Which Theory of Evolution do you Believe?

[Zosimus]

How is natural selection a tautology? It is merely an explanation as to what the trend or mechanism at work in the theory that, over long periods of time, leads to evolution.

Natural selection is a tautology because when you claim that the fittest animals will survive and that the animals that have survived are the fittest ones, you are merely engaging in circular reasoning.

Natural selection has no predictive power. It's like saying "Either it will rain... or it will not rain." This is true, but it's not useful.

 

[Revoltingest]

Revolting loses the battle.

No, I'm a non-combatant....a deserter.
A highly detailed argument citing irrelevant expertise simply doesn't warrant a response.

 

[Revoltingest]

Natural selection has no predictive power. It's like saying "Either it will rain... or it will not rain." This is true, but it's not useful.

This is false because of examples to the contrary, eg, evolutionary algorithms used in engineering.
Natural selection isn't limited to biological phenomena.
But regarding organisms, natural selection is a very useful thing to understand in many areas, eg, pesticide application.
Proper usage can curb pests while avoiding their developing resistance.

 

[leibowde84]

Natural selection is a tautology because when you claim that the fittest animals will survive and that the animals that have survived are the fittest ones, you are merely engaging in circular reasoning.

Natural selection has no predictive power. It's like saying "Either it will rain... or it will not rain." This is true, but it's not useful.

That simply isn't true. You are forgetting about the fact that evidence has repeatedly confirmed that the overwhelming trend is that the fittest in a species are more likely to and have survived. Polar Bears for example have come from bears that were black or brown. When they migrated to areas that were snow covered, lighter coloring was beneficial. More and more light colored bears flourished and eventually the white bears we see today became the norm in areas where the ground is snow covered year round.

 

[leibowde84]

Natural selection is a tautology because when you claim that the fittest animals will survive and that the animals that have survived are the fittest ones, you are merely engaging in circular reasoning.

Natural selection has no predictive power. It's like saying "Either it will rain... or it will not rain." This is true, but it's not useful.

Tons of predictions have been made using evolution by natural selection. Here are some (from http://answersinscience.org/evo_science.html):

• Darwin predicted that precursors to the trilobite would be found in pre-Silurian rocks. He was correct: they were subsequently found.
  
  
• Similarly, Darwin predicted that Precambrian fossils would be found. He wrote in 1859 that the total absence of fossils in Precambrian rock was "inexplicable" and that the lack might "be truly urged as a valid argument" against his theory. When such fossils were found, starting in 1953, it turned out that they had been abundant all along. They were just so small that it took a microscope to see them.
  
  
• There are two kinds of whales: those with teeth, and those that strain microscopic food out of seawater with baleen. It was predicted that a transitional whale must have once existed, which had both teeth and baleen. Such a fossil has since been found.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that we will find fossil series.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that the fossil record will show different populations of creatures at different times. For example, it predicts we will never find fossils of trilobites with fossils of dinosaurs, since their geological time-lines don't overlap. The "Cretaceous seaway" deposits in Colorado and Wyoming contain almost 90 different kinds of ammonites, but no one has ever found two different kinds of ammonite together in the same rockbed.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that animals on distant islands will appear closely related to animals on the closest mainland, and that the older and more distant the island, the more distant the relationship.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness. For example, arthropods all have chitinous exoskeleton, hemocoel, and jointed legs. Insects have all these plus head-thorax-abdomen body plan and 6 legs. Flies have all that plus two wings and halteres. Calypterate flies have all that plus a certain style of antennae, wing veins, and sutures on the face and back. You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly, much less on a non-insect or non-arthropod.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that simple, valuable features will evolve independently, and that when they do, they will most likely have differences not relevant to function. For example, the eyes of molluscs, arthropods, and vertebrates are extremely different, and ears can appear on any of at least ten different locations on different insects.
  
  
• In 1837, a Creationist reported that during a pig's fetal development, part of the incipient jawbone detaches and becomes the little bones of the middle ear. After Evolution was invented, it was predicted that there would be a transitional fossil, of a reptile with a spare jaw joint right near its ear. A whole series of such fossils has since been found - the cynodont therapsids.
  
  
• It was predicted that humans must have an intermaxillary bone, since other mammals do. The adult human skull consists of bones that have fused together, so you can't tell one way or the other in an adult. An examination of human embryonic development showed that an intermaxillary bone is one of the things that fuses to become your upper jaw.
  
  
• From my junk DNA example I predict that three specific DNA patterns will be found at 9 specific places in the genome of white-tailed deer, but none of the three patterns will be found anywhere in the spider monkey genome.
  
  
• In 1861, the first Archaeopteryx fossil was found. It was clearly a primitive bird with reptilian features. But, the fossil's head was very badly preserved. In 1872 Ichthyornis and Hesperorniswere found. Both were clearly seabirds, but to everyone's astonishment, both had teeth. It was predicted that if we found a better-preserved Archaeopteryx, it too would have teeth. In 1877, a second Archaeopteryx was found, and the prediction turned out to be correct.
  
  
• Almost all animals make Vitamin C inside their bodies. It was predicted that humans are descended from creatures that could do this, and that we had lost this ability. (There was a loss-of-function mutation, which didn't matter because our high-fruit diet was rich in Vitamin C.) When human DNA was studied, scientists found a gene which is just like the Vitamin C gene in dogs and cats. However, our copy has been turned off.
  
  
• In "The Origin Of Species" (1859), Darwin said:"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."
  Chapter VI, Difficulties Of The TheoryThis challenge has not been met. In the ensuing 140 years, no such thing has been found. Plants give away nectar and fruit, but they get something in return. Taking care of other members of one's own species (kin selection) doesn't count, so ants and bees (and mammalian milk) don't count.
  
  
• Darwin pointed out that the Madagascar Star orchid has a spur 30 centimeters (about a foot) long, with a puddle of nectar at the bottom. Now, evolution says that nectar isn't free. Creatures that drink it pay for it, by carrying pollen away to another orchid. For that to happen, the creature must rub against the top of the spur. So, Darwin concluded that the spur had evolved its length as an arms race. Some creature had a way to reach deeply without shoving itself hard against the pollen-producing parts. Orchids with longer spurs would be more likely to spread their pollen, so Darwin's gradualistic scenario applied. The spur would evolve to be longer and longer. From the huge size, the creature must have evolved in return, reaching deeper and deeper. So, he predicted in 1862 that Madagascar has a species of hawkmoth with a tongue just slightly shorter than 30 cm.
  The creature that pollinated that orchid was not learned until 1902, forty years later. It was indeed a moth, and it had a 25 cm tongue. And in 1988 it was proven that moth-pollinated short-spurred orchids did set less seed than long ones.
  
  
• A thousand years ago, just about every remote island on the planet had a species of flightless bird. Evolution explains this by saying that flying creatures are particularly able to establish themselves on remote islands. Some birds, living in a safe place where there is no need to make sudden escapes, will take the opportunity to give up on flying. Hence, Evolution predicts that each flightless bird species arose on the island that it was found on. So, Evolution predicts that no two islands would have the same species of flightless bird. Now that all the world's islands have been visited, we know that this was a correct prediction.
  
  
• The "same" protein in two related species is usually slightly different. A protein is made from a sequence of amino acids, and the two species have slightly different sequences. We can measure the sequences of many species, and cladistics has a mathematical procedure which tells us if these many sequences imply one common ancestral sequence. Evolution predicts that these species are all descended from a common ancestral species, and that the ancestral species used the ancestral sequence.
  This has been done for pancreatic ribonuclease in ruminants. (Cows, sheep, goats, deer and giraffes are ruminants.) Measurements were made on various ruminants. An ancestral sequence was computed, and protein molecules with that sequence were manufactured. When sequences are chosen at random, we usually wind up with a useless goo. However, the manufactured molecules were biologically active substances. Furthermore, they did exactly what a pancreatic ribonuclease is supposed to do - namely, digest ribonucleic acids.
  
  
• An animal's bones contain oxygen atoms from the water it drank while growing. And, fresh water and salt water can be told apart by their slightly different mixture of oxygen isotopes. (This is because fresh water comes from water that evaporated out of the ocean. Lighter atoms evaporate more easily than heavy ones do, so fresh water has fewer of the heavy atoms.)
  Therefore, it should be possible to analyze an aquatic creature's bones, and tell whether it grew up in fresh water or in the ocean. This has been done, and it worked. We can distinguish the bones of river dolphins from the bones of killer whales.
  
  Now for the prediction. We have fossils of various early whales. Since whales are mammals, evolution predicts that they evolved from land animals. And, the very earliest of those whales would have lived in fresh water, while they were evolving their aquatic skills. Therefore, the oxygen isotope ratios in their fossils should be like the isotope ratios in modern river dolphins.
  
  It's been measured, and the prediction was correct. The two oldest species in the fossil record -Pakicetus and Ambulocetus - lived in fresh water. Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus and the others all lived in salt water.
  

 

[Zosimus]

This is false because of examples to the contrary, eg, evolutionary algorithms used in engineering.
Natural selection isn't limited to biological phenomena.
But regarding organisms, natural selection is a very useful thing to understand in many areas, eg, pesticide application.
Proper usage can curb pests while avoiding their developing resistance.

Again, not useful because a theory should make novel, testable predictions that someone unenlightened by the theory would not expect. Natural selection does not do so.

 

[leibowde84]

Again, not useful because a theory should make novel, testable predictions that someone unenlightened by the theory would not expect. Natural selection does not do so.

It's tough to come across anyone who isn't familiar with natural selection. Also, there are plenty of unexpected predictions that have been made (see previous comment).

 

[Zosimus]

Tons of predictions have been made using evolution by natural selection. Here are some (from http://answersinscience.org/evo_science.html):

• Darwin predicted that precursors to the trilobite would be found in pre-Silurian rocks. He was correct: they were subsequently found.
  
  
• Similarly, Darwin predicted that Precambrian fossils would be found. He wrote in 1859 that the total absence of fossils in Precambrian rock was "inexplicable" and that the lack might "be truly urged as a valid argument" against his theory. When such fossils were found, starting in 1953, it turned out that they had been abundant all along. They were just so small that it took a microscope to see them.
  
  
• There are two kinds of whales: those with teeth, and those that strain microscopic food out of seawater with baleen. It was predicted that a transitional whale must have once existed, which had both teeth and baleen. Such a fossil has since been found.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that we will find fossil series.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that the fossil record will show different populations of creatures at different times. For example, it predicts we will never find fossils of trilobites with fossils of dinosaurs, since their geological time-lines don't overlap. The "Cretaceous seaway" deposits in Colorado and Wyoming contain almost 90 different kinds of ammonites, but no one has ever found two different kinds of ammonite together in the same rockbed.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that animals on distant islands will appear closely related to animals on the closest mainland, and that the older and more distant the island, the more distant the relationship.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness. For example, arthropods all have chitinous exoskeleton, hemocoel, and jointed legs. Insects have all these plus head-thorax-abdomen body plan and 6 legs. Flies have all that plus two wings and halteres. Calypterate flies have all that plus a certain style of antennae, wing veins, and sutures on the face and back. You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly, much less on a non-insect or non-arthropod.
  
  
• Evolution predicts that simple, valuable features will evolve independently, and that when they do, they will most likely have differences not relevant to function. For example, the eyes of molluscs, arthropods, and vertebrates are extremely different, and ears can appear on any of at least ten different locations on different insects.
  
  
• In 1837, a Creationist reported that during a pig's fetal development, part of the incipient jawbone detaches and becomes the little bones of the middle ear. After Evolution was invented, it was predicted that there would be a transitional fossil, of a reptile with a spare jaw joint right near its ear. A whole series of such fossils has since been found - the cynodont therapsids.
  
  
• It was predicted that humans must have an intermaxillary bone, since other mammals do. The adult human skull consists of bones that have fused together, so you can't tell one way or the other in an adult. An examination of human embryonic development showed that an intermaxillary bone is one of the things that fuses to become your upper jaw.
  
  
• From my junk DNA example I predict that three specific DNA patterns will be found at 9 specific places in the genome of white-tailed deer, but none of the three patterns will be found anywhere in the spider monkey genome.
  
  
• In 1861, the first Archaeopteryx fossil was found. It was clearly a primitive bird with reptilian features. But, the fossil's head was very badly preserved. In 1872 Ichthyornis and Hesperorniswere found. Both were clearly seabirds, but to everyone's astonishment, both had teeth. It was predicted that if we found a better-preserved Archaeopteryx, it too would have teeth. In 1877, a second Archaeopteryx was found, and the prediction turned out to be correct.
  
  
• Almost all animals make Vitamin C inside their bodies. It was predicted that humans are descended from creatures that could do this, and that we had lost this ability. (There was a loss-of-function mutation, which didn't matter because our high-fruit diet was rich in Vitamin C.) When human DNA was studied, scientists found a gene which is just like the Vitamin C gene in dogs and cats. However, our copy has been turned off.
  
  
• In "The Origin Of Species" (1859), Darwin said:"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."
  Chapter VI, Difficulties Of The TheoryThis challenge has not been met. In the ensuing 140 years, no such thing has been found. Plants give away nectar and fruit, but they get something in return. Taking care of other members of one's own species (kin selection) doesn't count, so ants and bees (and mammalian milk) don't count.
  
  
• Darwin pointed out that the Madagascar Star orchid has a spur 30 centimeters (about a foot) long, with a puddle of nectar at the bottom. Now, evolution says that nectar isn't free. Creatures that drink it pay for it, by carrying pollen away to another orchid. For that to happen, the creature must rub against the top of the spur. So, Darwin concluded that the spur had evolved its length as an arms race. Some creature had a way to reach deeply without shoving itself hard against the pollen-producing parts. Orchids with longer spurs would be more likely to spread their pollen, so Darwin's gradualistic scenario applied. The spur would evolve to be longer and longer. From the huge size, the creature must have evolved in return, reaching deeper and deeper. So, he predicted in 1862 that Madagascar has a species of hawkmoth with a tongue just slightly shorter than 30 cm.
  The creature that pollinated that orchid was not learned until 1902, forty years later. It was indeed a moth, and it had a 25 cm tongue. And in 1988 it was proven that moth-pollinated short-spurred orchids did set less seed than long ones.
  
  
• A thousand years ago, just about every remote island on the planet had a species of flightless bird. Evolution explains this by saying that flying creatures are particularly able to establish themselves on remote islands. Some birds, living in a safe place where there is no need to make sudden escapes, will take the opportunity to give up on flying. Hence, Evolution predicts that each flightless bird species arose on the island that it was found on. So, Evolution predicts that no two islands would have the same species of flightless bird. Now that all the world's islands have been visited, we know that this was a correct prediction.
  
  
• The "same" protein in two related species is usually slightly different. A protein is made from a sequence of amino acids, and the two species have slightly different sequences. We can measure the sequences of many species, and cladistics has a mathematical procedure which tells us if these many sequences imply one common ancestral sequence. Evolution predicts that these species are all descended from a common ancestral species, and that the ancestral species used the ancestral sequence.
  This has been done for pancreatic ribonuclease in ruminants. (Cows, sheep, goats, deer and giraffes are ruminants.) Measurements were made on various ruminants. An ancestral sequence was computed, and protein molecules with that sequence were manufactured. When sequences are chosen at random, we usually wind up with a useless goo. However, the manufactured molecules were biologically active substances. Furthermore, they did exactly what a pancreatic ribonuclease is supposed to do - namely, digest ribonucleic acids.
  
  
• An animal's bones contain oxygen atoms from the water it drank while growing. And, fresh water and salt water can be told apart by their slightly different mixture of oxygen isotopes. (This is because fresh water comes from water that evaporated out of the ocean. Lighter atoms evaporate more easily than heavy ones do, so fresh water has fewer of the heavy atoms.)
  Therefore, it should be possible to analyze an aquatic creature's bones, and tell whether it grew up in fresh water or in the ocean. This has been done, and it worked. We can distinguish the bones of river dolphins from the bones of killer whales.
  
  Now for the prediction. We have fossils of various early whales. Since whales are mammals, evolution predicts that they evolved from land animals. And, the very earliest of those whales would have lived in fresh water, while they were evolving their aquatic skills. Therefore, the oxygen isotope ratios in their fossils should be like the isotope ratios in modern river dolphins.
  
  It's been measured, and the prediction was correct. The two oldest species in the fossil record -Pakicetus and Ambulocetus - lived in fresh water. Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus and the others all lived in salt water.

None of these things were predicted by natural selection. The statement that "the fittest organism will survive" in no way logically implies that trilobites will exist or be found anywhere or in any geological stratum.

You are tacking again.

 

[leibowde84]

None of these things were predicted by natural selection. The statement that "the fittest organism will survive" in no way logically implies that trilobites will exist or be found anywhere or in any geological stratum.

You are tacking again.

As I clearly said in my last comment, these are predictions that were made by the theory of evolution by natural selection. That is the theory in question. Natural selection is merely the mechanism.

Do you deny that these predictions were made by the theory in question?

 

[leibowde84]

None of these things were predicted by natural selection. The statement that "the fittest organism will survive" in no way logically implies that trilobites will exist or be found anywhere or in any geological stratum.

You are tacking again.

Natural Selection is not a theory. Evolution by Natural Selection is the scientific theory we are discussing.

 

[Revoltingest]

Again, not useful because a theory should make novel, testable predictions that someone unenlightened by the theory would not expect. Natural selection does not do so.

It seems you didn't read the examples I gave.

 

[Zosimus]

...nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific...
-Imre Lakatos

Natural Selection is not a theory. Evolution by Natural Selection is the scientific theory we are discussing.

If you are arguing that, then you are moving the goal posts. The question is whether natural selection is a tautology. I said yes. So now you want to say that evolution via tautology makes testable predictions?

As I've pointed out before, this is tacking. I have invited you to indicate how you know that this tacking is valid. You have never responded.

 

[Zosimus]

It seems you didn't read the examples I gave.

It seems that you don't understand the question. Your examples are irrelevant because they do not involve natural selection.

 

[Revoltingest]

It seems that you don't understand the question. Your examples are irrelevant because they do not involve natural selection.

It seems you don't understand my examples, both of which involve natural selection.

 

[leibowde84]

...nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific...
-Imre Lakatos

If you are arguing that, then you are moving the goal posts. The question is whether natural selection is a tautology. I said yes. So now you want to say that evolution via tautology makes testable predictions?

As I've pointed out before, this is tacking. I have invited you to indicate how you know that this tacking is valid. You have never responded.

Natural selection is not a tautology nor is it a theory on its own.

 

[Zosimus]

Natural selection is not a tautology nor is it a theory on its own.

If it's not a tautology, then it should be experimentally falsifiable. Please indicate what tests we could run that could, at least theoretically, falsify the theory of natural selection.

 

[gnostic]

I do like it when you talk technical.

Tech talk is the new sex talk.

Perhaps, you two are just lousy in bed.

Oh! That didn't come out right.

 

[McBell]

Okay, my post was directed at someone who already knew what the conversation was about. You came in, and saw half of the conversation, and started talking about other things.

It's an A and B conversation ... so you can C...

It is no fault of mine that you misrepresented his argument in your retelling of it.
Though i notice you do an awful lot of paraphrasing in your posts.
interesting the spins you come up with when doing so.

 

[Zosimus]

It is no fault of mine that you misrepresented his argument in your retelling of it.
Though i notice you do an awful lot of paraphrasing in your posts.
interesting the spins you come up with when doing so.

I simply carried his argument to its logical conclusion. What he wants to say is that if you always assign a 50-50 probability to something, then someone could come up to you and say, "This box contains either $1,000,000 or $0. Since you assign a 50-50 probability, you should be willing to pay me $400,000 for the box because, on average, the box should contain $500,000."

This is an error because the principle applies when the conditions are exclusive and exhaustive. The options between $1,000,000 and $0 are not exhaustive of the possibilities.

 

[McBell]

I simply carried his argument to its logical conclusion.

Hells bells, from your posts it is unclear that you even understand his argument....