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171 Comments
- thebaron2, on 10/27/2007, -9/+64I know this is long, but it's HILARIOUS and sums up so many anti-evolution arguments. The following takes place at a public debate:
----------
Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU *******! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of ******** sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form ********; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu. - Coven, on 10/21/2007, -1/+26Because back then people needed something to explain what was at that time unexplainable.
- thebaron2, on 10/22/2007, -4/+25To be more succinct, and to quote Richard Dawkins: "Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random."
- thebaron2, on 10/21/2007, -4/+21Randomness has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is not random - that's where selection comes in. While mutations may be considered "random," they're distribution among the gene pool and survivability could not be further from a random occurrence. Read more on the topic - nothing pisses off evolutionary biologists more than the argument that evolution is just random.
- jeffiek, on 10/22/2007, -1/+15"the existence of Ribose alone statistically defies any random model"
Our existence is post selection. The odds are not relevant. Just like a lottery, the odds are only relevant before the drawing. Once the drawing is over, the winner knows who he is. With a probability exactly equal to one.
We won the selection. Or the creation. Whatever. - inactive, on 10/22/2007, -1/+14Science = Questions that MIGHT never be answered
Religion = Answers that MUST never be questioned - mysteri0usdrx, on 10/20/2007, -1/+13here we go:
statement 1: just because you cannot comprehend something, does not mean it does not exist. Think of things on the atomic scale of size. Your brain cannot begin to comprehend how infinitely small an electron is, yet it exists without a doubt.
statement 2: Neanderthals did not need to mate outside their species, slight interspecies mutations are the basis of evolution, and the basis of natural selection is that the slight advantage would slowly begin to effect the survivability of a certain mutation pattern, allowing those with this mutation to breed more often.
statement 3: negated by false statements in 2.
statement 4: Neanderthals, to the best of our knowledge, had no evolutionary offspring, and went extinct.
statement 5-7: once again negated by previous statement.
i hope this puts some things into perspective. - Lyanto, on 10/20/2007, -0/+11Considering the nature of the debate involving evolution, the words "Atheist" and "Christian" can easily be reversed in your last statement. Also, if you're going to criticize someone, at least provide some valid counterpoints first. Admittedly thebaron2's post was somewhat arrogant, but not more so than someone who feels a negative generalization can take the place of a reasoned argument (and therefore has no right to say someone else is pretending to be a scientist).
- DeskFlyer, on 10/22/2007, -0/+11That just made my day.
- inactive, on 10/21/2007, -5/+15Scary or not, its true. Its painful, but its time to grow up.
- djgreedo, on 10/21/2007, -0/+10You seem to totally miss the point of what evolution is, which pretty much makes your argument pointless.
Evolution is nothing to do with the origin of life. Evolution describes how life forms change over time and become adapted to their environment.
And the fact that you imply that evolution=athiesm shows that again you do not understand what you are saying. Evolution has nothing to do with God. Evolution exists with or without God. The sky is blue regardless of whether there is a God. Gravity exists regardless of whether there is a God. Evolution happens regardless of whether there is a God.
Some theists believe that God created a universe in which evolution occurs - good for them, but this is faith, not science. Science says that evolution is real and science has NOTHING to say about the existence of God.
Although it's quite obvious that there is absolutely no scientific evidence that God exists. - Phatt138, on 10/30/2007, -1/+11You just don't understand the processes well enough. A lot of people spout a lot of ***** about evolution without knowing any of the details about how these things work. The question about neanderthals is ludicrous - species evolved into different species over time, yes, but along the way there were -countless- intermediary genotypes. To put it simply, an evolving species would eventually come to the point where it would no longer to be able to mate with early ancestors - but those ancestors are long dead. All living members of the species would be similar enough to mate with one another, unless a population split at some point and evolved separately, creating a tertiary species. This is what keeps the whole mechanism functioning: as populations become separated in geography or time, the particular traits of those living relatives are magnified until they eventually becomes something entirely new.
See? It does make sense. Most people who don't believe it are just confused about the details because they've heard dumbed-down, glossed over versions from people with social agendas. So check out the details for yourself. Interestingly, that's where they say God lies. - Dimensio, on 10/22/2007, -0/+10"What Darwin asserted was that randomness could replace God as the agent of evolution. "
Please cite Darwin's writing wherein he made this specific assertion. - tazx, on 10/21/2007, -0/+9"If neanderthals slowly changed over time into humans, that might be easier to understand when talking about producing offspring who could mate, but at some point in our evolutionary history, we STOPPED being neanderthals and started being human, an entirely separate species. "
Your misunderstanding (and thus misguided skepticism) of evolution appears to be based entirely on lack of understanding what species, and speciation, are. What you're describing is essentially Lamark's "hopeful monster" scenario.
Evolution isn't a process by which one organism gives birth to an entirely different one. Every offspring is nearly identical to its parent. It's through genetic divergence over thousands of generations that one population can eventually develop into two separate species. "Species" is not an absolute term. Just as closely related species can often mate with more or less success, as they become more separated genetically, they lose that ability.
In your example, Neanderthals and modern humans share a *common ancestor*. That means that there was a protohuman species, likely ***** heidelbergensis, that was predecessor of both. Somewhere, likely Africa, there was a population of these protohumans; and one group moved away from the other. They possibly met little if at all for generations, and gradually, they evolved slight differences genetically. Eventually, they became noticeably different, and it's possible the now distant decendents of the original group could no longer interbreed.
At no time, for any species, primate otherwise, would you have an offspring that had no one to mate with because it was a new species. Rather, if half a population wandered into the next valley or over the mountains while the rest stayed, eventually they'd diverge so much that after many generations they would not be able to interbreed.
See these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolu ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution - tazx, on 10/22/2007, -0/+9Dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes etc. are all canids. Yet not all can interbreed. They are all "dog-like", and they all share a canid ancestor. But the jackals spent millions of years in Africa, while the wolves were in Europe, and the coyotes in America, and so on. Being separated for thousands of generations means they grew apart, physically and genetically, and so became different species.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canids - tazx, on 10/22/2007, -0/+9"was so thoroughly embraced by the progressive era movement as justification for making humanism the engine of change that it has become core to their religion. "
"What it means is there are two *ideological* models to explain the existence of life and neither has much backing them up scientifically."
"The Christian community is much more open and honest about this than the atheists (who are simply bent on propagandizing their religion)"
Bearing false witness (lying) is a sin. - babychen, on 10/20/2007, -2/+10Pretty tough topic there. People also believe because that shows you a clear path, and an afterlife. It's scary for many to think all that may not be true.
- WasabiBomb, on 10/20/2007, -3/+11That's a stupid argument, right there. What kind of "unexplainable" do you think science cannot explain?
Religion and Science are, in fact, polar opposites. Religion starts with a conclusion, and manipulates the evidence to arrive at that conclusion. Science starts with evidence, and formulates a conclusion to fit that evidence. The two processes are completely incompatible. - WRXFiles, on 10/21/2007, -3/+11I have always thought that a large part of the problem is that the human mind is not good at comprehending the vast time frames involved. If mankind had evolved 'knowing' the age of the universe, we might more easily accept processes that occur over geologic time frames.
- Phatt138, on 10/21/2007, -0/+7Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that -you- were 'spouting' - simply that there's a lot of misunderstanding out there because there are people putting doubt into people's minds about something that has as much evidence for it as most of the other precepts that we live by. I'm mad at the people who inject arguments into the public consciousness based on questions that have answers. I didn't mean to jump down your throat.
ANYway, dogs do vary in form, but they're all one species. In fact, they're so genetically similar to their ancestors that they CAN still breed with them. This is because most of the animals that we think of as 'dogs' are domesticated, and have only been separated from their wild ancestors for a few thousand years (having been living as semi-domesticated animals on the fringe of human society for much longer), and only bred selectively for the past couple of thousand. So yes, if you took a golden retriever and bred it in isolation for thousands and thousands of generations, it would no longer be able to mate with today's dogs. Further, if ALL of today's dogs were kept in isolation from their wild relatives, there would be dogs that couldn't breed with wolves in, again, thousands and thousands of generations. However, as long as wild dogs still occasionally breed with domesticated or feral dogs, the gene pools will share enough traits that they will continue to be compatible.
Again, the whole idea is isolation. An individual only has so much variation. So if you have a small group of individuals - for instance, the 5 or so shi-tzus that the entire breed is descended from - they will trade only the few variations they share between them, and whatever genetic traits they have will be emphasized. That's why inbreeding is bad - any weaknesses are magnified by breeding with an individual too much like oneself, so dogs like shi-tzus DO have genetic illnesses that other breeds don't. But even so, they haven't deviated far enough from the 'main' dog population that they can't breed with...hell, a bull mastiff, if they were so inclined. Again, dogs only LOOK different from one another, and that's because of human intervention. The mutt and some of the ancient dogs (dingos, hairless dogs, etc) are the more 'natural' states of dog-being; they have genetic links to many different breeds and thus are free from most of the genetic weaknesses that purebreds can develop. So to answer your question directly: yes, the dogs of 10 million years from now -might- not be able to breed with the dogs of today (depends on how much change the species undergoes in that time period. Dogs are highly valued for their conformation to breeding standards, so they may be kept by us in a state of artificial rest.) But there would BE none of today's dogs to breed WITH. The whole species of 'dog' will have moved forward as a whole, as long as there is an exchange of genetic material through breeding so that the different breeds don't become isolated.
I hope this answers some of your questions. But if you have the curiosity, I'd take a look around Wikipedia at topics like Natural Selection, Genotype, Phenotype, Inbreeding, etc. Until you know for yourself, don't be concerned with the 'debate' over evolution - there really is none, when you get down to it. Evolution has as much scientific credit to its name as any other generally accepted field of scientific study. - tech42er, on 10/20/2007, -0/+7It's not that different species can't mate. It's just that two animals that can't mate are defined as different species. Your neanderthal would have had an offspring that was mutated, but still a neanderthal. It would have mated with another neanderthal and had offspring that were different than the other neanderthals. At the point that this line was no longer able to mate with the old neanderthals, it would be classified as a different species.
- amsterdamordeth, on 10/20/2007, -0/+6I would like to say thanks for all of the answers. I can't respond to each person who provided a valid response but my question was answered by the majority of you. Thanks again.
- Asianwaste, on 10/20/2007, -1/+7Wait, what you've said was contradictory. People didn't need excuses to believe then... yet... for thousands of years here's religion... almost invariably it is supernatural in every culture.
- mysteri0usdrx, on 10/21/2007, -2/+81. helps disprove the 6,000 year old earth.
2. No, there are many finds each day and once in a while an important discovery is found, explaining the transision of one evolutionary traiit to another.
3. makes no sense.
4. same as 3.
5. I beg of you to show me how evolution is disproved by entropy, and while you are at it tell me how creating the planet and all life instantly does not overcome entropy.
5. Murphy's law is a humorous observation, not a scientific law to be taken as fact.
6. nothing has wiped out all life before, which is why we still exist.
7. That is not a coherent sentence, and no statement can be drawn from it.
8. also an incoherent sentence, where you somehow rope in Iraq?
9. So where is all of this fraud and error?
10. does not attempt to make any point. - ToadLeg, on 10/21/2007, -0/+6Here's an example of "[observing] the phenomenon of a positive genetic mutation" (this is just one example, there are actually at least thousands of observed beneficial mutations. I will provide more examples if you ask):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21340420/
"A new study shows the potentially lethal version of the "superbug" is more common than previously thought, infecting an estimated 94,000 people a year and killing 18,650 of them, exceeding the death rate for HIV/AIDS."
This is a staph infection that has mutated again and again to become resistant to everything we can throw at it short of immediate amputation.
Also: The "vector constraining mutation" is called "natural selection". Natural selection "constrains" bad mutations from occurring. - akimbo, on 10/22/2007, -0/+5Damm... a comic or flash animation should be made about this!
Classic - navitatl, on 10/20/2007, -0/+5Nobody claimed otherwise
- tazx, on 10/20/2007, -0/+5Oh, and another point:
A Chihuahua would have great difficulty mating with a Great Dane. Were we to disappear & no longer be artificially breeding dogs, the smaller and larger dogs would quite probably develop into separate species. They'd still be "dogs", just as wolves are, but different sub-types.
Evolution results in a branching tree, with new species retaining many of the qualities of their predecessors. As new branches grow apart, they become more distinct.
All life on Earth can be connected this way.
http://www.tolweb.org/tree/ - pgoowy, on 10/22/2007, -0/+5It's funny. I always thought most people believed in evolution because it is so simple for unscientific people to understand: ie. "all the horses with long neck could reach more leaves to they lived longer and so eventually giraffes were born."
It is people with scientific minds who understand the possible short-comings and difficulties of evolution; ie. natural selection reducing the gene pool, mutations usually being a loss of information, the formation of the first strand of DNA, etc.
Most people think that evolution==natural selection. This is not true; recombination, allelic drift and genetic flow are at least as (if not more) important. Perhaps if schools tried teaching a bit more modern genetics instead of teaching dawins original thoeries as if there were religious texts, people would listen to the science and make an edicated decision. - Xondar, on 10/22/2007, -1/+6"people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator"
This is completely untrue and a bunch of hogwash. Evolution is a theory of "how" things came to be, not "why" things came to be. It is equally possible that there was an all powerful creator guiding the process of evolution along as it is possible that evolution is a result of completely random natural processes.
It isn't real science when you start trying to shoe-horn evolution into the "why" category. It simply isn't built for that, and no rational person would ever accept such a flimsy "why."
I believe in God, but I can accept that evolution is possible for the "how" question. - ToadLeg, on 10/20/2007, -0/+5To be clear: Darwin never said anything about "randomness vs God", or anything even remotely similar. He simply put forward the idea of "natural selection" (an idea he got from carefully observing species on a trip to the Galapagos Islands), which has absolutely nothing to do with "God". This bothered the church because they had a book that said that their god had created the universe in its present form, which seems to oppose the idea of natural selection.
- Dimensio, on 10/21/2007, -0/+4"By all accounts, mammals cannot mate outside of their species. Now it is clear that neanderthals are not the same species as humans, and therefore could not mate with each other. So we must decide that a neanderthal had an evolved offspring that couldn't mate, OR the neanderthal had a male and female offspring whom were evolved, whom then mated to continue the "newly evolved species". OR in the same time frame, two separate neanderthals had evolved offspring whom managed to find each other and mated to continue the evolved species. OR a neanderthal has a single evolved offspring whom then mates with a neanderthal."
You are making the mistake in assuming that "species" is a solid, clearly-defined barrier. When speciation occurs, the distinction between species is initially fuzzy, and does not become distinct until multiple generations seperate the two divergent species. As such, all organisms give birth to offspring that are the same species as the parent, but over time accumulated changes mean that an offspring is not the same species as a parent's distant direct ancestor, even though every organism down the line gave birth to offspring of the same species. Examine the concept of "ring" species for known extant examples of this phenomenon. - djgreedo, on 10/21/2007, -0/+4Wrong.
The whole 'information' angle is a creationist attempt to make it appear as though evolution is a random process and therefore can't account for...evolution.
Do you really understand the concept of BILLIONS of years? Changes in the human population can become apparent in a couple of generations, such as changes to weight, etc. For example it is thought that redheads may be wiped out within a few generations due to their pigmentation being the result of recessive genes. Multiply that sort of thing by BILLIONS.
Natural selection is not all about mutation either, and it's not as simple as an animal one day being born with eyes when its ancestors didn't have eyes. Evolution has a snowballing effect. Take the giraffe. The giraffe probably developed its huge neck because all the tallest giraffes got the most food because nothing else could reach it. Therefore due to shorter giraffes dying more easily, the taller ones bred taller and taller giraffes - survival of the fittest.
Are you assuming that a mutation is something like you'd see near a nuclear acccident? Mutations are not strictly positive or negative - it depends on the environment. Mutations that are disadvantageous will be wiped out pretty quickly, while those that are advantageous will build up, such as the tall giraffes.
Who told you that the vast, vast majority of mutations are bad? They lied or they don't know what they are talking about. Mutations occur and natural selection decides if they are beneficial or not. - carbonetc, on 10/20/2007, -0/+4I'd also recommend "The Ancestor's Tale" for an explanation. We get hung up on the dividing lines between species, but those lines don't actually exist. They reflect our need to categorize, and nothing more. The reality being described is just a gradient.
- navitatl, on 10/21/2007, -1/+5That's true, and it's still true to some extent. People can't explain why the universe exists, why anything is here at all. So they default to God.
- inactive, on 10/21/2007, -1/+5Your idea of evolutionary time is severely inaccurate!
- Phatt138, on 10/20/2007, -0/+4Sorry, just wanted to clarify one last thing having looked at your question again. There will never be one individual who is a different species from his parents and therefore has no breeding partner. Rather, because the changes that make breeding incompatible happen over very long periods of time, any given newborn would be able to mate with any of his generation, and probably the last few -thousand- generations before it. Every reproduction is a step in the evolutionary process, but only a tiny one. At any rate, the 'old' species simply does not exist anymore - it evolves as a whole or branches split off and become yet more distinct species.
- ToadLeg, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3One point I'd like to make about this particular discussion: Evolution is not a linear process. This means that no organism on Earth is more "evolved" than any other organism of the same time period. Humans found one way to evolve, while chimpanzees found an other. While we both resemble a common ancestor, neither humans nor chimpanzees are the common ancestor that "branched" into the other. Humans could be said to have branched into chimpanzees just as chimpanzees could be said to have branched into humans. This is actually a very interesting and complex topic of biology (what causes a species to split) but I hope this summary clarifies some confusion.
- cmorwhat, on 10/21/2007, -1/+4thank you for that simple eloquent statement. it sums up my argument perfectly. ill be using this in my next debate. come to germany ill buy you a drink
- HunterTV, on 10/20/2007, -4/+7Are you kidding me? You think life is hard now, most of us wouldn't survive 24 hours in that ancient lifestyle.
- Misesean, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3Basically, the only people who talk about "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are ID-iots who like to pretend they're different things :)
[Much like the distinction between "micro-" and "macro-" economics, actually, except that there it's Keynesians and similar crackpots, rather than religious fundamentalists, doing the pretending...] - amsterdamordeth, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3is this considered micro or macro evolution, or is the distinction here impertinent
- transcendz, on 10/21/2007, -1/+4I can't see how this could be a clever behavior... What if they tell you that you don't understand a thing about religion ?
- ToadLeg, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3"Atheists and Anger"
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas ... - amsterdamordeth, on 10/20/2007, -2/+5I am not trying to spout *****, I was generally curious about the answer to the question. Sorry if I came off as trying to sound like I was trying to disprove evolution by my question but I felt it was a question I wanted answered at least for myself. When I was in public school, we learned that evolution was as magical as the Biblical account and I don't have the time to read everything nowadays especially with all of the new information coming out from all sides. But I learn by asking the questions that I have about a topic.
Bare with my questions please so I can understand better. The problem with discussing it is like talking to people who use Linux. If you don't know the answer already, they assume you are stupid and ignorant and just flame you for asking the question.
So let's take dogs. Dogs vary greatly in forms. Are we to say at some point that a dog will be born whom cannot mate with other dogs and therefore it is a new species? - amsterdamordeth, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3That explains it better I guess. I had referred a question about Dogs to Phatt138's comment that I think yours generally answered. So in my example of dogs, those dogs aren't going to have an evolutionary jump so to say, but when they separate from the rest of the dog groups, they interbreed causing them to increase the variances in their own genetics. This then means after some period of time that the genetic variances have changed to the point that they no longer can mate with the "old" dogs that they separated from years before. Therefore that species of dog that separated, inevitably becomes a new species with a common ancestor to the dog.
At least on the right track? - tazx, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3I believe that those terms aren't generally used today by biologists, but of course, it's complicated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution
Essentially, evolution is mostly seen as a continuous process, at which large-scale changes can be seen over long periods of time, but is dependent a constant process of variation and selection. - tazx, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3I think you get it exactly. :)
And that process, occurring again and again over millions of years, is what results in biological diversity.
If you're really interested, the wiki articles, or books by Dawkins like Climbing Mount Improbable are great. - ToadLeg, on 10/20/2007, -0/+2Yes there are environmental triggers that can cause acquired traits, or environmental conditions, to change the offspring of a species. However, this is not Lamarckian evolution. Instead, the environmental triggers themselves have to be evolved, to allow a species to very quickly adapt to a changing environment, when it changes periodically, and faster than the genes can adapt.
For example, the fetuses of women who seem to be starving may trigger their genes to be more conservative with energy, making them tend to keep energy more, and be heavier, while fetuses of women who seem to be overweight and eating as much as they want may trigger their genes to use energy more rapidly, making them tend to use energy faster, and be lighter. This has given a selective advantage to some organisms, allowing them to quickly switch from survival mode when there is little food, to energetic mode, when there is plenty of food. However, this is not acquired traits being passed down, it is a series of triggers being developed by natural selection to allow for fast adaptation. - hiscity, on 10/21/2007, -0/+2I wonder when digg started truncating links?
news.google.com/archivesearch?q=skull+interbred&hl=en&um=1
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070116-neanderthals.html?source=rss -
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