Thread: Evolution is a Fact - Not a Theory

photolysis. I hope you are not putting me in that group of religious wack jobs. because I clearly said I dont take that stance either. I would like God to regrow a limb as well, would be pretty sweet.

on the note of your explination, yes I get where evolution is coming from. but when it comes to something like eyes, or the repoductive system changes I have not read an actual break down of how these things evolved, I only ever hear about the "remarkable continuity" among the species which proponents of id can just as easily say is proof of a designer. That was pretty much my point

Originally Posted by tkdyo

photolysis. I hope you are not putting me in that group of religious wack jobs. because I clearly said I dont take that stance either. I would like God to regrow a limb as well, would be pretty sweet.

on the note of your explination, yes I get where evolution is coming from. but when it comes to something like eyes, or the repoductive system changes I have not read an actual break down of how these things evolved, I only ever hear about the "remarkable continuity" among the species which proponents of id can just as easily say is proof of a designer. That was pretty much my point

Do you see what you're doing, repeating slippery talking points about the irreducible complexity of systems that require little more than a thought experiment by you or me to see how they fit with every piece of physical evidence thus far gathered in confirming evolutionary theory? We have nearly the full gamut of eye structures present on earth now to fill in all the blanks--how can you use the variety of structures tailored to changing environments and ecological niches as evidence against evolution (regardless of whether you also see it as the work of a "designer")? If any of the pundits feeding you this garbage claim to have a scientific education or any familiarity with the evidence, then they are deliberately misleading you.

when did I say there was evidence against evolution? ID infers evolution by design does it not? Then why dont I ever see an explination of how these things developed rather than just "oh, well they are all so similar" I am not being fed garbage by any religious pundit and I in fact hold no religion as my own currently. So, I dont see what you are getting so worked up about. Im just gathering information by asking questions

Originally Posted by tkdyo

when did I say there was evidence against evolution? ID infers evolution by design does it not? Then why dont I ever see an explination of how these things developed rather than just "oh, well they are all so similar" I am not being fed garbage by any religious pundit and I in fact hold no religion as my own currently. So, I dont see what you are getting so worked up about. Im just gathering information by asking questions

Sorry, but the eyeball schtick is a standard ID talking point, so it automatically sets off alarms. I'm not refering to similarity of structures, but continuity--the chain of increasing complexity between the eyes of, say flatworms-->fish-->frogs-->snakes-->dogs-->humans.

As for "evolution by design," no, ID is descended directly from the movements to keep evolution out of schools and posits that all species were dropped on earth fully formed according to the timeline set forth by number crunching the ages of the patriarchs in the Torah (but they didn't get the number from there--no, they used special, invisible, irreproduceable science).

photolysis. I hope you are not putting me in that group of religious wack jobs. because I clearly said I dont take that stance either. I would like God to regrow a limb as well, would be pretty sweet.

I wasn't labelling you specifically as a religious nutcase, but merely making general comments based on the content of your post.

on the note of your explination, yes I get where evolution is coming from. but when it comes to something like eyes, or the repoductive system changes I have not read an actual break down of how these things evolved, I only ever hear about the "remarkable continuity" among the species which proponents of id can just as easily say is proof of a designer. That was pretty much my point

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

I could summarise the general points, but that article does it a lot better. A few others from wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluti...itory_ossicles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Sorry, but the eyeball schtick is a standard ID talking point, so it automatically sets off alarms. I'm not refering to similarity of structures, but continuity--the chain of increasing complexity between the eyes of, say flatworms-->fish-->frogs-->snakes-->dogs-->humans.

As for "evolution by design," no, ID is descended directly from the movements to keep evolution out of schools and posits that all species were dropped on earth fully formed according to the timeline set forth by number crunching the ages of the patriarchs in the Torah (but they didn't get the number from there--no, they used special, invisible, irreproduceable science).

oh, I see. Then I guess I need a new name for evolution by design. I guess I could just call it that, lol. and after reading the eye article from Photolysis I see what you are getting at.

Photolysis. thanks for the articles. The eye one makes a lot of sense. The jaw bone I did know about, its pretty interesting that it could have moved like that. As for the cells, it will be cool to see what solid conclusions more research brings.

In the end. I think Im sitting at around the area that evolution is obviously occurring, but I have a hard time believing that the necessary mutations could all just happen to occur in the places where animals need it most. So, Im leaning towards evo by design but defiantly not creationism or ID.

They don't 'happen where animals need it most'. All sorts of things happen and the vast majority are incredibly bad for the animal, but the animals for which their mutation happens by chance to be an advantage in their environment will survive to pass on that mutation.

If you haven't understood that then I think you've missed the whole point of Darwin's theory.

Evolution is clearly observed to happen but Darwin's theory is the only one which explains it so perfectly. As soon as you understand what it actually means, as Thomas Huxley said, you'll be ashamed you hadn't thought of it before, it's so simple and obvious.

Ok, maybe I worded my statement wrong. I understand the point of Darwin's theory. Let me use his classic finches as an example. It is true, each finch gained the necessary mutation to get the varied beaks to help them in their enviroment, and the ones who didnt died out because they couldnt get enough food. Anyone can understand that.

Now using the finches for my point. How is it that just "by chance" some finches genes mutated in the proper way to fit the food they wanted? Surely there must be more to these mutations than blind chance? Not necessarily a higher power, but it seems to me there must be more to mutations then "oh, the genes just happened to mutate in a way that the beaks could fit in holes"

edit: I was typing this when photo made his response. This aspect of evolution I also appreciate and indeed we observe it happening. I just find it miraculous that on all the island every finch's genes just happened to gain the correct mutation for its particular food supply. Or maybe Im switching the order and due to these finch's beaks they adapted to the most ready food supply?

I have a hard time believing that the necessary mutations could all just happen to occur in the places where animals need it most.

I think this might stem from a few things:


A lot of people don't seem to appreciate the amount of times that mutations will go wrong and lead to much worse things. We don't tend to focus on the millions of poor mutations compared to the rare good one.

A lot of people don't seem to appreciate the timescales at which evolution operates on (unless something is very lethal). Decades are a long time for us. A century is a very long time. Trying to understand how long a millenium is, is not an easy task. This is almost impossible when you hit the timescales of millions and billions of years.

Mutations also do not occur when needed. Obviously sometimes they do - we wouldn't be here otherwise - but mutations can occur pretty much anywhere, even if something is perfect and doesn't need changing, and a mutation would be useless. If there was a mutation that gave humans gold eyes say, which conferred no advantage, it would not rapidly spread throughout the population. It would randomly spread and mix. The mutation is not "needed", but it still happened anyway. There are lots of examples of mutations like this, such as eye colour, hair colour, etc.

Now if there were a disease or something that these gold eyed people were hypothetically resistant to, the "gold eye" gene would rapidly spread. The mutation is "needed", but it came about by chance. It was only a coincidence that the mutation happened where it was "needed", and we don't see the countless people that died because they didn't have the correct mutations.

Mutations always occur, regardless of whether they are needed or not (in hindsight), and will not always solve a problem. A species with thin coats in an ice age might not evolve to have thick coats. They might all die before this can happen. Again, we don't tend to see these examples.

We also need to appreciate the numbers we're working with. A mutation might have say a 1 in a billion chance, but if you have a population of 6 billion, the chances are that several people will have it. It's these numbers and timescales that a lot of people don't seem to fully appreciate.

Photolysis, I must say you have done a good job keeping the side of evolution in clarity and elaboration. I thought I would be the one delving into the details, but you have been doing well.

Thank you, and to others for your inquiry and response.

~