TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- Samoan Butterflies Evolving Fast / Butterfly shows evolution at work
Pages (3): « 1 2 [3]
| quote: |
| Let's make sure we are speaking the same language before we go any further: Do you understand the concept of abiogenesis? Do you understand the concept of biological evolution? Now, you realize that the former is NOT related to the latter? I really think this is important for us to get down before we move on. So please respond with your understand of these two when you have a chance. |
| quote: |
| Are you sure you understand evolution well enough? Do you have any knowledge of what researchers do with methodological naturalism (via the scientific method) that demonstrates the factual basis of a change of allele frequencies in a population over time via the known mechanisms of mutation and natural selection? Because this what appear that you do not. |
Let me google allele frequencies. I never denied a diversity in genetics. I denied that diversity in genetics creates new species, i.e., river-dwelling animals turning into 50ft. long whales. | quote: |
Hmmm, I see. You do realize that there is a great amount of information that can be told from a skull, right? Let's take an initial look at the Pakicetus skull: Now compare that to the skull of a modern-day false killer whale:  and now compare to that of a modern german shepherd:  Which one does it look like to you? |
| quote: |
| Now if you have peer-reviewed primary literature that supports your claims that Pakicetus is terrestrial only, I'd love to see them. There are most certainly terrestrial features (tympanic membrane, no pressure from pressure changes in the ear, molars similar to mesonychids), but we also have the aquatic features as well (features mentioned previously plus the other teeth similar to later cetaceans like premolars, whale-like sagittal skull crest, narrow braincase, and jaws more elongated) - hence a wonderful transition with a semi-aquatic animal. |
| quote: |
| 1. Define "kinds". Be specific in your description 2. What's your point? |
| quote: |
| If we could, that would be a tremendous falsification to evolution. You do understand this concept, right? It's the basic tenet of evolution with the known mechanism of mutation and natural selection. Such mutations combined with the process of natural selection does not simply occur with a "poof!" that delineates in such a drastic manner that you are desperately hoping for to supposedly "prove" evolution. That simply does not occur along such a short timeline. Sorry. |
| quote: |
| In short, punctuated equilibrium is the idea that evolution in many (but not all) lineages has been marked by long periods of stasis, interspersed with relatively brief periods of more rapid change when new species arise. Gould estimated that the period of rapid change when a new species is born accounts for about 1 per cent of its total lifespan. If the average stable lifespan of a species is a few million years, then its period of development--the punctuation--would have lasted a few tens of thousands of years. While that is not long on a geological scale, it is still longer than the history of human civilisation. Gould and Eldredge proposed punctuated equilibrium as a palaeontologist's view of the history of life: they were describing the palaeontological data available at the time, pointing out that there was no geological evidence to support Charles Darwin's belief that species evolved gradually. Time has shown them to be correct, and their observations are now accepted by most biologists as an accurate account of evolutionary history. Myers, P.Z. "A short sharp slice of evolutionary history: thirty-five years after they first appeared in print, provoking howls of protest, Stephen Jay Gould's ideas on evolution are as compelling and essential as ever.(Punctuated Equilibrium)(Book review)." New Scientist 194.2603 (May 12, 2007): 54(2). Academic OneFile. Thomson Gale. University of Phoenix. 17 July 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/infom...nix&version=1.0>. |
| quote: |
| You do realize that evolutionary researchers are not confined to their laboratories, right? I'm just curious - how do you personally define "macroevolution"? And why is the thought of evolution taking so gosh darn long so gosh darn difficult for you to accept? |
| quote: |
| What was the "assumption" again of evolution that you seemingly keep referring to? I guess I'm a little confused at what you call an "assumption." Are you referring to dating methodology? If so, explain. Genetics and molecular biology? If so, explain. Paleontological evidence? If so, explain. |
| quote: |
| Terrific. Now tell me, what exactly differentiates your belief from that of my personal God, the Great Cookie Monster from the Planet Zoinks!?: http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...+cookie+monster Or the Incredible Flying Spaghetti Monster?: http://www.venganza.org/ How does one differentiate the two with positive, verifiable, and falsifiable evidence? Please explain. |
| quote: |
| It doesn't - exactly my point. The concept of abiogenesis (life from non-life) is separate and distinct from evolution (change of allele frequencies in a population over time). Evolution research does not touch abiognesis research, nor should it. Granted, there might be some similar ideas with abiogenesis (i.e. possible mutation events in amino acids of sorts), but the research albeit very interesting in abiogenesis is both distinctly separate and very incomplete (to the nth degree of incompleteness compared to evolutionary research). So the comparison of life creation you are creating by lumping these two concepts together and calling them "evolution" versus a theistic involvement of some sort is incorrect on those grounds. |
| quote: |
| this is a typical fallacy you find repeated by the theist. it takes the form "life exists, therefore god does". there are innumerable, precise conditions that must have arisen to grant life on planet earth. this does not equal design. who knows how many universes exist/have existed where the parameters were not conducive to life? its the same argument regarding the very particular positioning of earth around the sun, yet theists seem to ignore the billions of galaxies, billions of stars, and presumably, billions of planets. |
| quote: |
| In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle says that we should take account of the constraints that our existence as observers imposes on the sort of universe that we could observe. Originally proposed as a rule of reasoning, the term has since been extended to cover supposed "superlaws" that in various ways require the universe to support intelligent life, usually assumed to be carbon-based, and occasionally to be specifically human beings. Anthropic reasoning involves assessing these constraints by analysing the properties of universes with different fundamental parameters or laws of physics from ours, and has frequently concluded that essential structures, from atomic nuclei to the whole universe, depend for stability on delicate balances between different fundamental forces; balances which only occur in a small minority of possible universes � so that ours seems to be fine-tuned for life. Anthropic reasoning also attempts to explain and quantify this fine tuning. |
| quote: |
| so who created god then? surely a being with as much information as god must therefore have been put together by something else. and who but that being together etc? |
| quote: |
| irrelevant. that's like saying computer don't exist coz they're a recently recent "discovery". |
| quote: |
| no, no it doesn't. all it does is make a joke of intellectual debate, by arguing "there appears to be a hole in the theory here, let's place god in that hole". which is un-scientific nonsense. there is no "hole" in creationism simply because there is no proper theory to begin with. and of course religion doesn't "explain it all". it explains NOTHING. unless you wish to argue that genesis is somehow realistic, there is nothing in any religious text to give us any kind of blueprint for how things were created, and certainly doesn't give us ANY reason to doubt the volumes of scientific evidence that has categorically supported evolutionary theory. |
| quote: |
| When defeated divert attention from the particular topic. If you had read what Opus has posted numerous times, you would've been able to answer your own question. Too bad he's wasting his time on someone who has convinced himself that his point of view is right and there is nothing else to be studied or worth considering. Shame, because Opus is really good at constructing and documenting his arguments; you could've learned something from what he posted. |
| quote: |
| how did god make the world if it has never been documented in a lab???? |
| quote: |
| Now god is not a "term" krypton would accept. He wants something along the lines of intelligent being. This intelligent being may be mortal too.. he just was sooo fucking smart.. he created the universe out crazy mathematical formulas and experimented and and poof...BIG BANG. Seriously, why do people need some sense of meaning in their pathetic lives?? U are a living organism! Just fucking live and die. Thats it. U want some sort of afterlife to show that ur insignificant life would be rewarded in a place where there is a load of blow where u can snort all u want and wont die of overdose??? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton The implications of evolution are abiogenesis no? How could biological evolution ever start? Are you saying that evolution only deals with how animals change over time? Wouldn't the beginning of life fall into biology? So why isn't it relevant? |
Can't talk too much tonight with an exam looming in the morning. I'll cover these points tomorrow afternoon once it's finished. I'll just hit your first quote for now:
| quote: |
| The implications of evolution are abiogenesis no? |
| quote: |
| How could biological evolution ever start? |
| quote: |
| Are you saying that evolution only deals with how animals change ove time? |
| quote: |
| Wouldn't the beginning of life fall into biology? |
| quote: |
| So why isn't it relevant? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton You are too smart Let me google allele frequencies. I never denied a diversity in genetics. I denied that diversity in genetics creates new species, i.e., river-dwelling animals turning into 50ft. long whales. |
| quote: |
| If the otter was extinct, and we found fossils of it around the globe, do you think evolutionists would toute the creature as a relative of the whale? Simply because it is adapted to life in the water? |
| quote: |
| It would be awesome if all three of these skulls were scaled together in size. You would see the whale skull is much larger than both Pakicetus and the dog! A whale calf, specifically orcas are already 180 kg and about 2.4 m long (8 ft). Compare that to the size of dogs and Pakicetus. What a stupid interpretation of a fossil. That a dog-sized creature can turn into a completely different animal that weighs tonnes. |
| quote: |
| Thank you for even mentioning peer-reviewed literature. I went to my university database and just began reading the peer-reviewed articles on artiodactyls, Pakicetus, whale fossils, etc. I must clarify when I said Pakicetus was a terrestrial creature, I meant it was not an ocean-going animal. I find the consensus is whales somehow came from land, however unclear, I am certainly not qualified to argue against this literature. Something interesting to note, whales seem closer to artiodactyls than mesonychians. What this means? |
| quote: |
| Species which cannot interbreed. We need to document an instance in which a new organism born cannot breed with the same species its parents belong to simply because it is a new species. Where do new species coming from old species begin? Kind of like a, "What came first (chicken or egg?)" arguement |
| quote: |
| I would dispute that. Though it may not be a poof, punctuated equilibrium which is commonly excepted would say it takes much less time than millions of years for a new species to arise.. |
| quote: |
| In 1964 five or six individuals of the polychaete worm, Nereis acuminata, were collected in Long Beach Harbor, California. These were allowed to grow into a population of thousands of individuals. Four pairs from this population were transferred to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. For over 20 years these worms were used as test organisms in environmental toxicology. From 1986 to 1991 the Long Beach area was searched for populations of the worm. Two populations, P1 and P2, were found. Weinberg, et al. (1992) performed tests on these two populations and the Woods Hole population (WH) for both postmating and premating isolation. To test for postmating isolation, they looked at whether broods from crosses were successfully reared. The results below give the percentage of successful rearings for each group of crosses. WH X WH - 75% P1 X P1 - 95% P2 X P2 - 80% P1 X P2 - 77% WH X P1 - 0% WH X P2 - 0% They also found statistically significant premating isolation between the WH population and the field populations. Finally, the Woods Hole population showed slightly different karyotypes from the field populations. Source: J. R. Weinberg et al. 1992. Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory. Science 46(4):1214-1220. |
| quote: |
| Change in offspring whereby they cannot reproduce with their parent species. |
| quote: |
| Assumption 1: changes in morphologies are induced by random mutations on the genome. Assumption 2: changes in the morphology of plant or animal make the life form either more or less successful in the competition to survive. |
| quote: |
| A single gene gives rise to the mirror-image form of a snail's body plan, which could become established as a different species if mating is prevented between snails of different chirality by genital mismatch1, 2, 3. Here we use molecular phylogeny to demonstrate the parallel evolution of reversal between left and right lineages of the Japanese land snail Euhadra. We find that the different mirror-image forms have evolved in favour of the genetically dominant handedness as a result of single-gene speciation. Evolution: single-gene speciation by left-right reversal. Ueshima R, Asami T. Nature. 2003 Oct 16;425(6959):679. |
| quote: |
| Randomness remains as the basic driving force that produces the varied mutations from among which the selection by survival takes place. |
| quote: |
| I never identified the god I believe in. I identified my belief in a Creator of the universe. Really, it cannot be examined under the normal constraints of science, but rather enters a more philosophical branch like metaphysics. We are constrained to what we can sense and detect. We are limited. I guess what your asking is, "Can we detect a god through scientific instruments?"............. |
| quote: |
| Isn't evolution trying to document the history of life? So why are we ignoring the very genesis of life itself? You can't escape it. Either life generated itself, or it didn't. What has to be true for evolution to be true? |
| quote: |
| Please, read for yourself what the physicists are talking about... |
| quote: |
| 1. The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos. We do not know what fundamental conditions would rule out any possibility of any life. For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible. Indeed, many examples of fine-tuning are evidence that life is fine-tuned to the cosmos, not vice versa. This is exactly what evolution proposes. 2. If the universe is fine-tuned for life, why is life such an extremely rare part of it? 3. Many fine-tuning claims are based on numbers being the "same order of magnitude," but this phrase gets stretched beyond its original meaning to buttress design arguments; sometimes numbers more than one-thousandfold different are called the same order of magnitude (Klee 2002). How fine is "fine" anyway? That question can only be answered by a human judgment call, which reduces or removes objective value from the anthropic principle argument. 4. The fine-tuning claim is weakened by the fact that some physical constants are dependent on others, so the anthropic principle may rest on only a very few initial conditions that are really fundamental (Kane et al. 2000). It is further weakened by the fact that different initial conditions sometimes lead to essentially the same outcomes, as with the initial mass of stars and their formation of heavy metals (Nakamura et al. 1997), or that the tuning may not be very fine, as with the resonance window for helium fusion within the sun (Livio et al. 1989). For all we know, a universe substantially different from ours may be improbable or even impossible. 5. If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it. There is nothing to rule out the possibility of multiple universes, most of which would be unsuitable for life. We happen to find ourselves in one where life is conveniently possible because we cannot very well be anywhere else. 6. Intelligent design is not a logical conclusion of fine tuning. Fine tuning says nothing about motives or methods, which is how design is defined. (The scarcity of life and multi-billion-year delay in it appearing argue against life being a motive.) Fine-tuning, if it exists, may result from other causes, as yet unknown, or for no reason at all (Drange 2000). 7. In fact, the anthropic principle is an argument against an omnipotent creator. If God can do anything, he could create life in a universe whose conditions do not allow for it. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI301.html |
| quote: |
| I am not placing god in transitional holes in the evolutionary timeline... I am stating a notion that complex organisms arise at same time, fully formed into their own phylas. Until you can explain definatively why we are here to observe the universe, philosophy or religion, etc. will continue to be the mode of universal understanding. |
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.