should "Evolution" be considered a sign of Ignorance ?

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


Observed speciation is an observed result of evolution, We posted results of evolution for you, you ignored them. Hell, you're a result of evolution. You have over 100 mutations, genetic code not found in either of your parents.

Please, give us the parameters of exactly what you would accept as proof of evolution.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I watch Cosmos like it's my bible... that does not prove anything to me.

I really like Contact though and think that the court battle of a scientist trying to prove something she experienced was just amazing, if Sagan wrote that part he was way ahead of all us here that is for sure.

edit: Connections (the original) by James Burke is another fave.

reply to post by CanadianDream420

Originally posted by CanadianDream420
Is this in retaliation of the other thread that sparked major debate?...

Evolution happens, Micro-evolution.

There is no scientific distinction between micro and macro evolution aside from time scale. The 'macro' and 'micro' distinctions were created by creationists.
But here are 29+ evidences for 'macro' evolution anyway.

Scientists cannot create life in labs even today...

...that's abiogenesis, not evolution, a discussion for another thread.

Even if THEY DID, wouldn't that prove it takes intelligent life to create life??

By your reasoning that would mean that greenhouses prove that it takes glass to grow plants.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


So you knew from the outset that when you asked for evidence you wouldn't accept anything as proof? Then what was the point of asking?

reply to post by imnessie


I didn't say that it DID say that life on earth might have come from elsewhere, so I'm confused by your capitalisation of "not". That said, I see no reason to dismiss such a hypothesis or accept it as fact.

As with Opabinia, it's a cute little thing, isn't it? However, considering the diversity of life that I am happy to accept a common ancestor for, I see no immediate reason to suggest that Opabinia in particular would have an alien origin. If I was to suggest that, I would feel that it was equally valid to suggest extra-terrestrial origins for the entire ecdysozoa branch of the animal tree (insects, nematode worms, spiders, crabs, a couple of other groups of worms... worms are everywhere, millipedes, centipedes and unless I'm mistaken, velvet worms (less wormy and more centipedey than the other worms)).

One fly, although I can't remember its name off the top of my head, reproduces in two completely different ways depending upon the availability of food - when food is plentiful, the fly doesn't bother pupating, but rather the growing (female) larvae explodes into a fixed number of larvae of the same species, and these larvae and their clonal offspring do the same until the food supply runs short. Then, the now quite hungry larvae explode one last time, and the resulting larvae eat, grow and pupate into adult flies, who fly away to lay their eggs somewhere else where food is plentiful, and the whole thing starts again.

If that's not a contender for "most likely extra-terrestrial", I don't know what is.

reply to post by ACTS 2:38


Now that would make a more appropriate opening post. Actual information worth debating without generalised insults. Take a page from this poster's book, OP.



Mod Note: Excessive Quoting – Please Review This Link

Originally posted by Cosmic.Artifact

There are two points to this thread..one is obvious, the other you will have to speculate on.

Hmmm... possible points. So hard to pick just two. You'll have to tell me how many I got right.

1. Two can play at this particular game.
2. To see how the shoe feels on the other foot
3. To possibly show people how it feels to have their beliefs spoken badly about.
4. Since there are a few threads you've created on topic. Maybe to show what a dead horse the many threads of an opposite nature on this can appear.
5. You could be trying to illustrate various freedoms. The freedom to believe what you want, the freedom to reticule others beliefs and of course to show that can go both ways.
6. You could actually think evolution is a sign of ignorance as you imply in your title.
7. You be be trying it illustrate the dangers of labeling all with one label. Much like your title basically says "Should we consider all who believe in evolution ignorant?" Of course, - nothing like that ever happens here on ATS about any groups does it?

You'll have to tell me how close I came.

reply to post by imnessie


Read if you are in need of revisiting bio:
scienceblogs.com...

Which brings me to the continuous Creationist canard (no, it's not a duck): Why are there still monkeys if humans evolved from monkeys?

There are two sides to this question: one is whether any modern view of evolution requires that there only be one instance of a "type" and once it has been evolved out of, it should go extinct. This is a silly belief that itself is based on ideas that predate even Linnaeus - that each "position" on the "scale of nature" once occupied by a lineage, must become empty when that lineage moves upward. No theory of evolution has held this view for at least 200 years, even before Darwin. If we did evolve from monkeys, then monkeys do not all have to go extinct just because another kind of monkey (i.e., us) has evolved.

There are basically two ways to classify things in biology. One is by identity - if group X is the same in some important manner to Y, then X + Y form a group based on that identity. The biological term for identity of characters here is homology, a term proposed by Richard Owen in 1843. It means the same organ under all variations of form and function. All organisms that have a heart form a single group - no matter if the hearts are single chambered, double chambered, or four-chambered. But organisms that have some kind of pump that is not "the same" as the heart are not in that way homologous - if, say, the "heart" in that species develops out of the anus or something, and not in the thoracic part of the body.

The other way is to classify by similarity. Something is in the same class as another thing if it resembles the other. Similarity is not identity - the anus-heart would be classified as similar to the thoracic heart in virtue of a similar task or even activity and structure. To say that humans are not like beasts is to classify by what seems important to use as a similarity measure to us. The biological term for a trait that resembles others because of form or structure is homoplasy. Bats', birds' and insects' wings are homoplasious - similar because of what they do, not because they are the same parts used. "

Quoting External Sources - Please Review This Link

Originally posted by Xcalibur254
reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

 

So you knew from the outset that when you asked for evidence you wouldn't accept anything as proof? Then what was the point of asking?

edit on 14-12-2010 by Xcalibur254 because: (no reason given)

this proves nothing, no reputable creationist denies speciation, in fact, it is an important part of creationist biology. The real issue is whether evolution can explain the increase of genetic information content, enough changes to turn microbes into men, not simple change through time. Before laying to rest evolutions pointless arguments on this issue, it might be helpful to review the creationist model in detail.

Originally posted by Cosmic.Artifact
Here is the question...should "evolution" be considered a sign of ignorance ? un-guided ignorance ? Should teaching children in a scholastic environment be considered willfully be teaching a known falsehood...

Here is my question...

Shouldnt threads like this be posted on stupid fundamentalist religious web sites where you can freely discuss crap like this with like minded idiots?

Stop polluting the boards with this stuff.....sheesh

reply to post by TheWill

Why did diversity of life fell as the Earth grew 'older'? The diversity now is nothing it was in older eras.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


Let me get this straight. You accept "micro-evolution" as fact. You accept the fact that different species can emerge through this evolution. Yet you refuse to accept that these small changes could accrue over time and create great change. Now let me ask you a question. What is the barrier that prevents these small changes from building up over many generations and producing an entirely different species?

reply to post by SpaceJ

I am not part of the Creationist crowd thank you very much!
I want to ask if there's Evolution, where are the examples of Devolution?
I think both the Creationist and Evolutionist theories are wrong.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c0fdcdd2d387.jpg[/atsimg]

MOTF!

reply to post by imnessie


Holocene extinction has led to many species going extinct since around 10,000 BC. It's basically extinctions caused by human actions or aided by human actions. The rate of the climbing human population in general combined with climate changes has had a hand in many species of plants and animals going instinct.

So before humans were present, these species didn't have to fend off changes brought on by humans, because we weren't here. Hunting wasn't happening, no one was cutting down habitats and using resources, creating pollution, etc. Species then were only up against themselves and natural disasters/climate change. Add us into the mix and it all goes to hell.

By the way to be clear here, I'm not entirely for either arguments either, though I lean towards evolution and I don't follow the Christian creation (I mean if I did believe in a "creation" event it is not the one depicted in the bible). I'm agnostic but don't totally discount the possibility of a higher power or higher order. I do believe in a higher order, I just don't define it in the way most religious doctrines do.

reply to post by imnessie


Devolution implies that there is a set goal to Evolution. This is not so. Evolution is simply a biological process that is constantly occurring. Therefore, if evolution does not have a goal it's moving towards, it cannot regress.

reply to post by SpaceJ

I wonder why only generic animals survive, the boring, ordinary types and the cooler ones, the strange species easily go extinct. Does nature prefer uniformity and generic species? Or generic species just have lower habitat/diet/living conditions specialization, so that makes them able to cope with changing conditions. I don't think today's species are more advanced than their ancient counterparts (except humans). They're just more generic in their bodies/functions so it's easier for them to survive, because generic forms adapt more easily. But being efficient does NOT equal being more advanced. They're just 'plain' in comparison to more 'odd', specialized species. The survival of the fittest is valid only on the intra-species level, not on the interspecies one.

reply to post by imnessie


Don't you hate it when you start typing a reply and it magically disappears?

I'd got quite a way, too.

Basically, it is my understanding that current biodiversity is higher than we have any record of it being previously, even correcting for the deficiency of the fossil record.

Well, no, it was at its highest in the Pleistoecene, but that, in my opinion, is just because humans are so darned good at killing stuff that the Holocene was bound to be a period of decline. And, with habitat fragmentation being a specialty of ours, we're bound to get a whole host of new species in the microfauna to replace the losses from the macrofauna (read: don't worry that all the rhinos, horses, elephants, camellids, llamellids, xenarthrans and megalocerids have gone extinct... the tardigrades are still going strong!!!)

Entertainingly, the "Age of the dinosaurs" - from the mid-triassic to the end of the cretaceous (about 65 mya) has so far yielded to science 1000 or so species of dinosaur. Around today (counting "dinosaur" to mean any creature within the group "dinosauria"), there are 10,000+ known species, making dinosaurs the most common terrestrial vertebrates around.

And yes, I do mean birds.

Devolution? Devolution implies that evolution is directional. The only progression of evolution is through time, and so long as a population is above a fitness threshold for dealing with the pressures imposed upon it (below the threshold is extinction), evolution can be the rise to fixation of new traits, or the reversion to an ancestral state - take, for example, the bloody-nosed beetle of the british chalk - as a beetle, it is descendant from a winged insect (beetles are a fairly recent radiation of the Neoptera), and yet it can't fly.

Then there are snakes. The most famous of the (many) clades of legless lizards, snakes have no legs, but are descendant from a lizard which DID have legs - as evidenced by the vestigial hind-limbs of some pythons - which was in turn, rather further back, descended from a fish which did NOT have legs.

Legs turn out not to be hugely useful for burrowing, which is why so many different groups of lizards (and others, too - caecilians and amphisbaenans being particularly noteworthy) have lost them when they turned to a sub-terranean life-style.

Is this any help? I hope so, because I am now going to bed.

EDIT: Before I go, in reply to a more recent post by yourself: one of the reason that the more familiar animals are everyday is because you are used to them. However, even in modern species, there is such a plethora of form that it's hard to point to anything and call it normal. Google giraffe-nosed weevils, whip spiders, gulper eels, pencil-slate urchins, comb jellies, squid, harpy eagles, proboscis monkeys, sword-nosed bats, malayan tapir, sumatran rhinos, stomatopods (aka mantis shrimps, but they're not shrimps at all), fan worms, priapulid worms (those ones in the remake of King King - you know, that eat lumpy the chef? They're real, but kind of smaller), surinam toads, olms, glass catfish, spider crabs, cone snails (some species hunt fish. As in they harpoon them and poison them before the fish can swim out of the snail's reach), janthina snails (eat Portugese man-o-war), flame scallops, nautilus, murex snails (predatory, and some of the shells are INSANE - justifying capitals), Chlamydosaurus....

I could go on.

reply to post by imnessie


I get what you mean and I'd wondered that before too, but I think you need to think about it more objectively. The term evolution is relative, and adaption is relative too. If you go with the idea that evolution has to mean rising in complexity or advancement, then you could say that a mutation or adaption that happens to have a negative impact on ones life, is a form of devolution. It depends on what you see devolution as meaning.

Devolution presumes that there is somehow a preferred hierarchy of structure and function, and that evolution must mean "progress" to "more advanced" organisms. For example, it could be said that "feet are better than hooves" or "lungs are better than gills", so that change to the "less advanced" structure would be called "devolution". A modern biologist sees all such changes as evolution, since for the organisms possessing the changed structures, each is a useful adaptation to their circumstances. For example, hooves have advantages for running quickly on plains, which benefits horses, and feet have advantages in climbing trees, which ancestors of humans did

So devolution, evolution, it all depends on how you are looking at it. What might seem like devolution, or "becoming less complex" to us is just a species evolving to adapt to its environment. An example is that distant relatives of horses once had many toes, but evolved to just have one hoof/toe. To us that seems a devolution, but to the species it was a positive thing as it helped the horse adapt to its environment and what was best for the horse's interests.
Here's an article that raises a pretty good question off of this topic, Is the human race evolving or devolving?

reply to post by imnessie


Devolution? I think you are a bit confused by what "evolution" actually is. Evolution is basically a "change". It doesn't have to be an "improvement", nor follow in a defined path. It's all about how the genetic changes either help or hinder a species in a set environment. As their environment changes, so do the genetic variables that would help them survive and pass down their genes. Just like everything else in life, it's all subjective. One trait that would be beneficial in a specific environment might be a disadvantage in a different environment, and vice versa.

"Devolution" would actually help prove some type of "god" figure, helping creationism, as a whole diverse species, abruptly (and magically) changing into some prior genetic state, is impossible in nature. It's just as silly as stating that Evolution isn't true because Cats have never morphed into televisions. The same reason that Kirk Cameron's "Crock-a-duck" argument is so laughably ignorant, yet I've seen that argument pulled out time and time again. Debating with some of the more "fundamentalist" creationists is futile, as they will usually argue in circles, and use the same lame logical fallacies over and over. Thunderfoot has a great series on Youtube called "Why people laugh at Creationists". It dissects some of the more commonly used Creationists' arguments, and explains beautifully why they are ridiculous, and intellectually dishonest.

"Creationism" is pretty much an American phenomenon.. There really is NO dissent among Biologists. They know evolution happens. It's observable, you can test it in a lab, it's a Scientific Theory, which IS NOT the same as the layman's theory. Creationism, and Intelligent Design is simply a crudely disguised ruse in order to allow Fundie Christians to teach the Bible's creation fable as fact in public schools. I could care less what you want to "believe" in. You could believe that we're the offspring of magical Sky Prawns, or whatever strange things humans tend to dream up, but that does not mean your beliefs should be taught to our children in public schools as some kind of fact, or Scientific Theory.