Another anti-evolution girl.

E

evoqe101

Registered Member
I was told about this site by another member you guys have been chatting with.

I don't believe in evolution as it is defined today. When I was growing up the general idea of what people define as "evolution" now was simply "adaptation" then. A creature's ability to be flexible & to change and grow based on its environment so that it does not die out -which makes sense.

What I do not believe is that one animal can evolve into a completely different animal. I do believe that there can be VARIATION within an animal type, since there is evidence of that. But no, I absolutely do not believe in the concept of evolution today.

There are species of birds, but they are all still birds. There are different species of cats, but they are all cats. There are different species of trees, but are they not all trees?

Archaelogical records which show that Neanderthals are a different species from homo-sapiens simply means that there was adaptation over time. They are a 'species' of human, but are they not still human?

That is my view on that matter.
 
evoqe101 said:
I was told about this site by another member you guys have been chatting with.

I don't believe in evolution as it is defined today. When I was growing up the general idea of what people define as "evolution" now was simply "adaptation" then. A creature's ability to be flexible & to change and grow based on its environment so that it does not die out -which makes sense.

What I do not believe is that one animal can evolve into a completely different animal. I do believe that there can be VARIATION within an animal type, since there is evidence of that. But no, I absolutely do not believe in the concept of evolution today.

There are species of birds, but they are all still birds. There are different species of cats, but they are all cats. There are different species of trees, but are they not all trees?

Archaelogical records which show that Neanderthals are a different species from homo-sapiens simply means that there was adaptation over time. They are a 'species' of human, but are they not still human?

That is my view on that matter.
Click to expand...

This is the Religion subforum. For complete processing, you should repost on the Biology & Genetics subforum. I would be happy to respond and discuss with you there.

http://www.sciforums.com/forums/biology-genetics.31/

Still, it's likely that a moderator will move this thread over, so...

evoqe101 said:
I was told about this site by another member you guys have been chatting with.

I don't believe in evolution as it is defined today. When I was growing up the general idea of what people define as "evolution" now was simply "adaptation" then. A creature's ability to be flexible & to change and grow based on its environment so that it does not die out -which makes sense.
Click to expand...

All right: whatever the general idea of evolution and adaptation were, adaptation essentially 'comes from' evolution. It is not the only product of evolution: maladaptive traits persist, and probably the majority of evolution - which is, mathematically, changes in allele/gene frequency - is neutral. Descent with modification is the outward (sometimes not visible) product of evolution, so that traits change over generations.

Your expression of adaptation seems to include the different issues of acclimation and acclimatization: these are not evolution, but rather the ability of an individual organism to accept and respond to its own local environment over the short and long term in time itself, respectively. All things can do this to some extent, or else they'd simply drop dead in a stiff breeze.

What I do not believe is that one animal can evolve into a completely different animal. I do believe that there can be VARIATION within an animal type, since there is evidence of that. But no, I absolutely do not believe in the concept of evolution today.
Click to expand...

There is more than evidence of variation - it is a certifiable and irrefutable fact, which is one of the supports for the transition of evolution into a law from the 'theory' that people still insist on calling it.

As for speciation, there is abundant evidence of that, and I'm sure that garbonzo - if you are indeed not he - has probably chosen not to mention it to you. There is even evidence of speciation within living human memory, in-lab and out. Here is a partial list of new species and references compiled from some posts on another thread:

Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)
Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis)
Raphanobrassica
Hemp Nettle (Galeopsis tetrahit)
Madia citrigracilis
Brassica
Maidenhair Fern (Adiantum pedatum)
Woodsia Fern (Woodsia abbeae)
Stephanomeira malheurensis
Yellow Monkey Flower (Mimulus guttatus)
Fruit fly (Drosophila paulistorum)

http://listverse.com/2011/11/19/8-examples-of-evolution-in-action/
http://readthedirt.org/rapid-evolution-and-adaptation-to-climate-change-salmon
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/emily-monosson-toxic-evolution/
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~snuismer/Nuismer_Lab/548_readings_files/Thompson 1998.pdf

There are species of birds, but they are all still birds. There are different species of cats, but they are all cats. There are different species of trees, but are they not all trees?
Click to expand...

Indeed: but birds, bats, trees and cats are all made up of different species. A tiger is not a housecat, though we see a resemblance and our supposition of their close relationship is borne out by DNA testing. Can they breed together? No, they cannot. Few tree species and no bird species that I know of can breed together either. They are related, but not cross-fertile. Hence, at some point in the past, they probably were related - and we reproduce this basic correlation again and again, ad nauseam. They're clearly related - you mention birds, which comprise thousands of species - but can't interbreed. Does this not strongly imply speciation? What if I told you that same kind of correlation of class and DNA relationship occurred again not once, not twice, but thousand upon thousand of times? What would you say then?

Come to that, why not expand your postulation: are not humans and bats and cats all just mammals? They are different species of mammals, but they're all just mammals, surely. Why say there are different kinds at all?

Since your bent WRT this topic is almost certainly religious, let me in turn ask you this, ultimately: what has evolution to do with God?
 
evoqe101 said:
...
Archaelogical records which show that Neanderthals are a different species from homo-sapiens simply means that there was adaptation over time. They are a 'species' of human, but are they not still human?...
Click to expand...

Can members of different species mate and produce viable offspring?
"different subspecies"
 
Welcome to sciforums, but note: personal opinions don't carry much weight here, when they contradict well established facts.

{Following is part of post here: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/th...s-for-intelligent-design.142790/#post-3233022 which at end has links you could learn from, but I copied them at end here too.}
You reject evolution, why? The evidence for it comes form many quite independent fields of study an even experiments.* For example (1) when given an antibiotic you are told to take it for 10 days even feeling well after three. The few germs not quickly killed will multiply to become an evolved gene pool resistant to that antibiotic. (2) Almost all animals come from fertilized eggs and they begin their development in very similar fashion. First one side of the egg folds inward to form the "neural tube" one end of which will become the head and the other the tail. Then the various major sub division begin minor differentiations:

embryo_comparison.gif
(3) Structural simularities between different species even in their DNA indicates a common ancestor they evolved from. All the apes, including humans, have less than 3% differences in their DNA. (4) several more* but I stop the list here.

If you are a "creationist" and think the complexities of large animals imples a "clever designier" - it does not. If any thing it implies a stupid designer:

For example, consider:
It seems likely that the distant ancestor of the giraffe was a four legged creature with probably shorter than average neck (or possibly none) as one of the nerves that told "cheek information" (i.e that bee stung there or he bit his cheek, happen to pass below a bone before going to the brain for processing. Getting it on top of that bone can not be done via a set of many very tiny "analog changes" accumulating over thousands of generations. The relocation of that nerve to the top side of the bone, which later became the "collar bone" is a "binary change" I.e. there are only two "states" ("under" or "on top" of the bone.) So the long necked giraffe of today learns he bit his cheek with considerable neural delay as the bite induced neural signals leave the cheek area, travel all the way down that long neck, go under the bone still and then travel all the way up that long neck and finally reach the brain.

Thus if there was a "designer" of the giraffe, that designer must be very stupid. - not the wise, loving God many believe in.

In contrast the length of the neck can increase via tiny incremental changes accumulating over thousands of generations. For example the average length of the giraffes in generation n+1 can be 0.1mm longer than the average neck length in generation n. Evolution can (and did) change the length of the neck of giraffes as that is an ANALOGUE CHANGE. I don't know why it happened but perhaps the short necked ancestor of the giraffe liked the taste of the leaves at the top of the short bush it feed on more than the slightly more dusty ones closer to the ground - Why the change occurred is not important as it did occur as each tiny stage of that analogue change gave a slight benefit.

The octopus has an eye design almost identical to that of man except much better in one "binary way" (The octopus' retina is in front of the nerve impulse collection network and the "blind spot" where they all join to form the optic nerve carrying the information to the brain. etc.) Man's network of blood vessels in front of the retina makes black random shaped shadows cutting all the 2D image into many dozens if not thousands of separated odd shaped pieces that later processing in the brain must "fill in" with best guesses as to what was blocked by the blood vessel shadows). Moving the retina to the other side of all this support structure (like moving the giraffe's nerve to the other side of a bone) is a "binary change."

Or at least the designer thinks much more highly of the octopus than man and giraffes.

* One of the many experiments supporting evolution was done in Brazil, where I live. Quickly: Two different fish, one large eating the tiny ones live below a water fall, and none above. The tiny ones became sexual mature in a few months and laid a few eggs before being eaten, if lucky. That all changed in about a decade after graduate students caught some tiny ones and relocated them above the water fall. There those that delayed maturity, into much larger adults that had many dozen of eggs out competed the others for the limited food supply. Soon none like their short cycle "cousins" below the falls existed above the falls.

PS if you learned anything from the above, you should learn more and find interesting:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=905778&postcount=66 where I explain and justify my RTS view of perception with focus on showing genuine free will is not necessarily inconsistent with the natural laws that control the firing of every nerve in your body. Then see:

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/wh...e-will-an-illusion.104623/page-5#post-2644660 and posts 84, 86 & 94 where I clarify my POV more.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
sculptor said:
Can members of different species mate and produce viable offspring?...
Click to expand...
Yes, but the viable creature is steril - can not reproduce. Donkey, Jackass, mating (I think if not confusing names) produce a Mule, but male and female mules can have "sexual fun" with no off springs produced, as one or both are steril.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Billy T said:
Yes, but the viable creature is steril - can not reproduce. Donkey, Jackass, mating (I think if not confusing names) produce a Mule, but male and female mules can have "sexual fun" with no off springs.
Click to expand...

by
"viable"
I had meant, "able to reproduce".

meaning that sapiens sapiens, and sapiens neanderthalensis, and homo sapiens denisovans, and , most likely, sapiens heidelbergensis, are all the same species and have indeed interbred and produced offspring who were also able to produce offspring
(I would replace the underlined with the word "viable")
 
evoqe101 said:
I don't believe in evolution as it is defined today. When I was growing up the general idea of what people define as "evolution" now was simply "adaptation" then. A creature's ability to be flexible & to change and grow based on its environment so that it does not die out -which makes sense.
Click to expand...

You think that the idea of evolution has changed in your lifetime? From what to what? How would you characterize the change?

(I think that evolutionary biology has changed in the last few decades, but the changes largely revolve around the introduction of developments from molecular genetics and developmental biology into evolutionary thinking.)

What I do not believe is that one animal can evolve into a completely different animal. I do believe that there can be VARIATION within an animal type, since there is evidence of that. But no, I absolutely do not believe in the concept of evolution today.
Click to expand...

The fact that you have beliefs is no doubt very important to you. But it isn't of very much interest to me, unless you have some interesting reasons for believing what you do.

I'll add that Charles Darwin's most famous book was entitled 'The Origin of Species'. So the idea of an evolutionary mechanism for species change certainly dates back to his time, the mid 1800's. Actually, it's older than that. Darwin didn't invent the idea of the evolution of species, which had already been bouncing around for a century. What he contributed was a plausible account (natural selection) for how it likely happened.
 
Last edited:
Where's the anti-evolution "Girl" if the OP is posted by someone who set their gender to male? Or is that a forum bug?
 
There are species of birds, but they are all still birds. There are different species of cats, but they are all cats. There are different species of trees, but are they not all trees?
Click to expand...
No. You have badly underestimated the differences between different cats, even, let alone birds - and "trees" are probably not even a "kind" - unless you think grass and beans and roses are all the same kind of plant.

Look, you clearly have a lot to learn about the living beings of this world. Go and learn. They are many and various and unutterably beautiful. And whoever put you up to posting here and embarrassing yourself like that, is not doing well by you. Stop trusting them in such matters.
 
Or:
The dividing line between species is not always clear-cut, but is usually drawn at the ability to interbreed. Precisely for this reason, the domestic dog and the wolf used to be considered as seperate species, "canis familiaris" and "canis lupus", but the dog is now regarded as a sub-species of the wolf species "canis lupus familiaris".
 
The dividing line between species is not always clear-cut, but is usually drawn at the ability to interbreed.
Click to expand...
Not the ability, but the actual interbreeding in normal wild circumstances. A species is an isolated and physiologically identifiable gene pool, the unit of evolution.

Most of the big cats can interbreed, for example. Most of the cattle (bison, wisents, Holsteins, buffalo) can crossbreed. Most oak tree species can hybridize. There are even chains of pairwise hybridizing species that lead to mutually sterile endpoints ("ring species" are famous - Google). There may not be that many species on this planet that absolutely cannot, under any reasonable conditions, hybridize with some other species.

And on the other hand, we have the problematic category of organisms that suddenly cannot breed with a share of what was, until they picked up a Wohlbachia parasite or something like that, their own species and designated breeding population, but only with each other.
 
If this was moved to a science subforum, it would probably be closed down.
It is in the right place.
Creationism is a religious topic, not a scientific one.
 
Billy T said:
Viable does not mean that, but fertile does - replace with fertile.
Click to expand...

You know, I think viable works - as in, a viable offspring that survives postzygotic reproductive isolation. Although you can get different species to produce an offspring, sometimes it dies fairly quickly.

Excellent points all around. Good thread.
 
sculptor said:
Or:
The dividing line between species is not always clear-cut, but is usually drawn at the ability to interbreed. Precisely for this reason, the domestic dog and the wolf used to be considered as seperate species, "canis familiaris" and "canis lupus", but the dog is now regarded as a sub-species of the wolf species "canis lupus familiaris".
Click to expand...

Well said. We're conceptualizing a process into human binary thinking. At higher orders the differentiation is indeed binary - or ordinal, where there are multiple groups - but at lower levels there can be a functional overlap.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top