldn't even survive in nature without human care.
Some of them are anatomically so skewed that they aren't even capable of natural reproduction anymore.

What dog breeds prove though, is that evolution happens.
If it wasn't for the processes of evolution, we wouldn't be able to create all these various dog breeds (and vegetables, and fruits and whatnot) that naturally do not occur, simply by artificially selecting breeding pairs, to breed for certain traits.

OK, I did a little more reading into this. I realize and understand that different species (is it? the proper name?) within the dog population (not sure what to call the dog bundle in a scientific term, I'll have to look and see what genus and species are) can develop, but this is because of the inherent chemical and biologic processes enabled by their makeup. To me this is not evolution. If someone says, for instance, that dachshunds evolved from whatever they were bred from, that is not the evolution type thing I am talking about. Not sure if dachshunds can breed with longer-legged dogs and have offspring that lose the short legged characteristics, but I read somewhere that the genes to make longer legs are lost, not sure how or if that works.

 

[SkepticThinker]

OK, I did a little more reading into this. I realize and understand that different species (is it? the proper name?) within the dog population (not sure what to call the dog bundle in a scientific term, I'll have to look and see what genus and species are) can develop, but this is because of the inherent chemical and biologic processes enabled by their makeup. To me this is not evolution. If someone says, for instance, that dachshunds evolved from whatever they were bred from, that is not the evolution type thing I am talking about. Not sure if dachshunds can breed with longer-legged dogs and have offspring that lose the short legged characteristics, but I read somewhere that the genes to make longer legs are lost, not sure how or if that works.

If evolution were not a fact of life, human beings would not be able to breed dogs in the way that they have and do.
Nor could we have produced cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. from the cabbage plant, as we have done.
When humans do it, it's called artificial selection. When nature does it, it's called natural selection.

Here's an interesting read for you:
The silver fox domestication experiment

 

[Polymath257]

OK, I did a little more reading into this. I realize and understand that different species (is it? the proper name?) within the dog population (not sure what to call the dog bundle in a scientific term, I'll have to look and see what genus and species are) can develop, but this is because of the inherent chemical and biologic processes enabled by their makeup. To me this is not evolution. If someone says, for instance, that dachshunds evolved from whatever they were bred from, that is not the evolution type thing I am talking about. Not sure if dachshunds can breed with longer-legged dogs and have offspring that lose the short legged characteristics, but I read somewhere that the genes to make longer legs are lost, not sure how or if that works.

First of all, all dog breeds are the same species.

On the other hand, the small changes you see between breeds of dogs *is* evolution.

Let me put it this way: what does the term 'evolution' mean to you? What *would* be an example of evolution?

Maybe if you answer this, we can clear up some misunderstandings about this topic.

 

[YoursTrue]

Well, once again, we can look at fossils from 1 million years, or 10 million years ago and compare them to the animals we see now. And, if we plot what the animals alive at each point in time look like, we find that similar animals tend to live both close together geographically, but also close together in time.

But, for example, there were no modern giraffes 10 million years ago. They simply did not yet exist. Instead, there were animals related to the giraffe (which we can tell by bone structures, teeth, etc) with shorter necks, etc.

And you are correct, to be down to only two individuals would be incredibly detrimental to a species. But it is populations that evolve, not individuals. Genes are mutated and passed along to children, and those changes spread through the population, changing its characteristics over many generations. And that is evolution: changes in species over geological time.

Remember that the LCA of any two species was a population of animals (or plants, if you want to study them--same principles apply). So, there was a common ancestor of dogs and cats. There was a common ancestor before that for dogs, cats, bears, and other carnivores. We have the fossils of those ancestors. Even if you don't like to think of them evolving into the species we have today, those animals did exist in the past, they were different than any alive today, and they had anatomies that had characteristics common to the mammalian carnivores *and to no other species*.

Evolution was first suspected by looking at fossils. People studying them noticed that the species alive at any time were different than at other times in ways that suggest that species change their characteristics over the course of millions of years. It was only later that we learned enough about DNA and genetics to understand the mechanisms of those changes.

This has been a most interesting conversation. So here's another bit of information I discovered. Let me know what you think:
"Zebroids—the name for any zebra-based hybrid—are almost always infertile, and they sometimes suffer from dwarfism. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising. While horses, zebras, and donkeys look similar and belong to the same genus (Equus), each species has a different number of chromosomes. So just because you can interbreed them doesn’t mean you should
But hybridization has its costs."

 

[YoursTrue]

If evolution were not a fact of life, human beings would not be able to breed dogs in the way that they have and do.
Nor could we have produced cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. from the cabbage plant, as we have done.
When humans do it, it's called artificial selection. When nature does it, it's called natural selection.

Here's an interesting read for you:
The silver fox domestication experiment

Again, I am not saying that it is impossible to interbreed certain animals. I know it happens. However, in the classic sense of evolutionary theory, I do not believe it happened as theorists and many scientists believe. I will take a look at the theory of "natural selection" as outlined by scientists when I have more time, meaning -- how the conjecture goes from a unicell to all the different kinds, or genuses, whatever they're called. I don't care how many billions of years they say it took for a unicell etc. to evolve to plants, trees, fishes and chimpanzees.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Again, I am not saying that it is impossible to interbreed certain animals. I know it happens. However, in the classic sense of evolutionary theory, I do not believe it happened as theorists and many scientists believe. I will take a look at the theory of "natural selection" as outlined by scientists when I have more time, meaning -- how the conjecture goes from a unicell to all the different kinds, or genuses, whatever they're called. I don't care how many billions of years they say it took for a unicell etc. to evolve to plants, trees, fishes and chimpanzees.

And why don't you believe it happened as the people who spend their lives studying and demonstrating this stuff (aka the people who understand this stuff) say about it? Especially when you yourself do not understand it? How can you draw conclusions about something you don't understand? Seriously though, you should have some basic understanding of evolution at this point, given the amount of very detailed explanations that have been provided for you by people who know what they're talking about.

Perhaps you could think about and respond directly to what I said in my post. You have a way of avoiding doing that.
How do you think artificial selection works, but then go on to declare that you don't think natural selection works? That doesn't make sense.

Evolution is a fact of life. It is the backbone of modern biology.

 

[YoursTrue]

And why don't you believe it happened as the people who spend their lives studying and demonstrating this stuff (aka the people who understand this stuff) say about it? Especially when you yourself do not understand it? How can you draw conclusions about something you don't understand? Seriously though, you should have some basic understanding of evolution at this point, given the amount of very detailed explanations that have been provided for you by people who know what they're talking about.

Perhaps you could think about and respond directly to what I said in my post. You have a way of avoiding doing that.
How do you think artificial selection works, but then go on to declare that you don't think natural selection works? That doesn't make sense.

Evolution is a fact of life. It is the backbone of modern biology.

I have seen the posts and links declaring nàtural selection. I don't believe that birds, fish and gorillas, for example developed by natural selection from bacteria or unicells over billions of years. I see no proof of that, even with timetables. I don't see that timetables prove natural selection. I hope we're not going into a discussion of no proof about anything scientifically speaking, of course. I see where many scientists get their ideas about that but I don't believe that lions, gorillas, fish, plants, came about by natural selection. I will try to learn more about genuses or kinds and species.

 

[YoursTrue]

First of all, all dog breeds are the same species.

On the other hand, the small changes you see between breeds of dogs *is* evolution.

Let me put it this way: what does the term 'evolution' mean to you? What *would* be an example of evolution?

Maybe if you answer this, we can clear up some misunderstandings about this topic.

That is a good question, for which right now I don't have the answer, based on what *I* believe. (What is evolution?) But now I have a question about -- something else, which impinges upon the discussion of what *is* evolution. That is, the following explanation: (from wikipedia about taxonomic rank):
"In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in a taxonomic hierarchy. Examples of taxonomic ranks are species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, etc."
I think I need to better understand those terminologies as well.
I will say what I think you think evolution is: that is the natural progression by chemical (biologic) changes that leads to permanent change of ??? what??? form? body? species?
Naturally I can be wrong about what you think. So I'll start at the beginning by saying that evolution, according to the major thinking of scientists, seems to be that life moved along from the first or several bacteria cropping up on the earth until the supposedly last rung right now of the evolutionary process, the human being.

 

[YoursTrue]

A lot. Millions of years worth of generations, each generation consisting of thousands to millions of couples.

Naturally you'd have to believe that somehow the many couples produced gorillas, and/or eventually human beings. Otherwise it would take only two to tango, as the saying goes. Yet it takes two to tango in the human population, nothing other than humans are yet produced, are they?

As you wind back two distinct populations of two distinct species with "definite boundaries", those "definite boundares" are going to get blurred more and more as you approach the common ancestral population.

This is the nature of gradualism.

In other words, if I understand you correctly, there is no definite, distinct evidence of transference of form by genetic means since it is so blurred.

Such visible change would take a lot more time then a couple of millenia.
On the scale of a human lifetime and certainly without modern technology, it takes quite rigourous and discplined observation, data collecting and data analysis, to detect and work out biological evolution.

OK, well, humans according to evidence, have only begun to write (something which I find fantastic) only about 5,000 years ago or so. Not long, long ago. And, of course, that is handily deposited by evolutionists as necessary transactions. (I don't believe that, as if that was why writing was developed within the past several thousand years.)

All of evolution is gradual.
Every individual ever born, was of the same species as its parents.

No non-human ever gave birth to a human.

But bobobos gave incremental birth to?? Or is it the missing CLA that gave birth to humans?

Just like no latin speaking mother has ever raised a spanish speaking child.
Instead, the latin spoken by an entire population gradually morphed into spanish spoken by an entire population.

You may say that is natural selection evolution, but I do not define that as such, or biologic natural selection. Perhaps some people do. The *evolution* of language is an entirely different idea as the word evolution is used in biological sciences. One might say that democracy evolved and is evolving, and one might argue that it is somehow natural selection. But that is not how *I* see biological natural selection of evolution. The word 'evolve' can mean things like society evolving, such as from kings with absolute power to other forms of government. Perhaps social scientists would say that is natural biologic selection, but that's like saying paper magazines evolved from writings on papyrus. I hope we don't have to discuss that, because I am not talking about social evolution as far as that goes. If you're going that way, here's where I stop.

Spanish isn't the product of a single individual or a single lineage within the latin speaking population. It's rather the result of accumulation of small changes over generations in commonly spoken language by the entire population.

Biological evolution is the same in that regard.

Oh, I see if I am understanding your correctly, that you are likening it to that. I do not.

What dog breeds prove though, is that evolution happens.
If it wasn't for the processes of evolution, we wouldn't be able to create all these various dog breeds (and vegetables, and fruits and whatnot) that naturally do not occur, simply by artificially selecting breeding pairs, to breed for certain traits.

What it proves to me is that men can often use elements as they wish. It also proves that dead bodies deteriorate into slime, can be eaten by animals, and turn by biological processes to different parts of chemistry. That is not what I mean by evolution as if these processes don't or wouldn't happen. So what I think it comes down to, perhaps, is what you think evolution is, and what I think evolution is. And possibly the two will never meet.

 

[YoursTrue]

Humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees.

So we go back to the (missing, not there apparently) Last Common Ancestor -? But then again, that's what all those charts show, the *tropes.* Somehow starting with an ape-like hunched over body, *evolving*? to the last specimen, humanoid standing type. So it wasn't a chimpanzee, it looked very similar to a chimpanee. Go back to what is the Last Common Ancestor if you know what it is, and then say why. Who knows what is the LCA down the line from humans?

 

[YoursTrue]

If evolution were not a fact of life, human beings would not be able to breed dogs in the way that they have and do.
Nor could we have produced cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. from the cabbage plant, as we have done.
When humans do it, it's called artificial selection. When nature does it, it's called natural selection.

Here's an interesting read for you:
The silver fox domestication experiment

That truly is a very interesting article, thank you for presenting it. It tells me more than one thing. First, in the context of this discussion, this was definitely a controlled experiment. Also, it tells me of the role of government in many cases. There are other problems with controlled genetics in an ethical sense such as this. But yes, this was a controlled experiment.

 

[Subduction Zone]

So we go back to the (missing, not there apparently) Last Common Ancestor -? But then again, that's what all those charts show, the *tropes.* Somehow starting with an ape-like hunched over body, *evolving*? to the last specimen, humanoid standing type. So it wasn't a chimpanzee, it looked very similar to a chimpanee. Go back to what is the Last Common Ancestor if you know what it is, and then say why. Who knows what is the LCA down the line from humans?

Oh my, you do not seem to realize that you have an ape-like body. Don't pay attention to overly simplistic artistic renderings. It is designed more to get the feel of the events than to catalog what actually happened.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

That truly is a very interesting article, thank you for presenting it. It tells me more than one thing. First, in the context of this discussion, this was definitely a controlled experiment. Also, it tells me of the role of government in many cases. There are other problems with controlled genetics in an ethical sense such as this. But yes, this was a controlled experiment.

What does a controlled experiment mean to you? Do you understand the concept?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

That truly is a very interesting article, thank you for presenting it. It tells me more than one thing. First, in the context of this discussion, this was definitely a controlled experiment. Also, it tells me of the role of government in many cases. There are other problems with controlled genetics in an ethical sense such as this. But yes, this was a controlled experiment.

What does an example of a Russian breeding experiment tell you about the role of government? How are you applying your observations to other governments not described it mentioned in the article?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

So we go back to the (missing, not there apparently) Last Common Ancestor -? But then again, that's what all those charts show, the *tropes.* Somehow starting with an ape-like hunched over body, *evolving*? to the last specimen, humanoid standing type. So it wasn't a chimpanzee, it looked very similar to a chimpanee. Go back to what is the Last Common Ancestor if you know what it is, and then say why. Who knows what is the LCA down the line from humans?

If you are riding in a car going from St. Louis to Philadelphia and you fall asleep in Indiana and don't wake up until Wheeling, West Virginia, what would that mean?

Would it mean you weren't on a trip? If you don't know the names of the town's your vehicle passed through while you slept, does that mean they do not exist or that you didn't ride through them?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Oh my, you do not seem to realize that you have an ape-like body. Don't pay attention to overly simplistic artistic renderings. It is designed more to get the feel of the events than to catalog what actually happened.

Not only ape-like, but well and truly the body of an ape. Just a different genus and species of ape.

 

[Polymath257]

Naturally you'd have to believe that somehow the many couples produced gorillas, and/or eventually human beings. Otherwise it would take only two to tango, as the saying goes. Yet it takes two to tango in the human population, nothing other than humans are yet produced, are they?

Once again, populations shift slowly over many generations. There is no firm line between 'human' and 'pre-human'. And I suspect that is one of the fundamental problems here. You seem to think that species are fixed over the course of thousands of generations and they are not.

In other words, if I understand you correctly, there is no definite, distinct evidence of transference of form by genetic means since it is so blurred.

What do you mean by the phrase 'transference of form'? Seriously. I have a feeling that this is another place where you understanding of what the theory of evolution says and what it actually does say are two different things.

If a chimp gave birth to a human, that would show our understanding of evolution is *wrong*. Do you understand that?

OK, well, humans according to evidence, have only begun to write (something which I find fantastic) only about 5,000 years ago or so. Not long, long ago. And, of course, that is handily deposited by evolutionists as necessary transactions. (I don't believe that, as if that was why writing was developed within the past several thousand years.)

But bobobos gave incremental birth to?? Or is it the missing CLA that gave birth to humans?

Once again, you seem to think there is a clear line making the distinction of what is and what is not human. We choose some language to describe what is going on, but the language tends to suggest more definite lines than actually exist.

The LCA was a population of animals that split into two (at least) smaller populations. Those smaller populations each changed gradually over time, always having a population of breeding individuals. But the populations both changed in different directions and changed away from what they began as. One population changed enough that we now say they are human. The other population changed enough we now say they are chimps.

You may say that is natural selection evolution, but I do not define that as such, or biologic natural selection. Perhaps some people do. The *evolution* of language is an entirely different idea as the word evolution is used in biological sciences. One might say that democracy evolved and is evolving, and one might argue that it is somehow natural selection. But that is not how *I* see biological natural selection of evolution. The word 'evolve' can mean things like society evolving, such as from kings with absolute power to other forms of government. Perhaps social scientists would say that is natural biologic selection, but that's like saying paper magazines evolved from writings on papyrus. I hope we don't have to discuss that, because I am not talking about social evolution as far as that goes. If you're going that way, here's where I stop.

OK, I know you don't think evolution is true. But what do you think the term means to those who believe it? What do you think they are saying actually happens? You seem to think it means something like a dog giving birth to a cat or a chimp giving birth to a human. Well, it doesn't.

Oh, I see if I am understanding your correctly, that you are likening it to that. I do not.

It is an analogy. But it is actually a fairly good analogy. Changes in languages don't happen all at once. You don't go from someone speaking Latin to someone speaking French in one generation. And, at each stage of the change from Latin to French (and Spanish), each generation of speakers in a population understood all of those around them. There was no 'first French speaker' Nor was there someone who started speaking French with nobody else to speak it with.

Nonetheless, French and Spanish 'evolved' (cultural evolution, not genetic) from Latin. And now, native speakers of French do not understand Spanish (they are separate languages) and neither French nor Spanish speakers can understand Latin.

This is how species evolve: through gradual changes over the course of many generations, population splitting and changing in different ways and with fuzzy boundaries over time with no clear line separating one species from another.

What it proves to me is that men can often use elements as they wish. It also proves that dead bodies deteriorate into slime, can be eaten by animals, and turn by biological processes to different parts of chemistry. That is not what I mean by evolution as if these processes don't or wouldn't happen. So what I think it comes down to, perhaps, is what you think evolution is, and what I think evolution is. And possibly the two will never meet.

OK, what do *you* think evolution is? Because I thought the topic of conversation is what *biologists* and other *scientists* think evolution is and what the evidence is for the type of evolution they say exists.

If you don't agree with the definition of evolution used, then you are simply talking about an irrelevancy.

 

[YoursTrue]

If evolution were not a fact of life, human beings would not be able to breed dogs in the way that they have and do.
Nor could we have produced cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc. from the cabbage plant, as we have done.
When humans do it, it's called artificial selection. When nature does it, it's called natural selection.

Here's an interesting read for you:
The silver fox domestication experiment

While again, that was a very interesting article and I appreciated reading it, I really think we have different ideas or interpretations of what evolution is. Breeding dogs is not natural selection. It is manipulating genes by outside (human) intervention. They still, however, remain dogs.

 

[YoursTrue]

Once again, populations shift slowly over many generations. There is no firm line between 'human' and 'pre-human'. And I suspect that is one of the fundamental problems here. You seem to think that species are fixed over the course of thousands of generations and they are not.

What do you mean that there is no firm line between human and pre-human. There isn't? OK, let's discuss what is the predecessor to humans, shall we?