Can you prove evolution wrong? -- Part 2

a reply to: seasonal

Double down ftw!

a reply to: Akragon

instead of attempting to " prove evolution wrong "

proponents of alternate claims should try demonstrating why thier claim is correct

Fun fact.

Did you know the vast majority of people who believe in evolution are theists.

Did you know the vast majority of people who are scientists are theists.

Coomba98

I'm not going to prove evolution wrong. Evolution means 'change over time' which is what we observe. I will however call into question our understanding of evolution by Darwinism, ie 'change through natural selection by genetic mutation in descendants.'

I am a biologist. I have been trained in genetics and learned about Darwinism as if it were fact.

I am also a Christian. I believe there is a benevolent God who created the universe and set the laws of biology in motion.

To consolidate those two disciplines together I do believe there is an evolutionary process, but I also believe that the true process is incredibly elegant and Darwin's theory is clunky, muddled, and full of holes.

As one example, allow me to present the conundrum of the wolf (Canis lupus) versus the domesticated dog (Canis lupus familiaris) and the idea of changes over time. One of the problems of talking about evolution is that we are dealing with millions and billions of years - the human brain is simply not designed to fathom numbers that big, but we are comfortable with thousands. So I will break the numbers down into digestible bites.

Known statements:

1) The domesticated dog split from wolves between 25,000 and 40,000 years ago. (I will stick with 25K for more effect in this argument.)

2) Domestic dogs and Wolves have undergone different environmental pressures in the last 25,000 years for breeding and selection.

3) Domestic dogs and wolves are still able to breed and produce sexually viable offspring.

Therefore, it can be argued that 25,000 years is not long enough to create an independent species. Going forward I will call this an Edge-of-Speciation Time (EST) to show that while there may be an excessive amount of variation within the species it has not been long enough to create a new organism... but I will play devil's advocate and say that tomorrow we actually do breed a new genetic species of domesticated dog with enough differentiation to create the split or at least create sterile offspring. This will apply to most mammals, there has been no discoveries that even rodents with their short lifespans and multiple generations per year have diversified into new species in 25,000 years.

Known statements:

1) The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event occured ~66 million years ago.

2) Proto-mammals were present at the time of extintion and began to fill in the ecological niches.
a) Placental mammal fossils have not been discovered prior to the extinction. (There were monotremes present at
the time.)
b) The earliest primate was determined to be 55 million years ago
c) Bats/Chiroptera appeared 50 million years ago
d) The earliest canines have been determined to appear 43 million years ago.

3) 66,000,000 divided by 25,000 is 2,640.

Therefore, there have been 2,640 EST's since dinosaurs went away and mammals began to diversify into what we see today. I have a serious problem with the idea you could have a species of egg-laying monotreme diversify into any of the mammals today with only 2,640 modifications. This gets even worse if you say that dog domestication began 40,000 years ago. That would mean there have only been 1,650 EST's since the dinosaurs went extinct.

So while I am not disputing the process of evolution, I am stating that our current understanding of the process is woefully incomplete and that Darwinism is not the answer to all those questions. There are other mechanisms at work that we have not worked out yet. So I have no problem saying Darwinism is wrong... not because we have not evolved, but because our idea of how we evolved is missing a lot of variables.

Common Ancestor

Human ———— Ape





Why did one common ancestor spawn homosapiens, while another spawned apes?
How did this become the norm as opposed to random accident?
Why did this common ancestor not infanticide their clearly deformed offsprings?
Why are we so unlucky to live in such an era as to never have witnessed this speciation take place?
What was so different about the environment/surroundings on Gaia during the time that caused this common ancestor to spawn multiple species?
Why are you asking us to prove something false that isn’t proven true as of yet?
Why do they call it evolution when the common ancestor never actually “evolved” themselves, instead just giving birth to a new species?
How comes different species can be spawned from a single common ancestor, but have no way of reproducing between themselves?

Truly some of these questions may come from my own ignorance on the hypothesis presented.
Nevertheless I’d still appreciate the answers, if you have them.

a reply to: Teikiatsu

Early biologists knew that there were similarities between completely different species. The rare study of taxonomy was a classification system that would allow scientists to arrange groups of species of all kinds of living things into large groups, and then into smaller sub groups. And you also have genetic drift being used to create certain plants that cannot pollinate with what ever plant you started with 120 generations before or something.
They knew it was there, but did not know how to put it into a scientific written theory and thesis, until Darwin.

His books and papers that were published just set forth what modern evolution is today, the main driving force was natural selection, but since then dozens more driving forces behind evolution have been added.
Evolution does mean change over time (literally) but what you are looking for is something called speciation, it's what every evolution denier is looking for, and it has been observed, MANY, MANY times, and the fossil record HAS intermediate species between what exists today and what one of their ancestors looked like.

a reply to: wildespace

Why does a blue lego house have a few red blocks? Cuz they were laying around when it was put together.

Every time a theory is disproven, they reinterpret the theory. Its easy to disprove Darwins concept.

Go get a tan. It doesn't take millions of years. Female turns to male in womb in months. Doesnt take millions of years. If things will change, they will change. White tree butterflies vanishing when the white trees they hide in get cut down, does NOT equal evolution. The green tree butterflies did not evolve. The information was already there. And everything is a subtraction from it.

When you can prove the information was already their, evolution is disproven. And it happens every time someone does science. They find the information already existed.

Ever been to a car graveyard?

You'll notice that the cars seem to be "evolving" over time.

Looking at the "bones" of the automobiles that you can dig up there, the cars seem to be getting smoother rounder edges, which obviously is an adaptation to the environmental air resistance the car experiences while moving about in the wind. So, the cars are evolving to use less energy and be more efficient in locomotion.

So, we have "objective" proof that cars are "evolving".

This tells us nothing, however, about how that "design" of the car is being made to "evolve".

Scientists looking a fossils have the same "objective" evidence that proves living things "evolve" too, but there's nothing in science that can tell us the true cause of the changes seen in the fossil record.

We are now tampering with life, creating our own types of bacteria and viruses. Some of these new organisms will become trapped in the ice, and frozen over time, and a million years from now the scientists will look and see the things we put there, and have the same trouble deciding how those strange bacteria came to be. Did they "evolve" from previous versions of bacteria that are similar to them, or did some "hand of a creator" introduce these alternate designs into the records?

See?

God is "tweeking" his designs all the time. We call that "evolution".

But, the "Word" is "in the flesh", and this "Word", wrapped up in a language we call "DNA", is doing all the "creative" activity.

originally posted by: ARM1968

Where are all the intermediate stage things? The not quite elephants, the not quite lions etc. Where are the things becoming other things? Why have crocs pretty much remained as they are for so long?

I actually believe in evolution. I just don’t think we understand it.

Plenty of those, you just need to "dig deep enough" as it were.

For example, take a look at the evolution of whales from four-legged land mammals into the fully-aquatic versions we know today:


www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: Dr UAE

originally posted by: wildespace
I have two questions for Creationists:

#1 Why do whales have remnants of hind limbs in their body?

#2 Why did God create Adam with nipples?

and you would love to believe that life is a coincident, no one can prove it, not even your dead Darwin, try harder, try creating something from nothing and come back to me and the others, its impossible.

Appearance of life is not "something from nothing", it's just one of the ways stuff in the universe can arrange itself into.

Please have a look at this excellent documentary titled "The Secret Life of Chaos" - www.dailymotion.com... It describes how some very simple components, that follow some very simple rules of nature, can create complex patterns and, potentially, life.

originally posted by: odzeandennz
can evolutionists tell me where or how consciousness evolved, or why only one species seemed to have developed this. why aren't there more like us, why don't we have a natural predator, why don't we have a mating season for reproduction like every species known to man.

Who's to say apes aren't conscious? Or dolphins? Or even octopuses? Gorillas and chimps are very much like us, they just haven't develloped speech. Many animals have been observed to use tools, or make complex, pre-planned decisions to achieve their goals.

originally posted by: SR1TX
Lol, Evolution is not real.

Darwin made that S*** up to justify his being on the expedition and wanted a name for himself.

People really need to learn history.

LMAO! Yeah, totally bro. You people really need to learn history. Forget science, just read the bible. Sorry but the theory of evolution has been confirmed and it's still going strong after 100+ years. Hilarious how you tell people to learn history, when you need to learn science.

I guess religious propaganda = history now. Too funny.

originally posted by: coomba98
Fun fact.

Did you know the vast majority of people who believe in evolution are theists.

Did you know the vast majority of people who are scientists are theists.

Coomba98

I wouldn't say vast majority. Just over 50% of scientists believe in god or a higher power. Theists are very under represented in the scientific community and the numbers get lower when you go to just Biologists and top scientists.

originally posted by: SR1TX

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg

originally posted by: SR1TX
Lol, Evolution is not real.

Darwin made that S*** up to justify his being on the expedition and wanted a name for himself.

People really need to learn history.

....Is this some kind of a joke, or a parody perhaps? You can't really believe that.

Show me some proof it's real.

Until then, Darwin was a lunatic, likely suffering from some sort of degenerative brain disorder at the time.

Proof doesn't work that way. If you are calling Darwin a liar YOU need to prove that he is lying.

originally posted by: odzeandennz
can evolutionists tell me where or how consciousness evolved, or why only one species seemed to have developed this. why aren't there more like us, why don't we have a natural predator, why don't we have a mating season for reproduction like every species known to man.

Who says there aren't more species that are conscious? I watch my dog sleep all the time. I'd wager that my dog is conscious when he isn't sleeping. How about defining conscious for however you mean?

a reply to: AMPTAH

This is a dumb argument because we know where cars came from. We built them. We know their functionality and why they were built. We know how they were built.

A car is not comparable to a living organism in any way, shape, or form.

a reply to: Teikiatsu

Therefore, it can be argued that 25,000 years is not long enough to create an independent species.

This is a false conclusion and as a scientist you should know better than that.

That 25,000 years (or up to 40,000) has not produced a speciation split between wolves and domestic dogs, may or may not be true, but so what? There is no guarantees in evolution; there is no "direction". There may well be new species of canines that are wolves that you haven't considered. Maybe there are domestic breeds that cannot breed with wolves - have you studied all of them? Speciation doesn't include 'just' animals that CAN NO LONGER breed with each other, it includes animals that WILL NOT breed with each other. It is unlikely that a Chihuahua will be ravishing a Gray Wolf anytime soon whether or not you might want to artificially inseminate the wolf from the dog.

Domestic dogs haven't "evolved" from wolves, they have been "bred" from wolves. Natural selection is not in play in the case of domestic dogs; their "change over time" is not managed by natural selection, but by human intervention. Mutations in domestic dogs that don't please the breeder are snuffed out and not given a chance to spread through the population of domestic dogs - and how would such a mutation(sufficient to cause a wolf/dog 'speciation event') in a population of, say, Chihuahuas, spread - through natural selection, mind you - to populations of St. Bernards or Greyhounds?

Your argument falls over immediately because you, as a trained biologist, cannot tell the difference between 'natural selection' and 'breeding' and that is a dangerous position to be in because there are still people in the world who support eugenics and you don't want to be stuck in that quagmire without adequate tools to deal with it.

a reply to: Teikiatsu

Therefore, there have been 2,640 EST's since dinosaurs went away and mammals began to diversify into what we see today.

Your concept of an 'EST' has no place in biology. The years that wolves and dogs have been apart is irrelevant, for the reason stated above - dogs are not subject to natural selection, wolves haven't needed to change that much in order to continue living on the periphery of humans, and you simply don't know how many wolf species have evolved in the time frame you have invented.

The time scale you want is generations. There can be hundreds of mutations between each individual and it parents. A species that has multiple births in one generation can have thousands of chances at useful mutations (and bad mutations, and neutral mutations). It is random and as a Biologist you should understand that there is no guarantee that a useful mutation will arise at the right time (or ahead of time). Mutation 'rates' differ across species, across genders (human male sperm has a higher mutation rate than female eggs, for example), and in different regions of the DNA structure. On average, the human rate is about 64 mutations per generation (depending on exactly how it is measured).

There are about 130 million human babies born each year. So that is about 8.32 BILLION chances PER YEAR for a speciation level mutation in the human population alone. And that is one heck of a lot more than your 2,640 EST number.

Of course, for that speciation event to actually happen, it has to actually be present in one part of the population and give that population a survival advantage over another, isolated, population that does not have the mutation. Since there are no isolated populations on Earth for the last 100,000 years or so we just aren't going to see such an event until we start colonizing off planet.

OK, so wolves have some enormous number of chances at speciation too, a heck of a lot more PER YEAR than your 2640 'EST's since the dino's. Where are all the wolf species then? Who knows? Mutations are random, natural selection filters the good from the bad. Not every mutation is species defining mutation. If the wolf populations don't 'need' the advantage offered by a potentially species defining mutation then the mutation sits in the gene pool doing nothing or gets changed into something new down the track.

And anyway, as a Biologist, you should know that Biologists don't really talk about speciation as being "can't breed" anymore since they have bred ligers and other such chimera's. There are just too many exceptions to the rule.

How can experts tell one master piece painting from the other and who painted each? The touch of the masters hand is the same.
We both have nipples to promote the knowledge we are flesh of one flesh, bone of one bone. We have the same parts, they are just changed to function together to make a man and a woman a complete whole. Thus one in flesh, the true meaning from which the words "help meet" (Referring to woman) was improperly translated in the Bible. Two halves to make a whole.


a reply to: wildespace