Question for Evolutionist

[outhouse]

Are the children in grade school presented with the evidence

Let me tell you what they are NOT presented with.

MYTHOLOGY based on ancient religious faith.

 

[metis]

So, how do I know there is no final purpose?

Mainly because there is zero evidence of such a thing. It is, for starters not required to make a functioning Universe, and i do not accept useless hypotheses which do not have justifications that go beyong my wishful or phylosophical thinking, or my spiritual longings, whatever they are. And things do seem to be, ultimately pointless.

Expected retort: but absence of evidence, does not entail evidence of absence.

True. But by the same token, I have no evidence that most of the things I know are wrong, either. If I did, I would stop knowing them today. This fact does not justify demoting my knowledge about X to agnosticism about X, just because there might possibly be some counter evidence about X I am missing today.

Am I sure about my position? Nope. i am not sure about basically everything.

Knowledge is not certainty.

Ciao

- viole

Since I'm an agnostic, I definitely can agree with the above.

Ciao and shalom.

 

[outhouse]

EVOLUTION

belief is optional


Participation mandatory

 

[AndromedaRXJ]

I am merely asking. It is all good and well to speak about how obvious certain things are but when one considers the millions if not billions of people who lived and died and did not figure this out one really wonders if it is in fact as obvious as it now appears.

It's not just the obvious similar morphological traits. It's stuff like similarities in the genome, most of which doesn't corresponded to any useful trait. E.g. similar junk DNA (useless genes), identical ERV markers, identical mutations like the faulty vitamin-c gene in all apes.

 

[Ouroboros]

It's not just the obvious similar morphological traits. It's stuff like similarities in the genome, most of which doesn't corresponded to any useful trait. E.g. similar junk DNA (useless genes), identical ERV markers, identical mutations like the faulty vitamin-c gene in all apes.

And transposons, which have a higher count than ERVs. We share some 20+ ERVs with chimps, but over 100 of the transposons.

 

[Midnight Rain]

I don't agree. Without any information (scientific information as we have now) it is illogical to make the assumption that the the earth is moving and the sun is standing still (relatively). Remember logic is always limited by the facts available. Therefore a logical conclusion can lean one way in the presence of facts and another way in their absence.

Actually not always. Logic simply means taking things that follow from what is known. I can agree that we can't fault the ancient peoples for their beliefs but belief in god even at that point wasn't based in logic. It was more based in our reliance on type 1 errors of leading to false positive associations of events to sentient agency.
Lighting exists. Therefore Zeus is not logical even back during Hellenistic era.

Now you are stretching it. Something being related to something else has a lot to do with similarities. Is it not the similarities in our DNA that leads scientists to believe we are more related to chimps than frogs? And so it is that mankind has largely believed it was the result of a common creator that has lead to there being physical similarities between species of the world. It was also a practical thing. If I make two ships, each of them will have the common characteristic of being able to float in water. Likewise a creator creating life on earth has the practical problem of insuring all life can live in the conditions that prevail. Thus most if not all animals breath oxygen. Creating an animal that needs helium to breath would have been impractical if not necessarily impossible.

Being related in a biological sense has always meant common ancestry. You are related to your cousin. You are not related in any meaningful sense to your neighbor necessarily. You even had the concept of how closely related you were by how far back your common ancestry was. You have siblings, cousins, 2nd cousins ect. All based ENTIRELY on where your lineage split. The concept of "relation" isn't even linked necessarily to similarities. You could have a person who looks Chinese and someone who looks African but they could be more closely related than they would be to anyone else in their ethnic group that looks far more similar to them.

You are merely confirming everything I have been saying. In the absence scientific information the most logical, natural, intuitive and obvious conclusion is that someone created everything.

Only if your point is that humans often get things wrong and must always re-evaluate everything through the lens of scientific evidence and the past beliefs actually have zero merit in terms of truth.

 

[occams.rzr]

I have a question for evolutionists.

From what I understand humans are supposed to have evolved from some common ancestor with apes. Now if I understand correctly evolution is not a smooth process but rather a random one where random variations occur and, with the help of natural selection, the most beneficial variations survive and continue. Now I also assume the common ancestors of human beings we found in different parts of the world.

So my question is this: Why don't we have today a remnant of some of the earlier human types (after our divergence from other apes)? That is, why are there no neanderthals or homo erectuses scattered in different parts of the world for us to see today? Why are they all dead (assuming they are all dead)?

Why is it that the only evidence we have of humans ancestors are dead bones when evolution is a rather random process? Surely there should be some parts of the world where the evolution never really took place.

By the way, although this thread is in the evolution vs creationism forum, this isn't really me trying to prove evolution to be false. I just want to know what the answers are that evolutionists have for these questions

1. Sometimes can be random (mutation), sometimes can be smooth (selection).
2. Extinction, and competition with humans.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I have a question for evolutionists.

From what I understand humans are supposed to have evolved from some common ancestor with apes. Now if I understand correctly evolution is not a smooth process but rather a random one where random variations occur and, with the help of natural selection, the most beneficial variations survive and continue. Now I also assume the common ancestors of human beings we found in different parts of the world.

So my question is this: Why don't we have today a remnant of some of the earlier human types (after our divergence from other apes)? That is, why are there no neanderthals or homo erectuses scattered in different parts of the world for us to see today? Why are they all dead (assuming they are all dead)?

Why is it that the only evidence we have of humans ancestors are dead bones when evolution is a rather random process? Surely there should be some parts of the world where the evolution never really took place.

By the way, although this thread is in the evolution vs creationism forum, this isn't really me trying to prove evolution to be false. I just want to know what the answers are that evolutionists have for these questions

The answer used to be, in Darwin's time, that the gaps, inconsistencies between the fossil record and the theory, were only artifacts of an incomplete record, that the missing links, transitions central to the theory would one day be filled in.

Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time

 

[johnhanks]

Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time

Creationists really seem to think that if they repeat this one often enough it will one day be true.
Take a look here. Or here.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The answer used to be, in Darwin's time, that the gaps, inconsistencies between the fossil record and the theory, were only artifacts of an incomplete record, that the missing links, transitions central to the theory would one day be filled in.

Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time

No, we have more. Plus we have genetics. And geology. And molecular biology. And paleontology. And many more.

http://www.livescience.com/3306-fossils-reveal-truth-darwin-theory.html
http://www.transitionalfossils.com/
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/c.bkgrnd.html
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Evolution/transitionalfossils.htm
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html
http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-14-84

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Creationists really seem to think that if they repeat this one often enough it will one day be true.
Take a look here. Or here.

Rather, the more true we realize it is, the more it is acknowledged by those who study it most seriously.

"Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time"

was the opinion of David M. Raup:

• Paleontologist
  University of Chicago

• Curator
  Chicago Field Museum

 

[Ouroboros]

Other quotes by the David M. Raup:
"It has been argued that dinosaurs did not die out, but just evolved wings and flew away. At a certain level, this reasoning is sound.... Birds, as a group, did descend from dinosaurs and ... all 8,600 species of birds living today carry some inheritance from their reptilian ancestors.

"There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth--possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty BILLION species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive--a truly lousy survival record: 99.9 percent failure!"

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection."

But earlier, beginning of article:


”Part of our conventional wisdom about evolution is that the fossil record of past life is an important cornerstone of evolutionary theory. In some ways, this is true -- but the situation is much more complicated. I will explore here a few of the complex interrelationships between fossils and darwinian theory. . . Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be."

What he really talks about is that we don't see the smooth progression and transition of species in the fossil record as Darwin suggested. The fossil record does contain a lot of transitional fossils. Really, every fossil is technically a transitional form, but the problem is rather that the jerky and spotty record creates a lot of jumps and holes between, so by percentage, we have more holes than ever before, even though we numerically have more transitional fossils.

Besides he wrote this in 1979. Things have changed quite a bit since then, and the science of evolution has moved on and have more explanations since then. There are several lineages of species that have been sorted out since, even if there are a million more species we don't have transitions for.

What Raup really is talking about here is that conflict between gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. It's not as much of a mystery or problem anymore (30 years later). There are answers to why it is this way.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Other quotes by the David M. Raup:
"It has been argued that dinosaurs did not die out, but just evolved wings and flew away. At a certain level, this reasoning is sound.... Birds, as a group, did descend from dinosaurs and ... all 8,600 species of birds living today carry some inheritance from their reptilian ancestors.

"There are millions of different species of animals and plants on earth--possibly as many as forty million. But somewhere between five and fifty BILLION species have existed at one time or another. Thus, only about one in a thousand species is still alive--a truly lousy survival record: 99.9 percent failure!"

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection."

But earlier, beginning of article:


”Part of our conventional wisdom about evolution is that the fossil record of past life is an important cornerstone of evolutionary theory. In some ways, this is true -- but the situation is much more complicated. I will explore here a few of the complex interrelationships between fossils and darwinian theory. . . Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be."

What he really talks about is that we don't see the smooth progression and transition of species in the fossil record as Darwin suggested. The fossil record does contain a lot of transitional fossils. Really, every fossil is technically a transitional form, but the problem is rather that the jerky and spotty record creates a lot of jumps and holes between, so by percentage, we have more holes than ever before, even though we numerically have more transitional fossils.

Besides he wrote this in 1979. Things have changed quite a bit since then, and the science of evolution has moved on and have more explanations since then. There are several lineages of species that have been sorted out since, even if there are a million more species we don't have transitions for.

What Raup really is talking about here is that conflict between gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. It's not as much of a mystery or problem anymore (30 years later). There are answers to why it is this way.

That seems to be the case with most of these quote mines.

 

[Ouroboros]

One more point to make about Raup regarding Darwinian evolution. The theory of evolution, as it is today, the modern version, is like version 3.0 of the theory. Darwin's was version 1.0, and it had some flaws. In the modern synthetic model (Modern evolutionary synthesis), there are more things to understand. Evolution isn't as simple as Darwin suggested, but to refute Darwin is not to refute Evolution. Raup is basically giving some critique regarding Darwinian evolution theory, and especially some parts that have been explained and researched in modern time.

To argue that evolution is wrong because Darwin was wrong about a detail is to argue physics is wrong because Newton didn't know about general relativity or the existence of graviton or Higgs field (modern explanation of gravity). If Newton was wrong about gravity, well then, gravity and physics must all be wrong and the sun must be revolving around Earth, and stars are just some lights on a sphere above us.

Darwin wasn't right about everything. Newton wasn't either. Neither was Bruno, Kepler, or Hawkins (yes, even Hawkins was wrong about Black Holes, his expertise!). And yet, they were right about many other things.

 

[Midnight Rain]

The answer used to be, in Darwin's time, that the gaps, inconsistencies between the fossil record and the theory, were only artifacts of an incomplete record, that the missing links, transitions central to the theory would one day be filled in.

Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time

This is a lie. First of all how can we have less fossils than we did in his time when we dig them up by the thousands every year? So lets forget all other arguments about evolution vs not evolution and focus specifically on this claim that you said that we have LESS examples of transitions?

 

[Sapiens]

Human evolution seems to be more a matter of temporary isolation followed by expansion and interbreeding to the point of absorption, rather than genocide.

Ancient DNA and Neanderthals

 

[Left Coast]

....WHY.

 

[Sapiens]

Why is for the terminally confused, the only real relevent question is how.

 

[Left Coast]

Why is for the terminally confused, the only real relevent question is how.

Indeed, how did you scour through pages and pages of threads and decide to comment on this one that no one has touched for over 5 years?

 

[Sapiens]

"How," should be rather obvious to a staff member; "why" is simple ... knowledge marches on.