Denial of Evolution VI.

[billvon]

what plant or animal did this fruitfly turn into? a rose? an ant?

A different kind of fruitfly.
In 100 years it will be a slightly different fruitfly. Maybe a different color.
In 1000 years it will be an even more different fly. Maybe it won't eat fruit; maybe it will eat lichen.
In 10,000 years it will be an even more different fly. Maybe it will have moved to the arctic where it can find more food, and operate during the summer.
In 100,000 years it will be an even more different organism. Maybe it will have gotten bigger and gotten some insulation so it can operate later into the season.
In 1,000,000 years it will be even more different. Maybe it will be able to generate some of its own heat to operate later into the season.
In 10,000,000 years it might look more like a bat than a fly; be larger and warm blooded.

When did it turn into a bat? Where was microevolution? Where was macroevolution? What's the difference?

 

[Rav]

Oh for fuck's sake, leopold, open your goddamned eyes and wake up. You're already admitting to morphological differentiation among Darwin's finches. Do they breed with each other? No, they fucking don't. Hey presto, they're different goddamn species, free to change in additional directions and radiate into even more altered forms. I don't know how many times people can show you the fucking lump on your face before you summon up the balls to hesitantly identify it as a goddamned nose. Why don't you fuck off over to www.aliensbigfootorjesusanythingbutdarwin.com and see if God's plan for the universe can really be inferred from reading the bumps on your asshole? All the time wasted trying to convince a Bible-thumper, what a laugh. You don't vote, do you?

Thank you Geoff, that was vicariously therapeutic

 

[Aqueous Id]

okay.
what plant or animal did this fruitfly turn into? a rose? an ant?

Just as you know that dogs didn't evolve from rats, you also know that neither the rose nor the ant evolved from the fruitfly. You can endlessly name creatures that did not evolve from one another, but can you name any that did? Evolution is not concerned with the endless impossibilities, but the relatively few possibilities that do occur and succeed - if only to meet eventual extinction. The inability to produce a result from a fruit fly that fails to meet some arbitrary criteria doesn't alter the fact that nature provides the process that explains the origins of all creatures, and that process is speciation. The onus is one the person who wants to try to understand it to bend to what it is nature is doing, never the other way around.

or was it still a fruitfly?
can you provide a scientific name of result of this alleged macroevolution?

I have been relying on the word 'speciation' to avoid the forays into semantics. You would do better to reverse that line of inquiry. You should be asking yourself how you ever arrived at the notion that macroevolution means that a creature of one phylum (or class or order) gives birth to a creature of another. That's a much worse twist on a definition than the one that puts speciation just above the minimum threshold for calling it macroevolution.

All of this would become clear if you would study the charts Trippy posted. Without making references to the endless branching over eons, and the actual pathways that describe macroevolution, we are still talking apples and oranges - or rats and dogs . . .

 

[leopold]

I've already told you what the process is called - Bullshit.
Whales don't turn into crocodiles and evolution doesn't predict they should.

that isn't the issue and you know it trippy.
i never asked that.
YOU said they had a common ancestor.
i asked what the process of evolution is called that produces either the whale or crocodile.
macroevolutio or microevolution or some other phrase.
it is a simple question trippy.

 

[leopold]

You should be asking yourself how you ever arrived at the notion that macroevolution means that a creature of one phylum (or class or order) gives birth to a creature of another.

first of all i have never used the phrase "gave birth to".
second i posted a link from berkely regarding the definition of macro evolution, do you disagree with it?

edit:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evoscales_04

 

[arfa brane]

i asked what the process of evolution is called that produces either the whale or crocodile.

Jesus H on a stick. The process is called evolution.

The whale evolved from an earlier species which is long extinct. This is another postulate of the theory--all species eventually die out, if they don't diverge into new species before going extinct then it's an evolutionary fullstop. You should also amend the above to "that produced" since it's a done deed.

Furthermore, the theory doesn't predict what whales will evolve into, in say another 10 million years. This is because it's very unlikely that all the environmental factors affecting whales (or, for that matter any extant species) can be determined over such a timespan.

What the theory does predict is that, given the opportunity (an unexploited 'niche') some species will evolve to exploit it. Otherwise it says that every species (throughout the history of life) has an ancestor which is extinct, i.e. has been replaced.

So, evolution predicts species will arise (that exploit environmental niches), but not what they will look like.

 

[Robittybob1]

trippys problem is he doesn't want to say what the process is called.
so yes, you ENTIRELY misinterpreted the proceedings.

Utilizing a niche is a possible term. No evolution when there is no particular niche to fill. If the environment changes and there appears a new niche with food and space some animal will evolve (if necessary) to utilize the niche.

 

[leopold]

Furthermore, the theory doesn't predict what whales will evolve into, in say another 10 million years.

it HAS to.
since it's a naturally occurring process then it must follow natures laws.
furthermore, why would thes words, micro evolution and macro evolution, be used in a science journal?

you know what would be ironic?
if valuable genetic discoveries are delayed because of some dogma.

 

[Trippy]

that isn't the issue and you know it trippy.

Isn't it? Because asking "What's the process called" in the context of talking about whales turn into crocodiles is, at best, ambiguous.

i never asked that.

Liar:

okay.
what is the word for the concept of a whale turning into a, say, crocodile?

YOU said they had a common ancestor.

Correct. I also said that it had been a long time since the common ancestor had existed, even implied that it probably didn't have a whole lot in common with either of them.

i asked what the process of evolution is called that produces either the whale or crocodile.
macroevolutio or microevolution or some other phrase.
it is a simple question trippy.

One that I have already answered for you. It seems, however, that you lake either the attention span, rentitive capacity, or basic comprehension to understand it:

You're wrong here as well.

To be clear, we accept that macroevolution deals with evolution at or above the species level.

A Species is described as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding AND producing FERTILE offspring.
Speciation is described as the process by which new species arise.

So in the instance of a common ancestor evolving in one direction to a whale and in the other direction into crocodiles, I would, according to the definitions I have previously posted, call that macroevolution.

It's every bit macro evolution as what happened to the fruitflies between 1958 and 1963.

 

[arfa brane]

it HAS to.

Why does it "have to"? Simply put, it doesn't. For instance, some whales retain vestigial legs (the genes for leg development are suppressed), in maybe another few million years they will most likely lose even these vestiges (the genes will be completely suppressed).
Humans, likewise, have a vestigial tail which is also likely to become completely suppressed. This does not mean the genes have disappeared--humans might have an environmental reason to have tails in the future, so the genes will be unsuppressed or fully functional. Similarly, if whales "need" legs sometime in the future their leg-genes will be reactivated, not by whales but by environmental "pressure". And there is no way to predict that it will definitely happen, it will depend on conditions which can't be predicted (like what the world will be like in one or more million years).

since it's a naturally occurring process then it must follow natures laws.

It does, but the laws are partly genetic and partly environmental.

furthermore, why would thes words, micro evolution and macro evolution, be used in a science journal?

Such words are an attempt by humans to understand how evolution works, hence the words are really just artificial labels--they may not mean anything at all.

 

[Aqueous Id]

first of all i have never used the phrase "gave birth to".

Well if I say "speciation" does that cover all the bases? Because that's all that anyone is claiming.

second i posted a link from berkely regarding the definition of macro evolution, do you disagree with it?

edit:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evoscales_04

That's an excellent place to center this discussion, provided we try to stick to what it says. On the first page we get a clue to the earlier subject you broached, which is that large changes (the divergence of phyla) requires eons of speciation. Hence, you would not get a rose from a fruit fly nor a rat from a dog in a lab experiment, in part due to the short term of such an experiment, that is, you don't have millions of years to wait for results, and in part because the mutation of a fruit fly is only one specific kind of speciation that has little bearing on the multitude of ways DNA has been altered in all the ancestral forms, and because such an experiment does not substitute for the actual processes of natural selection that were the fate of all the ancestral forms - but - most importantly - none of the "evolutions" you suggested are in the possible pathway for "descent with modification". See the tab marked "Biology 101" at Berkeley.

After referring us to a university biology site, we should have no problem finding common ground. I think I speak for all the folks taking issue with your remarks, many of whom have demonstrated competency in science. From here on out it's left to reading comprehension. Since your objections to standard curriculum are aimed at "how evolution works" I suggest you click on the Mechanisms topic under Evolution 101, and walk through the subtopics, since it answers the mail quite well for material that was prepared with a general audience in mind. Given that this represents the state of science education, what would you have Berkeley change?

 

[rpenner]

Sad, mad, or bad -- you are not seriously talking about any history of life on this planet or biological theory of evolution. It appears you are taking only information from widely-reprinted creationist distortions of biology and then lying about the sources of your constant misinformation.

appearances can be deceiving rpenner and in your case it's quite true.

I'm not deceived -- I was claiming your sources are creationist crap. Look what you raised to "refute" me:

It appears you are the laziest person on Earth because you don't bother to read even one book on the subject you are publicly airing opinions on. Even when such information has been codified in good websites like these:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01

you are correct in this regard.
i haven't read the entire book "bones of contention".
i only read the chapter on piltdown man.

Thank you for supporting my claim, as the full title of one such book is Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils and thus is another creationist distortion. You have built your misunderstandings on a platform of old distortions and outright lies.

So I am correct in both my estimates that you use creationist sources and that you are lazy.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lubenow_cg.html

--
It turns out over the last 50 years, a number of books named "Bones of contention" have turned up by various authors. The very nature of a nationalistic hoax being introduced doesn't impact the history of life on Earth any more than forged letters prove Thomas Jefferson was an agent of the Russian monarchy.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html

Humans behaving ugly.

 

[leopold]

I'm not deceived -- I was claiming your sources are creationist crap. Look what you raised to "refute" me:

Thank you for supporting my claim, as the full title of one such book is Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils and thus is another creationist distortion. You have built your misunderstandings on a platform of old distortions and outright lies.

a fine example of a person seeing what they want to see rpenner.
the chapter on piltdown that i read was in a book called "bones of contention" authored by roger lewin.
roger lewin isn't a creationist.

Humans behaving ugly.

i have run into more than my fair share of jealousy, envy, and hate.
petty little people for sure.

 

[Grumpy]

leopold

i haven't read the entire book "bones of contention".

Well, there's your problem right there, just having that book in your neighborhood school is a sign your whole state is headed back to the Dark Ages, where belief in idiocy ruled and people died from tooth aches in their 40s (if they lived to a ripe old age). It is pure Creationist disinformation(otherwise called deliberate lies)designed to protect their religious beliefs from questioning. The world is NOT 6000 years old, more like 4.6 billion.

Not only are humans descended from the same common ancestors with apes, but every creature with an internal skeleton is descended from one group of individuals from between 250 and 350 million years ago. If you examine the skeleton of a chicken, a bat, a man, a crocodile, a lizard, etc. they all have basically the same bones in different lengths. Fish are the exception, because they are the source of that group of individuals, not all fish descended from that group. The first amphibian(as opposed to lung fish, lungs came first)that crawled out of the ocean had a fully developed skeleton not greatly different from what man has, angles of the joints and length of the individual bones being most of that difference(though more than 5 fingers and toes show up throughout the earliest periods). So is every other creature with elbows, wrists, ankles and knees, even tails(coccyx in humans), even after 250 million years. So, you're right, we are still a form of that original amphibian, just altered by evolution to fit our particular environment like the fruitfly will always be an altered form of fruitfly , on a smaller scale, or a trilobite(or similar creature)from 450 million years ago on a larger one. Every insect can be traced back(in theory if not yet in practice)to one group of hardshell creatures in the late Cambrian, as segmented exoskeletons did not exist until that time.

Grumpy

 

[leopold]

leopold



Well, there's your problem right there, just having that book in your neighborhood school is a sign your whole state is headed back to the Dark Ages, where belief in idiocy ruled and people died from tooth aches in their 40s (if they lived to a ripe old age). It is pure Creationist disinformation(otherwise called deliberate lies)designed to protect their religious beliefs from questioning. The world is NOT 6000 years old, more like 4.6 billion.

we posted at the same time grumpy.
your mistake is an honest one.

 

[wellwisher]

One source of confusion between creationism and evolution, is each is talking more about separate data. Biology and evolution is about physical life based on protein and DNA which give it physical characteristics in common. Religion is about the spiritual aspect, which is not physical like the DNA, but is closer to the concept of consciousness, which is not easily defined even by science.

A migratory animal will make use of consciousness, to alter the external environment; change the location. In terms of fossils, this may suddenly appear like a quantum jump in physical evolution, if one is biased by physical only; has to be DNA. But on the other hand, if you think only in terms of consciousness, or spirit, you may miss physical things, such as genetic conditions not based on migration.

Evolution deals with the physical progression of life from simple gases to humans. The story of Creation, which is about 6000 years ago, deals with the rise in modern human consciousness, who can use will power to depart from the previous path of evolution; mind over matter. Once humans departed from the natural evolution of body and mind, problems began to appear on earth that were not there before. These new human can alter the earth (strip mine) so natural evolution also become subject to unnatural stresses. Millions of species disappear.

The concept of God appears to help humans toward a new natural consciousness/spiritual state, which take into consideration human will power and free choice along with the path of natural/physical evolution. This will cause the divergent path to once again converge; tree of life.

 

[Grumpy]

leopold

we posted at the same time grumpy.
your mistake is an honest one.

OK, but the P. T. Barnum atmosphere around the hoax should tell you the same thing, it was scientists who unmasked the hoax, you know.

And do you now understand that evolution is descent with modification tested by survival, not one creature becoming another, my fellow amphibian(or should I say fellow mammal, ape, fish or microbe, we are all descendants of all of these forks)?

Grumpy

 

[wellwisher]

And do you now understand that evolution is descent with modification tested by survival, not one creature becoming another, my fellow amphibian(or should I say fellow mammal, ape, fish or microbe, we are all descendants of all of these forks)?

Although I agree with all this in concept, one problem many people have, is we can't demonstrate this easily in the lab with the audience picking the scenario so it is not a fixed deck.

What this lack of utility says, is if we don't have a good enough handle to routinely demonstrate this in action with experiments, maybe we really don't understand everything. And maybe what we lack in understanding, that undermines utility in the lab, once understood, will alter the terrain of thinking.

As an analogy, we have a chef who can make good food. But you ask him to make something new, on demand, he is stuck. This would indicate he may not really have a good feel for how all the ingredient blend, but rather simply memorized a recipe that worked which he was able to tweak at the margins.

His theory on how these ingredients all appeared to him, may not be right since he can't use that understand to make a new dish. There is a rational disconnect so he gets very defensive if you challenged him. I content that applied science is the most advanced form of science, with evolution still many layers away from that place. This is proven by lack of addressing simple audience challenges with direct experiment. This is deflected to stock answers. There is room to grow.

For example, once we add water, we know how the DNA and proteins had at evolve. The DNA is currently the starting point for evolution, but with a water disconnect.

 

[leopold]

all i really wanted was answers to the science article, and i'm not so sure it has been adequately answered.
the process of speciation happens, it's a fact, science uses microevolution to differentiate from the larger scale process of accumulating changes of macroevolution.
the article says these are probably the same process but with different time scales.
note the word probably.
to my knowledge science hasn't proved there isn't some kind of barrier that prevents macroevolution.

shaking up the status quo, it's healthy for a vigorous debate and it could lead to disparately needed answers.

 

[Stanley]

That humans came from the oceans is a very good theory. Listed below are my reasons:

1. Coral and plant similarities
2. Penguins
3. Humans love water
4. Warm water feels so good on my bones.

Seems like we have some connection with water that is more than a mere "I like the water" thing going on. Then we may also be willing to consider that maybe there were "Merman and Mermaids".