Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

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“If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”ty clear.

This is pretty clear - a HUGE space exists between them.
 
I don’t know either. But complexity does not equal random, even if billions of years are added. “It’s more complex than we thought.” is coming up too often lately.
 
edwest211 said:
I don’t know either. But complexity does not equal random, even if billions of years are added.
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You really do have no idea.

First you post that it’s random - an error that a first grader would be embarrased about. Then you say it’s more complex than we thought and contradict yourself by saying that that doesn’t equal randomness.
 
Metis1 said:
Some that may be detrimental today may become positive if the environment were to change, such as what appears to have happened with sickle-cell anemia.
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I take it that neither you nor any of your loved ones suffer from this blood disorder that is as bad for the malaria parasite as it is for human beings. Evidence that we descended from apes to no one but true believers.
 
edwest211 said:
Adaptation is not evolution. The finch beaks return to normal size when things in the environment go back to normal.
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It is a mistake to say “back to normal” because it implies there is a “normal” or preferred environment. Actually, the environment is what it is. If it goes back to “what is was before” then small changes to the genome will similarly go back to what they were before. However, if the environment stays changed radially and for a long long long time, and then goes back to what it was before, there is no guarantee that evolution will produce exactly the same forms it did before. There is still a small element of chance in how things turn out.
So adaptation is a built-in design feature.
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It is a consequence of evolution - the ability to switch on certain genes. It is likely that the swings in the environment have occurred many times before, and that gave evolution the opportunity to develop several options that you call adaptation.
 
buffalo said:
This is pretty clear - a HUGE space exists between them.
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Between some of them. There is a large space between humans and sunflowers because their last common ancestor was a very long time ago. There is far less space between a lion and a tiger because their last common ancestor was far more recent.

What we observe is what we would expect from a branching tree of common descent which has developed over time. Similar species have a more recent common ancestor than less similar species. Very dissimilar species have a very distant common ancestor.

The degree of similarity correlates with the time since the last common ancestor of the two species. This has been confirmed by observations such as comparative cytochrome-c sequences.

rossum
 
From this you see evolution at work? The narrator is simply pointing to common sense and the fact that this is species within species nothing new here just slight adaption. I will let Dawkins explain


If we can prove design then evolution is redundant in my book as design of any dna had to have its code embedded from the beginning. Maybe this is why God wrote of his creation each to it’s own species, that always stuck me as an odd statement but only makes sense in these days where his design is being challenged by would be gods like Dawkins.
 
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sevenswords said:
If we can prove design then evolution is redundant in my book as design of any dna had to have its code embedded from the beginning.
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Really? So as well as designing a square circle and making a rock He can’t lift, we now have something else that God cannot do. He cannot design a system whereby we are formed by the evolutionary process.

And what we have then is the possibility of a simple q and a:

S: Is it possible that we have been designed?
B: Yes.

B: Could God have used evolution to create Man?
S: No.

I am more than willing to concede that we could have been designed. That the natural process of evolution was either enhanced or circumvented by someone (and I am fully aware that Dawkins feels exactly the same way). If anyone has some proof of this I would be anxious to see it.

But what we always have is people like yourself failing utterly to offer any and instead waste their time (and a lot of other people’s as well) in trying to reject evolution. ‘These bones aren’t millions of years old’ or ‘Micro evolution is just adaption and there’s a limit to what it can do’.

So what you have done again is waste your time and mine and anyone else’s who is reading this, posting irrelevant (and already conceded) points that do nothing to promote your claim of design.

And I might point out that, as per usual, any time a question is asked for which the answer would undoubtedly go a very long way to discount design, such as the age of any given fossil, it is totally ignored and the design crowd head off in another direction. Which is exactly what you have done here.

You were specifically asked about the the age of dinosaur bones earlier and why you claimed they were not as old as all the tests agree. Are we to get an answer or would you like to head off in yet another direction and hope the question can be swept under the rug.

And really? You’ve been debating this topic for twenty years? Although, to be fair, your lack of knowledge of all the points raised so far is par for the course. Most IDers could discuss this for a lifetime and still have no idea about the subject. Most recent case in point being Ed who still thinks the process is random.
 
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sevenswords said:
From this you see evolution at work?
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Yes. Either evolution, or a deceptive designer who has arranged things so they appear exactly as if they evolved with no design at all. Do you think Loki/Trickster is the designer?

We know that dragons and pegasus (pegasi?) can be designed since humans have designed them. Why do we not see living dragons and living pegasus? We know they can be designed, but we do not see any living examples.

Evolution can explain why we do not see them. Dragons have six limbs, and all vertebrate land animals are descended from tetrapod ancestors, with only four limbs, not six. A pegasus combines the mammalian body of a horse with avian wings. Evolution does not allow such major crossovers between such disparate groups: birds’ and mammals’ ancestors separated before dinosaurs evolved. When mammals evolved wings, they did not re-use the existing design of birds’ wings (or Pterosaur wings), but instead evolved bats’ wings.

Design does not have an explanation; evolution does. That makes evolution better science.

rossum
 
rossum said:
You have still not shown us any scientific evidence for this barrier you claim exists. Absent any evidence, you will not get support from the science side. Remember we can see no barrier between the first very primitive cell and an onion, which contains more information than a human being.
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Would not the preferred scientific approach to a claim that no genetic barrier to speciation exists be to evidence an actual speciation event? The math against speciation from chimp to human seems extraordinarily impossible. Does not the mutation of just one fertile/potent individual human from chimpdom require the same mutated individual of the opposite sex temporaneously exist and that these two highly improbable beings meet and mate?

It seems science is exploring but concludes, rather unscientifically that “something must have happened.”

www.scientificamerican.com

Is "Junk DNA" What Makes Humans Unique?

Noncoding regions of our genome may be key to how our brains develop
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com

According to Pollard, the parts of the chimpanzee genome that are analogous to the HARs have not changed at all in millions of years, and they are nearly identical to the same regions in most animals. Pollard says natural selection was acting to keep these parts of these animals’ genomes from changing, but something must have happened to relieve that evolutionary pressure from humans after our ancestors split from chimps about six million years ago. “Most of [the HARs] have so many changes in them that not only did they acquire random mutations, but…the individuals carrying those changes produced more offspring,” Pollard says. What happened to cause this is an open question. The fact that so many HARs are involved in neuronal development suggests the change may have had something to do with the evolution of intelligence, a vastly complicated trait that is the product of hundreds of mutations in our genomes.
 
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o_mlly said:
The math against speciation from chimp to human seems extraordinarily impossible. Does not the mutation of just one fertile/potent individual human from chimpdom require the same mutated individual of the opposite sex temporaneously exist and that these two highly improbable beings meet and mate?
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Notwithstanding that we didn’t evolve from chimps (or apes or monkeys), I’m really at a loss to know where to start to put you right. Do you really think that from our common ancestor to us only required one mutation for a male and one from a female and that that specific pair needed to mate to produce us?

You are so far from being right that you are not even wrong.
 
Bradskii said:
Notwithstanding that we didn’t evolve from chimps (or apes or monkeys), …
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Then you may substitute for “chimp” your current favorite scientific guess as to that from which we evolved.
Bradskii said:
Do you really think that from our common ancestor to us only required one mutation for a male and one from a female and that that specific pair needed to mate to produce us?
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The issue is not what I think but what science has proven as probable. Do you have any answers?

As an aside, look up “species” to refresh your understanding of the concept as you seem somewhat lost.
 
IWantGod said:
This is just a commonsense argument.

If God created species, then apart from animals that have gone extinct, all the animals that exist today should be no different from when they were first created; there should be no new species. So it should be true that the Platypus has always existed for as long as there have been animals. From the moment animals existed they ought to be identical to the animals that live today. The evidence does not bare out that cl;aim.

So while one might not want to take evolution as fact, i think one can think that it is the most likely origin of species when compared to the biblical 7 day creation explanation…
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The problem with your analysis is that it presumes to know the mind of God.

I.e, your logic is, this was created. Therefore it was created in the final form that God wanted. That’s fine human logic, but it is really wholly irrelevant.

Why would God make species to evolve? Why not? Just because if we make something, we make it in a final form (which isn’t what we in fact actually do), doesn’t mean that God would do it. Indeed, having things evolve over time is pretty neat, just from a human prospective, and why a God who is outside of time might not with to multiply his creation in this fashion woudln’t be clear at all.

Shoot, if I could create something that continually changed, I might do that. Why wouldn’t God wish to do that (which is a question we can’t really answer, as we don’t know God’s mind)?
 
The article does link to a talk by Dr Spitzer based on his book The Soul’s Upward Yearning which made a case for the existence of what he terms a transphysical soul.

Although merely skimming snippets of what he has to say, I think I’ve got a gist of what he’s trying to do, which is a reaching out to individuals who understand the world in accordance with its modern mythos that includes evolution.

It’s odd to hear an argument for the soul, when that is all one sees. What else is there but a relationship between my self and everything that it is not? This very act of reading being what it is, brings into sharp focus the physical spiritual unity that we are, as well as the reality of our being relational and rational, which in turn demands that there be truth, meaning and morality, and pointing to the fact that ultimately love is the highest form of the expression of our existence.

Perhaps through trial and error the attempts to put together the pieces of diverse physical morphology will reach the same end, but the questions most people have in this regard, have to do with who “I” am and how did “we” come to be. Putting aside for a moment the stories and ideas that we have absorbed and share in forming some sort of common vision of the world that allows for our meeting in this sociopsychological world, we can try to get to what is truly human. What is this? In prayer and contemplation, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we find Adam and Christ, He the One True Vine, the Way to Existence, the Triune Godhead. As an ontological expression of one mankind, each of us, individual and unique, while united with others in one body in Love, in Christ, had our particular beginning in time; so too did this all. And it is this knowledge that can illumine the science, casting away what is illusory, and give hope that the physical pieces will be seen by all as they are, rather than as imagined through the modern mythos of existence, which can so easily lead us astray.
 
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o_mlly said:
Would not the preferred scientific approach to a claim that no genetic barrier to speciation exists be to evidence an actual speciation event?
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We have many observations of such specioation events, from de Vries (1905) to the present day. I have posted links to a speciation event in crayfish many times.
The math against speciation from chimp to human seems extraordinarily impossible.
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Since evolution does not say that humans evolved from chimps (or vice versa) then your “seems” is irrelevant. Also, even if it were not irrelevant, you would need to show your working as to how you arrived at the conclusion. To me that maths of an omniscient deity “seems” to make it impossible for such an entity to exist. Does that convince you?

Humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor, not one from the other. In evolutionary terms they are cousins, not parent and child.
Does not the mutation of just one fertile/potent individual human from chimpdom require the same mutated individual of the opposite sex temporaneously exist and that these two highly improbable beings meet and mate?
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No. Very closely related species can produce fertile offspring: lions and tigers for example. Your slightly mutated individual would be able to mate with others from the same group/clan as they would be even more closely related than a lion and a tiger. Evolution happens in populations, so any mutated individual will have a population of similar individuals around them. If the mutation was such as to prevent breeding, then natural selection would remove that mutation within a single generation.

Chimps are better adapted to forests than humans: just look at a chimp climbing a tree. Humans are better adapted to more open savanna: humans can run further and faster over open ground than chimps. What probably happened was that one group of forest-dwelling apes moved into more open terrain while another group stayed in the forest. The plains group evolved into Australopithecus, and eventually humans, while the forest group evolved into chimps and bonobos.

rossum
 
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