Evolution Again.

[flukec]

In response to Darkk:


Yes, one of the modern understandings of how evolution works includes the ?theory of punctuated equilibrium?, which states that evolution occurred in ?spurts? that were brought on by factors such as climate change. (?Spurts? being a relative term that could mean hundreds or thousands of years) These relatively quick changes occurred in small parts of the original species. This is a departure from the ?theory of phyletic gradualism?, which states that evolution occurred gradually and evenly throughout the entire species all at once.

The theory of punctuated equilibrium (the theory of evolution occurring spurts) accounts for the gaps in the fossil record. However, the theory was not an ?ad hoc? explanation just to justify the gaps. Punctuated equilibrium arose through extensive studies and evidence. On the other hand, phyletic gradualism was abandoned because it fails to fit the evidence (not because it doesn?t justify the gaps in the fossil record).

The quotation you posted claims both that ??the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin" and ?It is almost entirely devoid of forms that can plausibly be identified as intermediates between older and newer ones?. I find these claims to be ridiculous. The fossil record has grown enormously since the time of Darwin and there are tons of examples of intermediate forms in species. Take for example, the evolution of mankind:

Starting roughly 4 million years ago, we have australopithecus afarensis (Lucy), with features similar to that of a chimpanzee, but with more human-like teeth and the ability to walk upright. This is followed by a progression of species from australopithecus africanus, to homo habilis, to homo erectus, to homo sapien, and eventually to homo sapien sapien. Each of these series of species shows an increase in brain size, more human-like teeth, and a less protruding face, as well as the use of more complex tools and evidence of the knowledge of how to harness fire.

There?s also a solid list of fossils showing dinosaurs gaining more bird-like forms and birds losing their dinosaur features. You can read through the list of transitional forms here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC214.html The list includes around 20 or so species with transitional forms.

We also have a nice number of transition forms charting the evolution from land mammal to whale: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC216_1.html

Fish to Tetrapods: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC212.html

And many more can be found here http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

I?m not sure how creationists and proponents of intelligent design make claims like ?there are no intermediate forms? and ?the fossil record is as discontinuous as when Darwin was around?. It seems like they are blatantly ignoring or denying the large amount of evidence for transitional forms clearly visible in the fossil record.

I?m sure most creationists won?t be convinced until there is a fossil record consisting of a couple billion specimens that show an extremely smooth and gradual morphing from one species to another. This is not only completely unrealistic, but it?s also completely unnecessary.

It?s unrealistic because of the nature of fossils. Fossilization is a fairly rare event. It requires rare conditions like those in river beds and tar pits. The fossilization must also happen in a small window of time, before the creature decays or is eaten by predators. Once fossilization occurs the fragile fossil must then stand up to the test of time. Erosion can destroy millions of years worth of fossils. And as rare as fossils are, finding them is even rarer. Most fossils are found on the surface after the ground they were in has eroded away. Yet, once they are on the surface they are very susceptible to being destroyed. (An example: Passenger pigeons numbered in the billons and went extinct only 200 years ago, yet it?s extremely difficult to find a passenger pigeon fossil).

A fully complete fossil record simply isn?t necessary to get the big picture. Like Extremophile suggested?.if you have a jigsaw puzzle, and you only have 400 of the 1,000 pieces, you will still be able to get a pretty good idea of what the big picture looks like. If evolution isn't true, then God certainly set up the puzzle pieces to look like it was true......enough so to fool the majority of the scientific community, anyway.

[extremophile]

Just a quick point, i didn't read this whole thread but glanced, whoever said there no transitional dogs or cats, in their breeds, is wrong. Please in topics like these, make sure your rebutals and arguments are true.

I said that in the sense that we don't see a smooth gradation between breeds, we just see the breeds. Even if we mix two breeds, we will hardly get a result that's 50% each, phenotypically. We won't either found infinitesimal variations between two breeds that are known to be closely related. Not to mention that transitional fossils between them are probably lacking.

And even tough we know and accept that dog breeds descend from a common ancestor, these smooth infinitesimal changes may not have happened most of the time, because there are many genes that produce short "leaps" of change (but not the sort of leap that would create fire-breathing winged dog). For example, the shortening of the legs of bassets may have originated in a single leap, rather than subtle tiny shortenings spread equaly across all the generations between the "first" basset and the non-basset ancestor.

[gau dog]

Speaking of dog breeds, I've always wondered what would happen if you artificially inseminated a Chihuaha with the sperm of a St. Bernard.

[extremophile]

Do you feel educators have a right, if not an obligation to introduce the ID or even creationism argument in the classroom? Or is it better to ignore it completely and forcefully impose the theory of evolution on the students? Is there an issue of freedom involved, especially if a student doesn't want to agree with the theory?

I think this way: evolution is a scientific theory; creationisms and ID aren't, even though their proponents keep repeating that to make confusion (see the Paul Krugman article I gave the link in the first or second page of this topic).

So if we're talking about science classes, creationism has its place more or less like lamarckism has, in its historical context, not as an alternative theory. The same goes for other scientific theories that have their non-scientific counterparts.
Another cartoon on this topic

Also, to go slightly off topic, I've read that there's little or no scientific evidence that suggests gayness is genetic. Yet many people put their faith in believing it is genetic, that they are born gay based on nothing more than their claim. I find many secularists to accept this kind of faith but not for religion.

That's true. In this specific case, I can defend a bit them a bit by saying that it has some logic, some solid ground, while with religion is everything more nebulous, depending entirely on faith. Is known that genes influence our behavior, gayness is a behavior, so it might have some genetic determinance, in some cases. That's my viewpoint.
But there are people with less understanding that just think that behavior is genetic determined, gayness is a behavior, then it's genetic. To say the least, there are secular pseudo-scientific beliefs around, I won't even cite at risk of helping these things spread!

Often seeing these sort of forum topics, making criticism and jokes on Christianity and religion, I wish you guys would stop discriminating against them and treat them with more respect and equality. For in here and the real world. I usually see lots of rude provoking and they normally don't start from the Christians.

I'm totally "pro-respect", in these or any discussions, and I've certainly seen inadequate behavior from both parts. To counter balance a bit what you said, I could say that I see religious persons with disrespectful behavior more often than the other side, but in the other hand, some non-religious individuals eventually manage to compensate that by being thrice times more disrespectful than the disrespectful religious individuals... hehe

But I must admit that it's a delicate issue, I might accidentally insult eventually, but's always unintentional, and I avoid if possible. I'll eventually take the risk, if I think that worth for the argument (such as analogies, with something that probably the person don't believe... the analogue creed must be chosen carefully), not gratuitously. Maybe these cartoons I've been showing can be a bit offensive, depends a lot on who reads... I just think they're more probably funny than offensive.

I know in the scientific community, supporters for ID and creationism are few. But the point is, there is a debate. And they do come from scientists. Evolution isn't as clean cut argument as a math problem.

Well, the thing is that there isn't. They want to make seems that there is.
They will say things like "more and more evidence is being found to be incompatible with evolution", "many and many more scientists are discrediting evolution". Then they cite some examples of troubles with evolution, and you google for 5 to 20 minutes about that and you'll find the answer. There are always the same things, their troubles for evolution are generally based in incomplete or wrong data, not to mention straw-mans of evolution.

And generally, they pass far away from the big picture of evolution. They try attack minor details that don't really affect the whole. I'm sorry for being so repetitive, but there's a clear phylogenetic tree, that's statistically improbable to result from other thing than common descent, with all structures of the beings being possible to be generated by natural selection.

That contrasts dramatically with what would be expected by special creations of the species (impossibility to found only one coherent tree of life, because the distribution of traits wouldn't be restricted by biological descent), and even with what would be expected if some adaptive traits were intelligently designed and somehow inserted in extant, naturally evolved otherwise, lineages (many IDers, like Behe, accept common ancestry) - we would still be able to found lots of chimaerisms, structures and genes that are present in non related species, and incapable of having been transmitted horizontally, and genetically and structurally distinguishable from what would be expected by convergent evolution.

But when we found similar adaptive structures in non related lineages, they don't fit with this hypothesis, but rather with convergent, independent evolution. For example, there are fishes, one Arctic and other Antarctic, which have similar or identical proteins that works as an antifreeze. But these similar proteins are made by different genes, which is compatible with convergent evolution, as each fish is in one side of the Earth. But using the same gene wouldn't be a problem if it was intelligently put there, somehow. But we simply don't found these things.

Unless, there are multiple designers which are restricted by something analogue to patents. Interestingly, that would make the whole ID thing more compatible with the evidence found, not only for that case but the whole predator-prey thing is hard to conciliate with mono-ID-ism. But it's never mentioned by their defenders, under the argument that ID doesn't try to infer about the designer (always in the singular). While they say that they don't have ulterior religious motivation, that's quite what would be expected from monotheists defending their position.

[extremophile]

Though my problem with Creationism is that the end result is known and the arguement is for evidence that only supports the known conclusion. "True" Science as well know is based on observation without truely knowing the end result.

To make things even worse, there's nothing that would disprove creationism or ID, in their terms. Nothing would be incompatible with the instantaneous creation by an omnipotent god 6000 years (or 6 minutes) ago, if he created the world seemingly older, with a fake history for unknown reasons.
With ID is similar. Okay, if I don't know how that evolved, then it was created. That's not quite proving that it was created, is the assumption that if something didn't evolved, was created. But how could we just test whether something was created or not, without puting into test the alternative explanation?

Though I do think the latest theory on human evolution has shifted from chimps to orangatangs, but I am really not as well read as some of you.

Technically, neither are defended as our ancestors, but rather may have some discussion about with wich we share the last common ancestor.
I've read once something about that, but is just some guy who defends that because orangutans are a bit morphologically similarer to humans than chimps are, but chimps are much more similar genetically, which is far more important. Also orangutans are asiatic, while our closest related species were mostly found in Africa untill now.
At least, that's what I think I know, if there's something newer of something like the "true" H. sapiens having arised in Asia from the asiatic branch of H. erectus, I haven't read nothing about that yet...

[flukec]

Extremophile:

Your typing skills leave a bit to be desired.... nevertheless, you make some excellent points and seem to be very knowledgeable on the subject of evolution. I was just wondering what your background on the subject of evolution was, since it's all you seem to post about on this board. Do you study it as a hobby? Or did you major in biology, or something? Just wondering.

Luke

[extremophile]

I don't have a degree in biology. It's something between a hobby and some sort of compulsion. Since I was a kid I prefered encyclopedias and documentaries in these themes than to watch sports or other more normal things. But I've never collected insects, snails or cultivated fungi.

With internet it just got worse, as I can find some free scientific articles, forums and lists with actual scientists and other hardcore nerds like me. Currently I'm translating some texts from talkorigins.org to portuguese, in my spare time.

[AgentHelix]

Anyone interested in some good reads about evolutionary biology (as in entertaining and not dry textbook type stuff) should check out David Quammen's "The Song of the Dodo" and "Flight of the Iguana".

[BlueHarp411]

As a side note, not sure if anyone has mentioned it but Time's cover this week is on Evolution. Did they hear you guys talking about it?

Jill

[HellboyOne]

As a side note, not sure if anyone has mentioned it but Time's cover this week is on Evolution. Did they hear you guys talking about it?

Jill

Heh...I picked it up yesterday. Haven't read it though.

[flukec]

Heh...I picked it up yesterday. Haven't read it though.

It's pretty depressing.

Did they hear you guys talking about it?

I think they heard him talking about it....



-Luke

[trigger25]

Kudos to both sides for keeping this discussion intelligent and civil.

In an effort to lighten things up a bit (and with no disrespect intended to anyone), I direct you to this week's Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

T.

[HellboyOne]

trigger: Thanks...I needed that.

[BlueHarp411]

Trigger now that is just insane. i guess that means that any scientific theory isn't accurate. Oh lawd.

Jill

[gau dog]

Oh, is that how gravity works? I always thought it evolved to how it is today. Call me crazy, but I don't think that onion article's a joke that both sides can laugh at.