What questions do you have about evolution?

I could list tons of "arguments for a #ty designer", I feel I gave enough to make my point about pally's design arguments being stupid. OH one more.

reply to post by nophun


Yeah me to. That's why I addressed someone else.
Ease up k?

I often snicker at comments from evolutionists where they throw around the “designed” word and they carefully add the inverted commas to make sure people don’t misunderstand them.

My main problem with evolution is this:

I see comments like “It didn't evolve that way with Johnze in mind, though; it had its own selfish reasons. It wanted to taste good to birds and arboreal mammals.” Am I the only one who notices that this process (evolution) sounds like it has intelligence? Don’t you need intelligence to make a decision? Decide to taste sweet because it will benefit it in the long run? It takes an INTELLIGENT decision to evolve into something beneficial, no? I want to stress this simplistically: something can “evolve” into 2 things; one good (for survival, etc), one bad. Surely intelligence is required to DECIDE which way it will go?

Evidently evolutionary changes do not benefit the organism right away. It takes millions of years for something like wings or eyes to evolve but in those millions of years it conveniently performs some other function. It’s easy to say wings were front paws which eventually evolved into wings for those animals to fly away from predators, but in the few million years it takes for the wing to form what benefit does it have for the animal? There are 1000s of species without wings which have been preyed on for millions of years. Why didn’t they develop wings for survival? Why did eagles which are not preyed on by anything else develop wings? Sounds circular to me, no?

Briefly: I’m a sort-of agnostic leaning towards I.D. but I’m anti-evolution and anti-religion.

My main problem with evolution is this: I see comments like “It didn't evolve that way with Johnze in mind, though; it had its own selfish reasons. It wanted to taste good to birds and arboreal mammals.” Am I the only one who notices that this process (evolution) sounds like it has intelligence? Don’t you need intelligence to make a decision? Decide to taste sweet because it will benefit it in the long run? It takes an INTELLIGENT decision to evolve into something beneficial, no? I want to stress this simplistically: something can “evolve” into 2 things; one good (for survival, etc), one bad. Surely intelligence is required to DECIDE which way it will go?

Evidently evolutionary changes do not benefit the organism right away. It takes millions of years for something like wings or eyes to evolve but in those millions of years it conveniently performs some other function. It’s easy to say wings were front paws which eventually evolved into wings for those animals to fly away from predators, but in the few million years it takes for the wing to form what benefit does it have for the animal? There are 1000s of species without wings which have been preyed on for millions of years. Why didn’t they develop wings for survival? Why did eagles which are not preyed on by anything else develop wings? Sounds circular to me, no? Briefly: I’m a sort-of agnostic leaning towards I.D. but I’m anti-evolution and anti-religion.

I do not agree with hypothesis presented that oranges evolved to taste sweet. It is our brain that decides what is "sweet" and what is "not" as dictated by the brains neurotransmitters. As we needed oranges for sustenance, we acquired a taste for it. If you happen to be a food connoisseur and try out a different cuisine you will notice that at times you may initially not like the taste of a particular fare but eventually you grow to like it....as we have been eating oranges for ages our brains have evolved to like it.

People are known to have developed a taste for human flesh, snakes, cockroaches and what not....While it is not considered kosher they certainly do provide sustenance.

I have a completely different hypothesis for the evolution of the orange and I will present it if required.

In other words we need foods for sustenance and whether it tastes sweet, sour or salty is a subjective notion depending on how your brains interprets substances....it is a sort of reward function or stimulus to obtain sustenance. If Gene therapy takes off they could change our taste buds completely.

You cite intelligence but you don't seem to understand evolution. However if you open your mind and look around you will find a lot of things in nature that have no relevant purpose and aren't exactly beneficial.Or bodies for that matter also contain organs that serve no purpose and are actually harmful...the appendix for example or a more extreme example would be cancerous cells.I don't believe you truly understand evolution.Things do mutate in a detrimental manner and as expected this things die out as they do not stand the test of time.

When you touch a hot substance, does your hand not inadvertently pull away?....this is not intelligence but rather a response to stimuli(There is no conscious deliberate intelligent thought involved in this action.) It is the same with evolution. You cannot decide that you want to have awesome lighting powers or want to fly or have a penis like a horse and your future generations will subsequently evolve to accommodate your desires...NO,evolution is just like stimuli, it is an adaptation to change and this may or may not happen...depending on how your genes favor such an adaptation.

It is true that evolution takes a long span of time as it is not an intelligent process but a response to change as I have stated and that is why you have so many countless species going extinct. This is because they were unable to adapt or because the process took far too long.Evolution is a harsh battleground for survival.

I also don't know why you consider man as being an intelligent creation.Man is quite imperfect and I fail to see why god would place such a wuss at the zenith of his creation.


I snicker at "creationists" and their absolute inability to post a coherent and scientifically tenable argument.The Creationism argument is akin to that of witchcraft and sorcery in the middle ages.Just because something seems fantastic to some people they make up contrived statements that fail to stand up to objective scrutiny.









[edit on 15-7-2010 by Leonardo01]

Originally posted by randyvs
reply to post by avingard

 

Ok could you look hitherto then? I've had others look at this, might as well see what you have to say.
I'm sure you can tell me, if all the facts are there and in order. Please I know what you'll want to say. I'm interested to see if you think this is totally
bogus, has a few mistakes or just something you disagree with. Maybe this is something you havn't heard before? Just look with an open mindK?
If their are mistakes, it's outdated? W/e.
[edit on 14-7-2010 by randyvs]

It's a cool article. I'm a computer scientist with particular interests in encryption and the design of programming languages (love me some Noam Chomsky), so the whole DNA as language thing is quite intriguing to me.

The paper gives an example of computer code being a language, and relates that to DNA as one of its many arguments. I like this comparison, because it best illustrates why I believe DNA is not a language.

Most computers represent alphanumerical characters with ascii, which is just a mapping of numerical values (that the computer can represent) to alphanumeric characters. For example, 0x41 is 'A'.

In other words, ascii is a representation of an alphabet out of which many latin-based languages have been built. DNA is much the same. It is possible to map specific genes to specific outputs, i.e. if input equals gene A, output equals blue eyes.

Based on that, I could comfortably say that DNA could be used as an alphabet; however, an alphabet doesn't have inherent meaning. Just because you have a set of symbols doesn't mean that when put together they encode information.

The article as a whole is interesting, but doesn't back up its claims. It says DNA can be represented by a grammar, but I'm pretty sure it means grammar in the middle-school english class sense, which isn't so informative. If DNA could be represented by a grammar from the grammar hierarchy, I would be pretty convinced that it was a language. There's also the problem of encoding versus meaning, which the site mentions. I would question what the meaning is?

reply to post by avingard


Even though you have come down on the neg side. That is from my point of view of course. I have to say thank you indeed for your answer
to my question. I believe this to be an honest and detailed enough response in accordance to the way I asked the question. Thank you

I won't give up on this, though I applaued your answer. stars and a flag for the op



[edit on 15-7-2010 by randyvs]

reply to post by Leonardo01

I see comments like “It didn't evolve that way with Johnze in mind, though; it had its own selfish reasons. It wanted to taste good to birds and arboreal mammals.” Am I the only one who notices that this process (evolution) sounds like it has intelligence?

No, the author of the post--that would be me--noticed it too, and in fact deliberately used those words in order to play up the teleological appearance of evolutionary processes. He did this for fun, and also pour épater la bourgeoisie. However, the author no more regards evolution as telic than he regards flying fish as birds. He is a writer by trade and enjoys the use of metaphors.

Don’t you need intelligence to make a decision?

You do not. Consider certain tiny jellyfish, creatures entirely lacking in brains, which make the decision whether to swim upward or downward based on the probable availability of food above or below them. This is an intelligent decision arrived at without intelligence. Actually, any reflexive action in nature belies your statement. So do artificial control systems -- primitive ones like toilet cisterns and thermostats.

'Decide to taste sweet because it will benefit it in the long run?'

Have you misunderstood the argument? The tree evolves sweet fruit that attract hungry animals, not for the benefit of the animals, but for the benefit of the tree. This is how the tree reproduces itself. The animal, meanwhile, evolves to find sweet fruit tasty because they are nourishing. It's a synergetic process--though, as I pointed out earlier, the plants probably started the cycle off.

It takes an INTELLIGENT decision to evolve into something beneficial, no?

It doesn't. All it takes is selective breeding, with the environment acting as the selector. No intelligence required.

Plants with edible fruit are no longer at the mercy of accident to reproduce themselves. In certain environments (like rainforests) this is a huge advantage; in others, like flat treeless plains, not so much. By inserting its seeds into an animal, a thing that moves about, the plant distributes them far enough away from itself that it doesn't have to compete for resources with its own daughter trees--yet at the same time, the chances are good that the seed will fall in a place favourable to its growth, since animals tend to stick to the same ecological setting most of the time.

I want to stress this simplistically: something can “evolve” into 2 things; one good (for survival, etc), one bad. Surely intelligence is required to DECIDE which way it will go?

As the above shows, simplistic analyses and explanations rarely work. The world is a very complicated place.

Evidently evolutionary changes do not benefit the organism right away. It takes millions of years for something like wings or eyes to evolve but in those millions of years it conveniently performs some other function. It’s easy to say wings were front paws which eventually evolved into wings for those animals to fly away from predators, but in the few million years it takes for the wing to form what benefit does it have for the animal?

'Of what use is half an eye?' The old creationist challenge. The biologist's answer is: better than no eye at all. The same, oddly enough, is true for wings, or just about any physical characteristic you can think of.

There are 1000s of species without wings which have been preyed on for millions of years. Why didn’t they develop wings for survival?

Because the Great Mutation Lottery didn't confer wings on them. Don't forget that natural selection acts on already existing mutations, and mutation is a random process (unlike natural selection). They just never got a 'wing gene'.

Why did eagles which are not preyed on by anything else develop wings?

Because predators, too, are in competition for survival. Anything that helps in finding and securing food is a competitive advantage. And of course, they got a wing gene.

*

reply to post by Leonardo01

I do not agree with hypothesis presented that oranges evolved to taste sweet.

In that case, how did they become sweet? Did it just happen by accident? Random mutation? Genetic drift? What about apples? Watermelons? Lichees? Durian? Guavas? All accidents?

What say you to the scientific papers I posted, which say the same as I? Did you look at them? Do you not know that I am merely expounding a standard, very uncontroversial trope in evolutionary biology?

Is it not our brain that decides whether the orange is sweet or not?....Taste is a deception used to reward a certain form of sustenance.The orange was never sweet in the first place.Also I did not expect you to expound upon the "masochistic" nature of the orange tree for it was a comment made merely in jest.

Your allegory on the evolution of the orange was quite fascinating.However I feel the use of metaphors and simile would be a crime against simple minded folk like these as such concepts would be alien to them.

However I will check out these papers that you cite from.












[edit on 16-7-2010 by Leonardo01]

Originally posted by Lannock
My main problem with evolution is this:

I see comments like “It didn't evolve that way with Johnze in mind, though; it had its own selfish reasons. It wanted to taste good to birds and arboreal mammals.” Am I the only one who notices that this process (evolution) sounds like it has intelligence? Don’t you need intelligence to make a decision?

You are quite right in this, and if people put it like that, they either don't 'get' evolution, or they describe it wrong. Evolution should be considered random changes, and *if* it results in increased production of offspring, then it should be considered an advantage.

Intelligence as such, has nothing directly to do with evolution.

Evidently evolutionary changes do not benefit the organism right away.

Not true. You can certainly have a mutation that makes a protein more efficient in its catalytic activity, greatly enhancing cellular function.

The problem with non-believers of evolution is that either can't grasp the changes on a molecular level, or that they can't grasp the enormous timespans we are looking at.

It takes millions of years for something like wings or eyes to evolve but in those millions of years it conveniently performs some other function.

It doesn't have to. A feature can lie 'dormant' so to say, and don't have a particular function. As long as it doesn't entail a negative benefit for the organism, the feature can stay. Just look at our reminiscent tail, its there for no reason (At least as far as we know), and could still turn into something usefull (Sprinters needing it for balance? ).

It’s easy to say wings were front paws which eventually evolved into wings for those animals to fly away from predators, but in the few million years it takes for the wing to form what benefit does it have for the animal?

Wings are believed to have helped the creatures to run; Just like you move your arms back and forth when you run, they did the same and got extra speed by having 'mobile sails' so to speak.

Why didn’t they develop wings for survival?

Some did, and some didn't. You have to recall that all species share common ancestors. One species A, might have evolved into species B with wings - But since there was still niche room for species A, both species live on, and over time develop into seperate species.

Why did eagles which are not preyed on by anything else develop wings? Sounds circular to me, no?

Not at all. There are *many* ways a feature can be advantagous to an organism, apart from 'how to escape'. They can use their wings to catch prey from above, which they obviously do. And just because they have no natural enemies now (Except for humans), doesn't mean they didn't have it when wings evolved. Again, the timespan.

[edit on 16/7/10 by Thain Esh Kelch]

reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch

You are quite right in this, and if people put it like that, they either don't 'get' evolution, or they describe it wrong.

Apollo's eyeballs! Do you have a commission in the Evolutionary Expositionary Police or something? I have read any number of accounts of evolutionary processes, including some in scientific papers, that use this convenient metaphorical shorthand. I admit to using it above for poetic effect, but anyone taking the trouble to read my post to the end must surely see that I claim neither desire nor volition for orange trees. I mean, really... :shk:

Evolution should be considered random changes, and *if* it results in increased production of offspring, then it should be considered an advantage.

Evolution is accretive and cumulative, building on what is already there, directed by the principle of natural selection. The random process is mutation.

You can certainly have a mutation that makes a protein more efficient in its catalytic activity, greatly enhancing cellular function.

True, but it still takes time for such a beneficial mutation to spread through a population. Evolution takes time.

A feature can lie 'dormant' so to say, and don't have a particular function. As long as it doesn't entail a negative benefit for the organism, the feature can stay. Just look at our reminiscent tail, its there for no reason (At least as far as we know), and could still turn into something usefull (Sprinters needing it for balance?

).

Or maybe a fitness advertisement like a peacock's. Correct--but the real problem here is that people are thinking in terms of evolving traits or species. Things become clearer if one looks at natural selection as occurring at the level of genes.

Originally posted by Phlynx
What questions do you have about evolution?

what is it evolution evolved from? sorta a rhetorical question i ask myself now and again.


secondly, and i'm curious as to some people opinions on this:

What is it you think evolution evolves into? or maybe evolution is part of the same puzzle as other disciplines, perhaps?

the evolution of the homonid ATSers (homo-keypadist).

The first thing I would like to point out is that if indeed there is a Creator, that fact does in no way deny evolution of any kind whatsoever! It is completely plausible that man, or anything else, was intentionally created with the ability to evolve. It is not rational to view these concepts as one or the other only.

Originally posted by Leonardo01

Given the right conditions such as the "primordial soup"...life can very well be created from inanimate objects where amino acids I.E the basic building blocks for life come into existence...also termed as Abiogenesis this is when the first forms of life came into existence in the oceans.....

The link below explains how life originated from inanimate matter.
en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 13-7-2010 by Leonardo01]

Statements like this one are how we are taught to argue these things. If not for the utter shame that this is taken seriously and as factual info by many people, this would be hysterical! According to Leonard here, you need not explain who, what, or how created the oceans, or the "primordial soup", that's the very basis of his science, to prove his theory, but only things that can be shown to come after it? Somewhere in his rational mind he knows damn well he cannot explain his way back to the beginning of it all, so he ignores it.

To put it in other words think of it as a cake. Leonard is saying he can prove to you, with science, exactly how a cake has materialized in your kitchen all by itself. He will explain that, given enough time, your mixing bowl will eventually move about your kitchen and make contact with the eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla and everything else contained in your cake. That through many millions of years the cakes ingredients will mix in your bowl, pass through your oven, cover itself in frosting and finally come to rest on your counter in glorious perfection.

Now, if you should demand further details of the making of the cake, that would be fine with Leonard. His science would elaborate every detail of the process. He can show every ingredient and its measured quantity with science. Science can show the order they get mixed in, temperature of the oven and bake time to the second. True or not, science can explain every detail imaginable, except one. As simple as it may be, science cannot begin to account for the original contents needed for the cake to exist at all? Without these things everything else that follows is moot! No leg to stand on! Irrelevant! Gibberish! Total B.S.!

Science has these unexplainable, yet crucial, elements in most, if not all, its theories? Unexplained simply due to its very methods refusal to consider them. Only X can fill in the blanks, but science doesn't recognize X?

As simple as it may be, science cannot begin to account for the original contents needed for the cake to exist at all? Without these things everything else that follows is moot! No leg to stand on! Irrelevant! Gibberish! Total B.S.!

The hoary, crippled old God of the Gaps argument doesn't look any fresher when you give it a makeover and shoehorn it into a slinky new dress.

Actually, all the ingredients needed for the cake are present and accounted for by science. So is the cake.

What we don't actually have is the recipe, but we're working for it.

You have got things exactly backwards.

Originally posted by Zerbst
The first thing I would like to point out is that if indeed there is a Creator, that fact does in no way deny evolution of any kind whatsoever! It is completely plausible that man, or anything else, was intentionally created with the ability to evolve. It is not rational to view these concepts as one or the other only.

A rather fatuous argument that stems from nothing but ignorance.As has been pointed out earlier, science has the ingredients for the cake and the cake as well but is in the process of uncovering the recipe.

The term "perfection" is an arbitrary term and comes from our rather limited perspective of the universe as has been explained in my earlier posts.Human beings are not by any measure perfect.

The concept of a "creator" is a frivolous one at best. Eventually everything comes down to a so called "designer".Very well, ask yourself this then: where did the designer then come from?

Do you suppose that this "designer" appeared out of thin air then like the cake in question?...funny that you should believe in this incredulous idea rather than one that purports more evidence.

The idea of a so called christian god simply does not augur well and I consider it as being practically impossible.

The only constant paradigm of chaos is change and we must either adapt to change or perish.

Further reading: (Abiogenesis is not a mere conjecture)

www.wired.com...

www.wired.com...


You know what the problem is...its "creationists" think sorta like this














[edit on 19-7-2010 by Leonardo01]

reply to post by Danbones

How do non poisonus fox snakes know to imitate poisonus rattle snakes?

At some point an ancestor of today's fox snake gained a mutation that caused it to shake its tail when threatened and passed it on to its descendants. Predator species that had developed a respect for the rattlesnake avoided this line of the fox snake a little more often than its relatives that didn't shake their tails. A small advantage maybe, but enough to allow the line to eventually come to dominate the population.

There are places where there are human and dino prints side by each in the same strata, how does that happen?

No there aren't, and it doesn't happen. You are thinking of the Paluxy River 'Man-Tracks' which have been completely discredited. This site has links to all the info you could want: The Texas Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy

For many years claims were made by strict creationists that human footprints or "giant man tracks" occur alongside dinosaur tracks in the limestone beds of the Paluxy River, near Glen Rose Texas. If true, such a finding would dramatically contradict the conventional geologic timetable, which holds that humans did not appear on earth until over 60 million years after the dinosaurs became extinct. However, the "man track" claims have not stood up to close scientific scrutiny, and have been abandoned even by most creationists. The supposed human tracks have involved a variety of phenomena, including forms of elongate (metatarsal) dinosaur tracks, erosional features, indistinct markings of uncertain origin, and some doctored and carved specimens (most of the latter on loose blocks of rock).

Man is supposed to have decended from a single pair of parents that lived about 270,000 years ago,( by DNA research ), but a couple generations of inbreeding amoungst a few rich families who wanted to creat super humans from their superior DNA degenerated into produing total tards

Your question reveals that you misunderstand the process. A species isn't suddenly "created" by a mutation. A mutation happens and if that mutation affords a reproductive advantage to its possessor, then over time its descendants come to dominate the population. When a population is isolated from its relatives and enough mutations occur to differentiate it sufficiently then speciation occurs.

Man did not descend from a single pair of parents from one generation that 'suddenly' had the characteristics of modern man. "Mitochondrial Eve" lived approximately 200,000 years ago; "Y-Chromosomal Adam" lived between 90,000 and 60,000 years ago. Neither was the only member of their population at the time. They are just the oldest unbroken lines of descent to modern humans according to DNA. Nothing more.

This diagram may help you picture the situation: Matrilineal Ancestor.PNG

From Mitrochondrial Eve:

Not the only woman
One of the misconceptions of mitochondrial Eve is that since all women alive today descended in a direct unbroken female line from her that she was the only woman alive at the time.[9][10] However nuclear DNA studies indicate that the size of the ancient human population never dropped below some tens of thousands;[9] there were many other women around at Eve's time with descendants alive today, but somewhere in all their lines of descent there is at least one man (and men do not pass on their mothers' mitochondrial DNA to their children). By contrast, Eve's lines of descent to each person alive today includes at least one line of descent to each person which is purely matrilineal.
Not alive at the same time as "Adam"
Sometimes mitochondrial Eve is assumed to have lived at the same time as Y-chromosomal Adam, perhaps even meeting and mating with him. Like Eve, "Adam" probably lived in Africa; however, Eve lived much earlier than Adam – perhaps some 50,000 to 80,000 years earlier than Adam – due to the greater variability in male fecundity.
Not the most recent ancestor shared by all humans
Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, not the most recent common ancestor (MRCA). Since the mtDNA is inherited maternally and recombination is either rare or absent, it is relatively easy to track the ancestry of the lineages back to a MRCA; however this MRCA is valid only when discussing mitochondrial DNA. An approximate sequence from youngest to oldest can list various important points in the ancestor of modern human populations:
* The Human MRCA. All humans alive today share a surprisingly recent common ancestor, perhaps even within the last 5000 years, even for people born on different continents.[12]
* The Identical ancestors point. Just a few thousand years before the most recent single ancestor shared by all living humans comes the time at which all humans who were alive either left no descendents or are common ancestors to all humans alive today. In other words, from this point back in time "each present-day human has exactly the same set of genealogical ancestors". This is far more recent than Mitochondrial Eve.[12]
* "Y-Chromosomal Adam", the most recent male-line ancestor of all living men, was much more recent than Mitochondrial Eve, but is also likely to have been long before the Identical ancestors point.

From Y-Chromosomal Adam:

Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the Biblical Adam. This may lead to a misconception that he was the only living male of his times; in fact he co-existed with plenty of men around.[8] However, all his male contemporaries failed to produce a direct unbroken male line to the present day.

From Inbreeding in Humans:

The offspring of consanguineous relationships are at greater risk of certain genetic disorders. These autosomal recessive disorders occur in individuals who are homozygous for a particular recessive gene mutation. This means that they carry two copies (alleles) of the same gene. Except in certain rare circumstances (new mutations or uniparental disomy) both parents of an individual with such a disorder will be carriers of the gene. Such carriers are not affected and will not display any signs that they are carriers, and so may be unaware that they carry the mutated gene. As relatives share a proportion of their genes, it is much more likely that related parents will be carriers of an autosomal recessive gene, and therefore their children are at a higher risk of an autosomal recessive disorder. The extent to which the risk increases depends on the degree of genetic relationship between the parents; so the risk is greater in mating relationships where the parents are close relatives, but for relationships between more distant relatives, such as second cousins, the risk is lower (although still greater than the general population).[19] A 1994 study found a mean excess mortality with inbreeding at the first cousin level of 4.4%

Why do we allow our swivilization to be ruled by royal families that interbreed and then complain that everything is Charlie Foxtrot?

That is a question of ethics and sociology and has nothing to do with evolution or the Theory of Evolution. I have opinions about that of course, but it is off topic to this thread. Sorry.

DNA research shows dog dna was split from wolf DNA about 90,000 years ago...
who bred them apart?

Wolves were not specifically 'bred' to becomes dogs by anyone. Wolves and dogs share a common ancestor, just like Humans and Chimps. The wolf evolved to fill an environmental niche that they could exploit and likewise the dog evolved to fill an environmental niche scavenging in human discards when they began leaving dumps of edible scraps behind. Proximity and familiarity with humans eventually led to domestication. Human mastery of animal husbandry followed much later and produced the myriad of breeds we see today.
For more information see: Myths about origin and nature (of dogs)

just wundering

IMO, to be in a constant state of Wonder is the pinnacle of human experience and the prime motivator to seek Understanding. Understanding is the pinnacle of human achievement and the prime generator of Wonder.


[edit on 20/7/2010 by rnaa]

reply to post by Lannock

I see comments like “It didn't evolve that way with Johnze in mind, though; it had its own selfish reasons. It wanted to taste good to birds and arboreal mammals.” Am I the only one who notices that this process (evolution) sounds like it has intelligence?

No, you are not the only one who gets confused by metaphors and analogies.

That does not, of course, invalidate metaphor and analogy as valid tools for explanation in the English language. The ability to understand metaphor and analogy is quite possibly the fundamental enabler of human communication (IMO).

Your inability to distinguish between the map and the territory (another metaphor), while not unique to you, is a disadvantage that I suspect must cause you periodic episodes of disquiet that you don't quite understand what is going on. I believe that this is not uncommon and that, to the extent that it is not genetic, improvement can be realized with the correct techniques.

This is not a pipe

It takes an INTELLIGENT decision to evolve into something beneficial, no?

No.

I want to stress this simplistically: something can “evolve” into 2 things; one good (for survival, etc), one bad. Surely intelligence is required to DECIDE which way it will go?

No it doesn't (and don't call me Shirley).

Let's put it simply: a pair of gray moths mate and the result is two child moths. At inception DNA replication errors result in a slightly different mutation in each child. One turns out darker gray than its parents and the other turns out white as snow.

One day both siblings are resting on an Ironbark tree and a magpie lands on a nearby tree. Spotting the white one, it eats it and flies away. The magpie couldn't see the dark gray one against the gray of the Ironbark's bark. The dark gray moth lived to pass its genes on to the next generation, the white one didn't. There is no intelligence here. Just the random chance of the mutation and the natural selection for a trait that gave a little bit of advantage over different trait.

Suppose instead that on 'the day of the magpie' the moths had happened to rest on the edge of a glacier that was in their neighborhood. The magpie would then have only seen the dark gray moth and the white one would have survived.

As the population grows there is gradually a split in the population: the part of the population that rests on ironbark trees becomes increasingly dominated by dark gray moths as the white moths are eliminated, the part of the population that rests on glaciers becomes increasingly dominated by white moths as the dark gray moths are eliminated. Eventually, the two populations may become isolated and continue their evolution separately: they have become two separate species. This process can happen in a very few number of generations, it doesn't have to take hundreds of thousands of years.

The moths didn't 'choose' to evolve; there was no 'intelligence' involved. Random mutations arose and then natural selection eliminated those mutations that were positively detrimental so that useful mutations came to dominate the population. That is as simplistic as it gets.

The orange didn't evolve to taste good to humans, humans didn't evolve to recognize orange as good tasting, and not all oranges are tasty. Plants that happen to taste good to animals have their seeds spread over a wide area by the animals that eat them, those that don't taste good must spread their seeds differently. There is no intelligence here, just survival or non-survival of traits raised by random mutation.

When man figured out how to farm plants he naturally cultivated plants that were useful and tasted good. Orange varieties that tasted good were chosen for cultivation and the tastiest individual plants were selected and propagated. There is intelligence here, no doubt, but human cultivation is not evolution. While plant breeding does take advantage of random mutation, the human breeders selection is not the same as natural selection. A human breeder is selecting for traits that are desirable to the human; while natural selection is selecting for traits that allows for maximum chance of the continuance of the gene pool of the organism.

[edit on 20/7/2010 by rnaa]

[edit on 20/7/2010 by rnaa]

reply to post by rnaa


I can see how we could have evolved from the differing "ape-man" species(e.g. Lucie the Afifibbmificus or something) but then according to "Walking with Cavemen",that guy Robert says that the ape-men evolved from these tree-dwelling thingies(which Robert himself admits that they have no evidence of their existence) that look exactly like monkeys,but Evolutionists all say no no no! we didn't evolve from monkeys(we just evolved from these ape-men that evolved from these thingies that look exactly like monkeys but their not.And then these monkey-thingies' ape-man descendants evolved into Humans and these things that look exactly like the monkey-thingies but ARE actual monkeys).

Anyway what i wanted to ask is what are these primates' ancestors supposed to be?Is there just big line of missing links, that have left NO evidence of their existence behind, untill we reach an ancient ancestor of a pig or something?

Hi there. I am under the influence atm and I have learnt my lesson not to write long posts when inebriated.
Do not fear I have bookmarked a bunch of YT videos for moments just like this one.



I am not familiar with "Walking with Cavemen" but I am intrigued, I will have to get back to you.

Moral of the story.. We are #ing monkeys bro. Get over it ... Embrace it ! Monkeys are awesome, yo.

untill we reach an ancient ancestor of a pig or something?

That would be stupid ... Fish .. obviously.
Seriously
en.wikipedia.org...

When did love appear in human evolution?

reply to post by xspinx


Tell me what love is and I'll tell you where and when it developed.

The one place where evolution fails completely is that those that accept evolution as a real process keep trying to explain it to those that do not want accept it.

Evolve, move on

BTW I hate the taste and texture of oranges so maybe I took a different evolutionary path and if everyone felt that way oranges would no longer be here. If oranges were the only food and I still didnt eat them I would no longer be here

OOps thats evolution in action.

reply to post by Erad3


We need a one world language, a new currency backed by something other than nothing, and alien's to finally admit that their here. I mean cmon now....its been a while