Evolution: PROVE IT!

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


"So...if I want to provide a transitional form or a citation for my explanation of genetics...I cannot use outside sources....um....how am I supposed to do that? I don't have a genetics lab nor do I have a library of fossils. And the links aren't stupid, they're quite informative. "

I expect people to think for themselves, that is, if they really know what they are talking about. Citing experts is a cop out and the lowest form of debate.

"As for multicellular entities, it's been answered. You don't get bicellular organisms because that would actually require more coding than a 'colony' creature." (How do you know this?)

So am I to infer from this statement that single cell entities evolved into multimillion celled entities where each cell is organic to a specific funtion of the body as a whole with no transitional forms in between? You really believe that? I am not satisfied with your answer and I think you are a victim of dogmatic thinking.

You can take my word for it. I do not believe in the Bible. Despite your moniker I don't believe you are mad, a little narrow minded maybe, but not mad. And your statement about life not being mysterious is not only stupid but arrogant in the extreme.

Don't believe everything you read; even your precious science books. It is just a wise stance to take.

As I said before: BS

God: PROVE IT!

Neither can be done, and if you cant prove it use education and go with the most logical answer.

reply to post by Deuteronomy 23:13

Originally posted by Deuteronomy 23:13
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Do you believe everything scientists say?

No, I tend to ignore their opinions on the arts and entertainment. I also recourse to the peer-review process and science's tyranny of evidence to sort out attempts at deceit and outright fraud.

Do you know for a fact these fossils are what the experts say they are?

Yes, I do. I've actually read over those links and looked up the fossils in my own time. They demonstrate exactly the points that the scientists are making. The whole point in science is that it isn't conjecture, it's evidence based. Science is not democratic, it is a tyranny of evidence, where the only thing that matters in the discussion is who has what evidence.

As I said your post is BS and you don't know what you are talking about.

Hooray, I'm being accused of ignorance for no reason! I must really have made an impact. Please, show me where I don't know what I'm talking about.

However that doesn't seem to detract you from spouting off BS.

You've yet to fill my request of proving that what I was saying was BS.

There is a difference between species variations and evolution.

Yes, and that difference is that species are varied within a time frame, but evolution occurs within gene pools. Species variation is the difference between a big bull and a smaller bull. Evolution is the lineage we can trace back of all domesticated bovines.

There is a difference between sophistry and science.

Yes, and I know that difference. Hell, I've taken both science and philosophy at a high level.

You don't seem to understand these differences.

Look, another baseless accusation! I must be making an impact.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Yet another baseless accusation!
I've been debating evolution on ATS for about 3-4 years more than you've been a member on here. In that time my knowledge of the subject of evolution has grown immensely. I do not claim to know everything or near everything, but I have more than a basic understanding of morphological phylogeny.

Ah, but what fun would it be to be human if we couldn't make fools of ourselves? So, have fun!

Yes, keep making a fool of yourself by not addressing any of my points.

reply to post by Deuteronomy 23:13

Originally posted by Deuteronomy 23:13
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

"So...if I want to provide a transitional form or a citation for my explanation of genetics...I cannot use outside sources....um....how am I supposed to do that? I don't have a genetics lab nor do I have a library of fossils. And the links aren't stupid, they're quite informative. "

I expect people to think for themselves, that is, if they really know what they are talking about. Citing experts is a cop out and the lowest form of debate.

I'm not 'citing experts', I'm citing research. I'm not going to go out and do my own fieldwork to prove evolution. I have neither the time nor resources for that.

I am citing evidence that is backed up by peer review and raw data. The transitions found in the list I provided all have skeletons that can be examined by the scientific community, have been subjected to radiometric dating, and are available to critique from those who think they are fraudulent.

There is a difference between the logical fallacy of the argument from authority and the citation of scientific data. Anyone who cannot realize the difference doesn't belong in a discussion of scientific fact.

"As for multicellular entities, it's been answered. You don't get bicellular organisms because that would actually require more coding than a 'colony' creature." (How do you know this?)

I know this because it's basic programming aside from established in research. "Keep making copies" is one simple command. "Make only one copy" is a command that requires a routine for termination. Hence multicellular entities would have developed prior to bicellular entities. Hell, there isn't even a particular selective pressure that would bicellular, tricellular, or quadcellular organisms to thrive.

So am I to infer from this statement that single cell entities evolved into multimillion celled entities where each cell is organic to a specific funtion of the body as a whole with no transitional forms in between?

...no, you're the one that assigned a number. There are numerous 'colony' type creatures, like sponges that don't require multimillion cellular structures with specific bodily functions. There is a living creature that refutes your argument, it is invalid.

You really believe that? I am not satisfied with your answer and I think you are a victim of dogmatic thinking.

Nope, but you sure did a helluva job setting fire to that straw man.

You can take my word for it. I do not believe in the Bible.

Nor do you believe in rational thought or science. Hell, you are clearly ignorant of basic scientific principles.

Despite your moniker I don't believe you are mad, a little narrow minded maybe, but not mad.

Nope, I'm quite open minded. I'm open to anything someone can use reason and/or evidence to support.

And your statement about life not being mysterious is not only stupid but arrogant in the extreme.

No, it isn't. Please, point me to the mystery in life.

Don't believe everything you read; even your precious science books. It is just a wise stance to take.

Yes, don't believe the sum total of hundreds of years of scientific inquiry that has been poured over by millions of individuals each seeking to disprove something established and make a name for themselves as a revolutionary scientist. Don't trust the scientific method, the one thing responsible for the sum total of human progress in the last two hundred or so years.

I'll stop believing my science books when you stop believing your computer will function consistently, because the same science in those books is the same science that enables it to function.

As I said before: BS

Yes, that is what your statements seem to be.

reply to post by Spinster


You can prove evolution. Between the posts on this thread there have been more than enough to back it up. There's the fossil record, genetics, observed evolution, and phylogeny all there to back it up.

Originally posted by Mez353
reply to post by myster0

 

If you were to attempt categorise all of the insects on earth you'd never do it as as you got closer to the end over a million new insects would have evolved. Many of the original insect species would remain as they were. It's due to environment and adaptability, similar also to bacteria and viruses.
A different example is to put a known bacteria into a petri dish and kill 99.9% of them with a toxin. Allow the 0.1% to recover and repeat the process. Eventualy the toxin has no affect and the bacteria has evolved into a new form, resistant to that particular toxin. This is exactly how viruses work also, they mutate (evolve) and readily differ from the 'parent' virus, sometimes in as much as a few hours.
I agree that human evolution is much more difficult to prove and it's a hypothesis but then again many things are, it doesn't mean that they have no validity. A black hole has never been seen, only the affects of a black hole on another entity have been studied but we know that this fits the hypothesis of what a black hole is theorised to be and how it should behave so this validates that it is there. Sort of, LOL!.

We know black holes are there. A black hole is a point of super-intense gravity that gives off Hawking Radiation. We know they're there because we can see the effect they have on the bodies around them. It's a hypothesis that black holes are the remains of stars that have imploded, but the fact of black hole existence is indisputable.

Human evolution isn't difficult to prove; we exist, evolution is a fact, therefor we evolved. The only difficult thing is puzzling out which of the particular dead hominids is directly ancestral to H. sapiens. Frankly we'll never know the answer to that question - each dead hominid we dig up is an individual, and like all other individuals within a species, they have some pretty strong variations among them. However the great thing is, we don't need to know which species is directly ancestral to us. It's utterly and totally unimportant with regards to evolution.

reply to post by wiredamerican

I have flat feet. It was passed down from my grandfathers side and my family has flat feet now.

Egoscue Method

Vibram

You need to start strengthening your feet. Muscles if not used will atrophy.

Originally posted by Deuteronomy 23:13

I also wonder how one cell organisms turned into multicelled organisms. Evolution is supposed to mean gradual change over a period of time. Where are the 2 celled entities, or 3 celled or 4 celled. It seems that single celled entities simply errupted into multimillion celled entities with no intermediate steps.

Why do you think evolution is supposed to mean gradual change?

I thought evolution was driven by enviromental change. If that change is subtle the change mirrors this. If in the case of the extinction of the dinosaurs then the change is explosive and was.

reply to post by colin42


Environmental change is one of the driving factors of evolution, but competition within a species and between different species is also a driving force.

Sexual selection and genetic drift are also accounted for. Therefore there is both gradual and sometimes relatively quick change in a species.

reply to post by Dantas


At this point I don't care if someone else has answered this question. I have to!

1) different species occupy different niches - they use different resources, in different places, or at different times. When this divergence is happening, you get your 'ecotypes', as with Eastman et al (2009)'s study of Amybstoma barbouri, which breeds in two completely different habitats and interbreeding between ecotypes reduces fitness of offspring. Humans are a "plains" ape - that is, our natural habitat is basically open land/grassland/scrub - all other extant apes are primarily forest dwelling. There were a whole bunch of other apes occupying the same sort of niche - our close relatives since the australopithecines - but we seem to have wiped them out. If you contest this, note that most tribal groups or even nations have, for prolonged periods of their history, tried to wipe out distinct races - let alone species - of humans wherever they encountered them.

2) the concept that the rise of one species is the demise of another is based on an extreme interpretation of 'survival of the fittest', which only really applies when resources (be they food or escape from predation) are EXTREMELY limiting. More common is "survival of the satisficient" - that is, provided that an individual gets by, it contributes to the gene-pool. You don't have to be the best, just not the worst.

So basically, the other apes continue to exist because we are not in direct competition with them, or have not been so until quite recently.

And we didn't evolve from them any more than they evolved from us. We share a common ancestor, from which we have diverged and each become adapted to our own specific environments. So there is no clear point at which a first human arrived on the scene, because saying that something is and something isn't is based on Linneaean, discrete classifications, and Linnaeas was a creationist, so his classification was never supposed to fit evolution.

Rant over.

reply to post by DrunkYogi


No missing link = no proof???

Do you have any idea how hard it is for a terrestrial animal to fossilise? And do you have any idea how many "species" have been filled in between us and our common ancestor with the genus Pan (chimps and bonobos) based on fossil remains? Despite the fact that the genera "Homo" and "Pan" are considerably more similar than the various members of "Equus" who are all lumped together in one genus, and so - by that example - we should probably be sharing a genus with 2 of the other 4 great apes? What do you want archaelogists to do, dig up every single person on my maternal line until they can tell me that the male Bonobo in Twycross is my eighty-thousand, seven hundred and twelfth cousin nine hundred and sixty-two times removed? Because if they find any more "missing" links, that's pretty much what they'll be doing!

Originally posted by JohhnyBGood
if a creature can replicate (slightly imperfectly) and survive - it will - no matter how disgusting, repulsive, destructive etc

Please tell me that you were talking about humans here? Please???

The funny part:

Every person on the planet could have automatically evolved at some point in the past 2-4 months, and nobody would even notice it until years from now.

Despite everything you wrote being correct. Despite all the other replies explaining evolution that have been done to death and apparently having no impact on those that do not want to accept (notice I avoided want to believe) the evidence that evolution is fact you will make no impact.

I read all the time 'I am insulted to think we evolved from a monkey', and you can repeat till you are blue in the face that we share common ancestors they wont accept.

I challenge these people to live with any species without our tech and see how superior or special we are. they would be dead in a week, tops.

Go to a lion kill with a superior attitude and tell it to move over as you are hungry and see how special a human being is.

Sometimes a bigger brain is not an advantage especially if you choose not to use it

reply to post by xiphias


...individuals are incapable of evolution. Evolution is a term that is used to describe a species-wide phenomenon, not one for individuals.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Says who?

If 7 billion individuals evolve simultaneously, then it's a species-wide phenomenon.
Also, Darwin witnessed the physical evolution of individuals, but physical evolution probably isn't the whole story.

The fact that evolution can even be labeled a phenomenon shows that we don't understand as much as we'd like to think we understand. Just like we may not even be able to observe our own evolution, we definitely can't observe the misconceptions of our own science. Until the misconceptions are wiped away, that is.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by colin42

 

Environmental change is one of the driving factors of evolution, but competition within a species and between different species is also a driving force.

Sexual selection and genetic drift are also accounted for. Therefore there is both gradual and sometimes relatively quick change in a species.

hey you are preaching to the converted. My personal thinking is that many factors impact on the pressures evolution responds to. Even cheating has a place within a herd but how deep do you go when you cannot even get past 'I never evolved from an ape'?

Originally posted by xiphias
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Says who?

If 7 billion individuals evolve simultaneously, then it's a species-wide phenomenon.
Also, Darwin witnessed the physical evolution of individuals, but physical evolution probably isn't the whole story.

The fact that evolution can even be labeled a phenomenon shows that we don't understand as much as we'd like to think we understand. Just like we may not even be able to observe our own evolution, we definitely can't observe the misconceptions of our own science. Until the misconceptions are wiped away, that is.

edit on 28-11-2010 by xiphias because: (no reason given)

Shows you dont understand evolution. There is no mechanism for 7 billion indivuduals to evolve in the same way at the same time.

reply to post by colin42


Shows how willing you are to accept hypothetical as fact. Sorry, but this is the sad truth plaguing modern science. Don't chew on everything someone else feeds you. Understanding is relative to what you know you don't know.

I doubt anybody has sufficiently proven an understanding of the mechanics of evolution. All that has been proven is that the outcome of evolution is observable and evident. There are always two sides to every story. Biological evolution is probably only half the story.

There are plenty of hypothetical mechanisms to allow a species to evolve at the same time. Time itself would be the biggest mechanism, and all things derived from time (solar/lunar cycles, seasons, etc.) If you open your mind a little bit, you might even consider if radio waves or the internet could be a mechanism for invoking evolution. A mechanism to allow a species to evolve in the same way: DNA (or more specifically, "junk" DNA).

Might it be possible that the mechanism driving any form of evolution is always another form of evolution?

And it wouldn't necessarily be simultaneous evolution. If you could imagine a species making an evolutionary jump during the course of a single rotation of the Earth (or more feasibly, a single orbit of the Earth around the Sun), then you might have a broader perspective.

Anyway, my point is that we could evolve 1 hour from now and nobody would even notice it. That says a lot about our supposed understanding.

reply to post by xiphias


As much as you are right in that scientific thought follows not proof by the absence of disproof (As proof requires absolute knowledge, which is lacking) the very concept of an evolutionary 'jump' is contrary to current evolutionary thought in that it implies teleology (or intent/directionality) of evolution. It's the same as people saying "oh, you're overlooking that stuff can devolve" when no, that concept is implying that evolution has direction. It doesn't, so far as we know.

Stuff happens, if it's good or not noticeably bad it can spread, if it's bad it doesn't. While radiowaves etc have effects on DNA, their effects tend to appear random, and it is difficult to see how any genetic change could be propogated through the human population - or any of a similar size and overlapping generations - within a single year. Even allowing for the transmission of DNA as a byproduct of a virus, it seems a little on the hopeful side, surely?

reply to post by TheWill


I think, ultimately, the hard evidence needed to prove our own biological evolution will come after working backwards from a discovery which clarifies (in absolute terms) our own psychological existence.

On a sidenote, I have a feeling that discovery might be the epitome of irony.

Makes me wonder if, somehow, modern technology (computer/internet) could have been "manifested" by evolution itself. Evolution could be preparing us for something, in much the same way it prepares other species to adapt to their environment. Such thoughts probably belong in the Philosophy section, so I'll spare you.

I like to look at evolution as a predictive mechanism, rather than mindless natural selection.

Originally posted by xiphias
reply to post by colin42

 

Shows how willing you are to accept hypothetical as fact. Sorry, but this is the sad truth plaguing modern science. Don't chew on everything someone else feeds you. Understanding is relative to what you know you don't know.

I doubt anybody has sufficiently proven an understanding of the mechanics of evolution. All that has been proven is that the outcome of evolution is observable and evident. There are always two sides to every story. Biological evolution is probably only half the story.

There are plenty of hypothetical mechanisms to allow a species to evolve at the same time. Time itself would be the biggest mechanism, and all things derived from time (solar/lunar cycles, seasons, etc.) If you open your mind a little bit, you might even consider if radio waves or the internet could be a mechanism for invoking evolution. A mechanism to allow a species to evolve in the same way: DNA (or more specifically, "junk" DNA).

Might it be possible that the mechanism driving any form of evolution is always another form of evolution?

And it wouldn't necessarily be simultaneous evolution. If you could imagine a species making an evolutionary jump during the course of a single rotation of the Earth (or more feasibly, a single orbit of the Earth around the Sun), then you might have a broader perspective.

Anyway, my point is that we could evolve 1 hour from now and nobody would even notice it. That says a lot about our supposed understanding.

edit on 28-11-2010 by xiphias because: (no reason given)

I dont chew on anything someone feeds me, trust me and that includes you.

Science willing to accept hypothetical as fact. Really? So those scientists that continually test relativity even today seem to show that is not quite true.

You say 'All that has been proven is that the outcome of evolution is observable and evident.' To me that sounds like you agree that evlolution is a fact. The mechanics, the description of how it works is the theory.

You say 'Might it be possible that the mechanism driving any form of evolution is always another form of evolution? You could well be correct but a rose by any other name is still a rose.

TBH no I do not see anyway we can evolve in an hour, day, year. I am as evolved as I am going to get. The only way I will affect evolution now is to pass on a trait that gives my offspring an advantage.

Added
In your next post you say 'think, ultimately, the hard evidence needed to prove our own biological evolution will come after working backwards from a discovery which clarifies (in absolute terms) our own psychological existence.'

Boy are you going to have a long wait. There is nothing in existance that can be described in absolute terms and I am absolutely sure of that. Oh dear, well other than that.

I'd like to bump this with some nice YouTube videos that put forth even more evidence that evolution is true beyond all reasonable doubt.