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

[rossum]

There is freakingly huge difference between simian and human brains.

Not that huge. There is no part of a human brain that is not also present in a chimpanzee brain. The relative sizes of some parts are different, but changing size is not difficult for evolution.

For a huge difference, look at the differences between an earthworm’s brain and a primate brain. Cephalopod brains are very different as well.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Has anyone seen a transitional fossil in real life? If so please let me know when and where. I have never seen one,.

See Specimens of Archaeopteryx for your nearest Archaeopteryx fossil.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

there was a good study done years ago that demonstrated that in spite of the benefits of overall better nutrition and public health measures, the average IQ of humanity is dropping about one point per decade

An interesting study, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came out yesterday from China. The Impact of Exposure to Air Pollution on Cognitive Performance, describes a negative impact that increases with age, affects men more than women, and those with less education. We can’t assume, as I did in trying to illustrate some of the nuances of evolutionary theory, that the cause of a global decline in intelligence may be primarily due to genetic factors. As an aside, the fact that education level is somehow related to cognitive decline suggests that there may be other, including psychosocial, factors involved; that segment of society tends to be stuck with the dirtiest jobs. Industrialization, for all its benefits, may have been doing some serious harm - we may end up seeing natural selection at work.

 

[FredBloggs]

FredBloggs:

Nothing. What do you think is missing?

That answer tells me you a “blind faith adherent”

What you infer is your business, not mine.

Are you going to answer my question or just bait-and-switch again?

 

[FredBloggs]

Has anyone seen a transitional fossil in real life? If so please let me know when and where. I have never seen one,.

What attributes would you require a fossil to have in order for you to accept it as “transitional?”

 

[buffalo]

What is missing from evolution?

Steps of the Scientific Method

Reliable Observation
Hypothesis
Prediction
Experimentation
Conclusion

What is missing from evolution science?

Reliable Observation - missing
Hypothesis
Prediction - missing - evo cannot predict
Experimentation - trying, but no results
Conclusion - not missing Evo is fact don’t ya know.

 

[Aloysium]

In other words, I don’t believe it.

Interestingly, the suggestion from this statement is that beliefs are an act of will.

Beliefs are all grounded in some knowledge, some sort of revelation or realization. The understanding that develops however, derived from those bits of truth can be quite different from the reality that lies in the darkness of our ignorance, and which our mind tries to illuminate. In everything, our beliefs determine what we see. From the very beginning, when they are hard-wired in our nervous system, they determine the data that can be observed and it’s interpretation. Where there is no contradiction, it justifies the belief. That is how empiricism works, trying to keep an open mind, seeking to understand that aspect of existence which is in its purview. But then, we can also ignore that which would contradict the belief. Rather than putting things on a back burner to mull over when they don’t make sense, we are so protective of those connections to reality, to the truth, that we can doggedly adhere to misunderstandings. This in spite of the fact that in working them through, we can grasp the larger context and higher truth.

 

[Aloysium]

What attributes would you require a fossil to have in order for you to accept it as “transitional?”

There are too few fossils. The existence of transitional creatures can be sought in the world around us.

Some people have a materialistic understanding of who they are and what constitutes living beings.

There is no part of a human brain that is not also present in a chimpanzee brain.

According to this view, some ancestor of a chimpanzee would be imagined to be a transitional organism between a more primitive simian and we ourselves.

Contemplating who we are and what is the essence of our nature, we know ourselves to be an expression of humanity. Although we share, as we have always known, similar anatomic, physiological, perceptual and emotional charactristics to animals, we are that and more. As persons, we all have an eternal nature and a free will. Regardless of our physical capacities and the variation in the gifts have been bestowed upon us, we are human to the core of our existence. There are no transitional entities in this mix.

 

[rossum]

What is missing from evolution science?

Very little.

Reliable Observation - missing

Observed, repeatedly. How many antibiotics, insecticides and herbicides are no longer as effective as they once were thanks to evolution? Yes, that is micro-evolution, but it is reliably and repeatedly observed. We do not have an many observations of speciation,aka macro-evolution, but we do have some which have been posted on these threads.

Prediction - missing - evo cannot predict

False. Evolution predicts that bacteria will evolve immunity to antibiotics, insects will evolve immunity to insecticides. On the large scale it predicts that every species, except the very first, is descended from earlier species.

Experimentation - trying, but no results

False. The Lederberg experiment produces the same results reliably whenever it is performed.

Conclusion - not missing Evo is fact don’t ya know.

Conclusion: buffalo is relying on some appallingly bad sources of information which are grossly misleading him.

Hint: evolution is both a fact and a theory. The fact exists; the theory explains the fact.

rossum

 

[FredBloggs]

buffalo:

What is missing from evolution?

Steps of the Scientific Method

Reliable Observation
Hypothesis
Prediction
Experimentation
Conclusion

What is missing from evolution science?

Reliable Observation - missing
Hypothesis
Prediction - missing - evo cannot predict
Experimentation - trying, but no results
Conclusion - not missing Evo is fact don’t ya know.

Ooh, that’s fascinatingly ignorant. You believe that evolution has no predictive powers? There is a rich history of predictions made by evolutionary theory that - surprise! - have been confirmed.

No results from experiments? Please reference where you got that “information” from.

Why do you think the observation isn’t reliable? Is it because “we weren’t there?”

 

[Bradskii]

buffalo:

What is missing from evolution?

Steps of the Scientific Method

Reliable Observation
Hypothesis
Prediction
Experimentation
Conclusion

What is missing from evolution science?

Reliable Observation - missing
Hypothesis
Prediction - missing - evo cannot predict
Experimentation - trying, but no results
Conclusion - not missing Evo is fact don’t ya know.

Well it’s not like no-one had had a quick browse to find examples of every single step mentioned waiting for you to respond to your own question.

Observation: Well, that’s a shot through the ol’ metatarsuls already. Every single fact, every single example, every single fossil, every single facet of the galactically large body of evidence that has been used to generate the theory of evolution has been obtained by (wait for it)…observation. Saying that there has been no observation is saying that we have no information about the matter whatsoever.

Hypothesis: Well there obviously have been hypotheses otherwise we wouldn’t have a theory.

Prediction: Too many examples to list really. Here’s a selection of 142 papers (count 'em! 142!) all dealing with prediction regarding evolution (you must have know these were available - all you had to do was Google ‘evolution prediction’. Make some effort, for heaven’s sake). Predicting evolution | Nature Ecology & Evolution

Experimentation: Here’s a book you can browse that has 22 chapters which discusses nothing BUT experiments in evolution. I guess you must think they made it all up.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1ppqbc

Conclusion: Well the only conclusion I can postulate is that you enjoy shooting yourself in the foot.

By the way, I gave your post a tick of approval. You should be encouraged to post more of this stuff. It’s entertaining.

 

[buffalo]

Ooh, that’s fascinatingly ignorant. You believe that evolution has no predictive powers? There is a rich history of predictions made by evolutionary theory that - surprise! - have been confirmed.

No results from experiments? Please reference where you got that “information” from.

Why do you think the observation isn’t reliable? Is it because “we weren’t there?”

First, one cannot observe long ago past events. So yes, we were not there.

Wait a minute - evolution is predictable? It follows some law or route? (you could list a few and we can discuss)

Over and over I have asked for them. rossum produced two, if I recollect. Neither is a rock solid confirmation of macro-evolution.

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution​

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

It is textbook biology, for example, that species with large, far-flung populations—think ants, rats, humans—will become more genetically diverse over time.

But is that true?

“The answer is no,” said Stoeckle, lead author of the study, published in the journal Human Evolution .

For the planet’s 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity “is about the same,” he told AFP.
The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

“This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could,” Thaler told AFP.

“another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between."

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

The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said."

Read more at: Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

 

[Techno2000]

There is a rich history of predictions made by evolutionary theory that - surprise! - have been confirmed.

Name some organisms today that can be clearly seen to be transitioning and morphing into a completely new species.

 

[Aloysium]

The message clearly hasn’t gotten through. I don’t think anyone here is disputing the science in terms of its methods and the basic facts that it has revealed, with more to come every day.

The problems arise in the overall story that is evolution, of which the concept of species plays an important role. Species is a human intellectual construct, whose reality, if any, is of a gene pool belonging to different collections of members which can breed to produce offspring.

The argument against evolution begins with the idea that what exists are kinds of living beings, each of which would include different, and even a multitude of separate species. I would describe these as being organizational principles or souls that bring together atoms and molecules in order to express their reality as psychophysiological forms of existence.

As to the emergence of variations in different kinds of life, we can use bacteria as an example.

A population may develop a resistance to antibiotics through different processes, the main one being the transmission of a trait, lost i previous generations by many, that appears to have been present from their beginnings as a way to coexist in harmony with molds. This is not evolution, but rather the manifestation of pre-determined possibilities and also the destructive consequences of random mutation.

Considering that a genetic code is simply that, a code - information in action, we can understand that despite our imagining that it could be otherwise, mutations have an negative impact on the code, as would the insertion and changing of letters in this post.

Bacteria in the end, regardless of the variety of forms they may take, remain bacteria. It is in the imagination only, in science fiction and in the modern secular mythos that prokaryotes led to the emergence of mankind. I doubt that random changes in those simplest of life forms even led to eukaryotes.

 

[Bradskii]

Wait a minute - evolution is predictable?

Your job, should you wish to accept it, is to somehow deny that predictions regarding evolution were made in all those papers to which I linked (count 'em! 132!).

You don’t even have to prove that the predictions were wrong.

 

[Bradskii]

And in passing, you commented that ‘evolution couldn’t predict’. That is: ‘the ToE does not allow predictions to be made’ - which it obviously can. See those 132 papers (count 'em! 132!).

Not ‘evolution is not predictable’. As in 'we have no idea of the changes likely in any organism in the future (with some obvious short term exception - but my guess is that you are thinking millions of years) - which is obviously correct. Well done.

Although I’m not sure you’d appreciate the huge difference there.

 

[Bradskii]

I don’t think anyone here is disputing the science in terms of its methods…

What, nobody is disputing the scientific methods of observation, hypothesis, prediction, experimentation and conclusion? Hmm. Let me check…

Nope. You’re wrong. I guess that you can’t be reading what everyone else is posting.

 

[buffalo]

And in passing, you commented that ‘evolution couldn’t predict’. That is: ‘the ToE does not allow predictions to be made’ - which it obviously can. See those 132 papers (count 'em! 132!).

Not ‘evolution is not predictable’. As in 'we have no idea of the changes likely in any organism in the future (with some obvious short term exception - but my guess is that you are thinking millions of years) - which is obviously correct. Well done.

Although I’m not sure you’d appreciate the huge difference there.

What is the top prediction?

 

[rossum]

Step 1: read those 132 papers.

Step 2: decide for yourself which is the top prediction. You don’t want other people doing your thinking for you, do you?

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Step 1: read those 132 papers.

Step 2: decide for yourself which is the top prediction. You don’t want other people doing your thinking for you, do you?

Another strike. I figured you guys would have your best case loaded and ready to go.