I'm not... I'm miss-communicating. I'm stating that Mutation works on the basis of errors. Those errors are "random".
Evolution
- Thread starter garbonzo
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I'm not... I'm miss-communicating. I'm stating that Mutation works on the basis of errors. Those errors are "random".
I agree, but that doesn't make evolution random. And in fact mutations are less random than you might think. The genome of many life forms are structured in such a way to encourage mutations in some parts and protect other parts through redundancy. So they evolved to be better at evolving. Furthermore, the eating habits of some animals are such that they reduce the number of mutagens in their diet by simply eating the same thing all the time. Other animals including humans eat all kinds of stuff, which encourages mutation (perhaps not deliberately through).
Care to respond to my reply above or are you done?
I pretty much think you're an idiot, so... I no longer care what you say...
Why did you comment to begin with then?
Problem is of course when hair brained individuals like this are allowed to preach their nonsensical unsupported crap, they truly believe they are convincing people of there point of view.
He isn't the first to try an conduct an evangelistic crusade on this forum, and he won't be the last.
No other science forum will have them.
There's no evangelism going on in this thread, for you to say that makes you a liar unless you show me where I evangelized. If you can't I will be reporting you for false claims.
There's only one liar in this thread, and I'll leave it up to the mods to decide who that is.
Yes, Evangelism in disguise.
Evolution is a fact old bean. And if you had anything at all to disprove with Evolution, you would not be here.
You would be following the scientific methodology and peer review and getting this "proof"published.
You obviously only have forums such as this to infest with your nonsensical claims, as any mainstream review would see you totally exposed for exactly what you are, just as our online experts have done here.
Of course the indispensable quality that you do have in bucket loads, prevents you from ever recognising your shortcomings....I speak of delusional qualities in actual fact.
First evidence for a Creationist troll or agenda of some sorts.......
Scientific theories do not really deal in proofs.
Another lie!
Unless you can show us Evolution is incorrect, and/or a reputable non creationist site for calls of a new theory.
Just because you say so, does not make it so.
And finally of course, Evolution is a fact old bean. And if you had anything at all to disprove with Evolution, you would not be here.
You would be following the scientific methodology and peer review and getting this "proof"published.
I thought you might be able to make a case for your position, or might be open to the facts. But it's just not worth the effort to convince one deluded person of their error.
How about you? Care to reply? Or is it just me and Geoff?
garbonzo:
Pardon me for jumping into the middle of this discussion.
Why would God, if that is your preferred Creator, try to fool us all by making things look exactly like evolution by natural selection occurred? I understand, of course, that a capricious god could do as he wished, but do you have a more cogent answer than "God works in mysterious ways"?
I assume these calls have been from biologists and not theologians...
Let's take the genes that make, say, my eyes. Can you please explain the detrimental effects of those? I realise that you may not be an expert on this, so let me know if you don't know the answer to this one.
Another problem is your imagining that human beings are somehow at the pinnacle of life. Human beings are far from being the "luckiest" goo around. We're far from being perfect beings. Our bodies wear out after a while, and our genes stop working to repair them. We're susceptible to all kinds of illnesses and disabilities. Our eyesight isn't very good. We have bad backs (almost like we weren't "designed" to walk on two legs - can you account for that?).
Pardon me for jumping into the middle of this discussion.
My question to you is: why does the ancestry of modern animals, as evidenced by DNA sequencing, look just like we'd expect it to look if the theory of evolution were true?
Why would God, if that is your preferred Creator, try to fool us all by making things look exactly like evolution by natural selection occurred? I understand, of course, that a capricious god could do as he wished, but do you have a more cogent answer than "God works in mysterious ways"?
Anybody looking at DNA closely can see that if it was engineered then it was engineered by an incompetent designer. There are huge messes of junk, sequences that are needlessly repeated, DNA that produces less than optimal outcomes in the morphology of organisms, and so on. Why would God do such a poor job on the DNA? And - once again - why does DNA look just like we'd expect it to look if it changed the way that evolution says it does?
Interesting. Got a link or two?
I assume these calls have been from biologists and not theologians...
What makes you think that?
Let's take the genes that make, say, my eyes. Can you please explain the detrimental effects of those? I realise that you may not be an expert on this, so let me know if you don't know the answer to this one.
If a mutation is not beneficial now, but may become so later, does it not stand to reason that a mutation that is detrimental now may become neutral or even beneficial later? Please explain why this can't happen.
You seem to be imagining some kind of initially-perfect DNA that then gradually changed and degraded over time, with detriments building up among the occasional lucky benefit. It doesn't work like that. First, not all mutations have detrimental effects. Second, individual genes seldom act alone to produce an outcome - part of the "environment" of every gene is the other genes in the same organism. Third, many genes do not have a direct and high impact on survival. The effects of mutations often don't result in sudden and wholesale changes to an organism, but rather a slight trend or drift in one direction or another - a slightly longer neck, a slightly better eye, a slightly different rate of processing glucose.
Another problem is your imagining that human beings are somehow at the pinnacle of life. Human beings are far from being the "luckiest" goo around. We're far from being perfect beings. Our bodies wear out after a while, and our genes stop working to repair them. We're susceptible to all kinds of illnesses and disabilities. Our eyesight isn't very good. We have bad backs (almost like we weren't "designed" to walk on two legs - can you account for that?).
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Bipedal walking is certainly one of the innovations that led us to our current status as the rulers of the planet. Simply having our hands free 100% of the time made it easier to fend off the smaller predators. Being able to carry a double-armload of food allowed the females to stay back in a relatively safe place with the children.
But we pay a terrible price for that, and back pains aren't the worst of it. The human brain is, proportionally, more than twice as big as our closest relatives, the two species of chimpanzees. If a human newborn's brain were as well-developed as that of the other apes, the birth canal would have to be twice as wide as it is.
This would mean a much wider pelvis, placing our legs much farther apart. Bipedal walking would be a constant sideways-rocking motion, using considerable energy, putting a lot of strain on the lower body, and making for a very slow traveling velocity. Our ancestors would not have been able to chase down prey!
So human babies are born with incredibly undeveloped brains. About all they can do is suckle and cry. Of course this requires dedicated parental care for the first couple of years... compared to newborn giraffes, for example, who hit the ground ready to scamper (albeit clumsily) away from a predator. These brains require so much maturation that we need assistance and close supervision for about 15 years. Compare this to whales, which become adults at age two, and even elephants, who are grown up by age five!
BTW, the recently discovered "missing link," Ardipithecus, has feet that are reasonably well constructed for full-time bipedal walking. Yet this transitional species retained one prehensile toe (the hallux or "big toe"), so they could climb into the trees fairly quickly to escape predators.
It's not. Organisms often find a niche that they are perfectly suited for; in this case there is no evolution, because any change will make them less perfectly suited. It is only when an organism is not an ideal fit for its environment that you see evolution in action.
In nature, "no evolution during 2 billion years" is exceedingly rare, and is only seen in static environments, like benthic or sea vent environments.
No, it never happens. Evolution is continuous.
Nope. The theory of evolution does not predict any specific rate of evolution, and a zero rate of evolution is perfectly compatible with the theory.
How is it proof that evolution does not happen, when vast numbers of other organisms are evolving?
The existence of one or two or ten or a hundred thousand species not changing with descent does not falsify evolution. Evolution in one or more species does falsify Biblical stasis and special creation as described in Genesis. The counter to that is the Spinozan God: but that implicitly allows for evolutionary modification, since the close hand of God in every action is considered unlikely. Evolution - or rather descent with modification, since evolution is actually merely the act of changing mathematical allelic/genotypic frequencies - is like a real number coefficient, which may in some cases be zero, as billvon points out above. There is no implicit requirement for DWM to take place: life is not running a forced race to see which creature ends up as the most differentiated or complex.