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Evolution

Does evolution happen

  • Total voters
    70
lpast said:
I put I dont know...because no one can tell me how the VERY first life organism got here and I havent seen Jesus yet...so I just dont now...and neither do any you :p
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Evolution has nothing to do with how the first life organism got here. It has to have existing organisms to work on. Abiogenisis is what you are talking about, and is entirely separate from evolution.
 
Redress said:
To be clear: Mutations are random, and are what allow changes. "Survival of the fittest" isn't really random, but it is also not directed(assuming no higher power). It's a clever phrase to describe what mutations tend to flourish. WHen I said "evolutiuon is random", I meant kinda all of that, but did not explain clearly. My apologies to any who answered wrong based on that.
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geez, I did not know the quiz was going to be graded and my answer would be counted "wrong" as a result. :2razz:

I had to clarify my answer and could not go with the "random" bit since it is perpetually used in an attempt to discredit evolution, it is right up there with "its just a theory"
 
Redress said:
Evolution has nothing to do with how the first life organism got here. It has to have existing organisms to work on. Abiogenisis is what you are talking about, and is entirely separate from evolution.
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To evolve you have to have a life form to evolve from correct..? where did it come from...Im admittedly no scientist lol...as if you couldnt tell
 
lpast said:
To evolve you have to have a life form to evolve from correct..? where did it come from...Im admittedly no scientist lol...as if you couldnt tell
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I do not know. However, evolution starts once there is life. It does not address how life came to be.
 
Nate Silver linked to this poll today... maybe it's because I live in such a wealthy, educated area, but I find this kind of hard to believe:

Majority of Republicans Doubt Theory of Evolution

Not only do only 30% of Republicans believe in evolution, only 58% of Democrats do, and only 49% of the U.S. overall (vs 48% who don't). I guess that puts me in the tiny minority of Republicans who do. Which is weird, because my whole conservative/libertarian philosophy regarding the free market hinges on evolution being true at every aspect of life.
 
Redress actually kind of nails it. In the fossil record animals, fish and birds just appear at about the same time already fully developed. There's no evidence to show that evolution is responsible for mammals. There is no evidence that fish ever walked. There's nothing connecting man to anything. The evidence for macro evolution is quite underwhelming.

Micro evolution is a different story. We know people have change. We know dogs have change. We've seen how animals and fish have changed. They just have morphed into something different.
 
Redress said:
I do not know. However, evolution starts once there is life. It does not address how life came to be.
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Ok then we do agree...I didnt answer the right question...but to believe in evolution and not creation...I need to know how the very first piece of life was created.....so I stand by I dont know...
 
There are certain persisting body parts that seem to be a strange part of evolution. Like two species evolving very similar body parts even though their ancestry dates back even before those body parts existed... this is a somewhat unexplained aspect of evolution, as it seems that some bodily structures are more likely to happen then others. For example a squids eye and a mammals eye; both evolved completely separately but turned out to be very similar... some question as to whether pure randomness would demonstrate such a result; others say that having an eyeball is superior aspect of earth... that all species try to approach to an eyeball form..... which isn't the case with all species though.
 
ksu_aviator said:
Redress actually kind of nails it. In the fossil record animals, fish and birds just appear at about the same time already fully developed. There's no evidence to show that evolution is responsible for mammals. There is no evidence that fish ever walked. There's nothing connecting man to anything. The evidence for macro evolution is quite underwhelming.

Micro evolution is a different story. We know people have change. We know dogs have change. We've seen how animals and fish have changed. They just have morphed into something different.
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Which is the real monkey wrench in the system...

I just really don't know why when you try to breed a species into a different one it actually can revert back to its original form with Darwin and his Pigeons.

To me, the logic points to that it should work; but im sure biologist have an explanation why breeding extensively isn't changing the species, and i think i have read it before but forgot.

But it is intriguing why we STILL don't have the concrete evidence of micro-evolution.

i believe in evolution, but we all can not help but to realize that we are speculating a little bit.
 
celticwar17 said:
There are certain persisting body parts that seem to be a strange part of evolution. Like two species evolving very similar body parts even though their ancestry dates back even before those body parts existed... this is a somewhat unexplained aspect of evolution, as it seems that some bodily structures are more likely to happen then others. For example a squids eye and a mammals eye; both evolved completely separately but turned out to be very similar... some question as to whether pure randomness would demonstrate such a result; others say that having an eyeball is superior aspect of earth... that all species try to approach to an eyeball form..... which isn't the case with all species though.
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Some structures work better than others .. however, one has to remember that organisms only can change from what it already has. If an eye in the traditional sense is not feasible from the organism's current structure or if the environment is one any sunlight to speak of, there is less of a chance that it will evolve that way.
 
ksu_aviator said:
Redress actually kind of nails it. In the fossil record animals, fish and birds just appear at about the same time already fully developed. There's no evidence to show that evolution is responsible for mammals. There is no evidence that fish ever walked. There's nothing connecting man to anything. The evidence for macro evolution is quite underwhelming.

Micro evolution is a different story. We know people have change. We know dogs have change. We've seen how animals and fish have changed. They just have morphed into something different.
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I posted an image of the fossil of a walking whale in this very thread.
 
MusicAdventurer said:
However, no scientific theory can be fully proven; one can only support or disprove a theory. For example, the theory of gravity is well supported; there is like a 99.99% chance that when you drop an apple it will fall to the ground ... however, there is still a chance that it will not, however minute that chance is.
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This is wrong. The overall classical behavior of gravity is well known. Under no circumstance will you ever drop an apple and under the force of gravity alone be repelled. We understand that like mass attracts much like like charges repel. Electricity and magnetism is well known, proven from first principle and have quantum models as well. We understand a lot about the other fundamental forces, including the bosons which transmit the force. What makes gravity unique isn't that we don't know that like masses attract; it's far more fundamental than a derived equation. We don't really understand HOW gravity is transmitted. It's postulated to be through exchange of virtual "gravitons", it's why people spend so much time looking for the Higgs boson. Gravity has no quantum model, we don't really understand how it works. There's no negative mass (that we know of), even though everything else has a negative to it (physicists LOVE symmetry). It's not to say that we can't make observations, and in a classical sense understand the FUNCTION of gravity very well. For we can. We have equations and models which can accurately predict gravitational force. It's how we can do any space exploration at all. Classically it is a well understood theory. It remains a theory because there is still much we do not know about it. But you will never drop and apple and have it float away under only the force of gravity. Less you have a negative mass apple, which would be cool.
 
celticwar17 said:
Which is the real monkey wrench in the system...

I just really don't know why when you try to breed a species into a different one it actually can revert back to its original form with Darwin and his Pigeons.

To me, the logic points to that it should work; but im sure biologist have an explanation why breeding extensively isn't changing the species, and i think i have read it before but forgot.

But it is intriguing why we STILL don't have the concrete evidence of micro-evolution.

i believe in evolution, but we all can not help but to realize that we are speculating a little bit.
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We could also get into how carbon dating is bogus and about tests that have shown carbon dating exaggerates the age of rocks and other geological formations. But that might cause the atheists to explode :D
 
celticwar17 said:
To me, the logic points to that it should work; but im sure biologist have an explanation why breeding extensively isn't changing the species, and i think i have read it before but forgot.
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Evolution works on random genetic mutations, as breeding is not acting on random genetic mutations and instead acting on different genetics related to traits within a species, evolution into another species is about as likely to occur when breeding as it is within nature.

celticwar17 said:
But it is intriguing why we STILL don't have the concrete evidence of micro-evolution.
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Actually there has been evidence of micro-evolution

celticwar17 said:
i believe in evolution, but we all can not help but to realize that we are speculating a little bit.
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Sure there is a bit of hypothesis involved, i.e. scientific evidence based speculation.
 
ksu_aviator said:
We could also get into how carbon dating is bogus and about tests that have shown carbon dating exaggerates the age of rocks and other geological formations. But that might cause the atheists to explode :D
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You know, carbon isn't the only radioactive element (isotope) out there which can be measured to date things such as rocks. It is in fact NOT how rocks are dated.
 
Ikari said:
This is wrong. The overall classical behavior of gravity is well known. Under no circumstance will you ever drop an apple and under the force of gravity alone be repelled. We understand that like mass attracts much like like charges repel. Electricity and magnetism is well known, proven from first principle and have quantum models as well. We understand a lot about the other fundamental forces, including the bosons which transmit the force. What makes gravity unique isn't that we don't know that like masses attract; it's far more fundamental than a derived equation. We don't really understand HOW gravity is transmitted. It's postulated to be through exchange of virtual "gravitons", it's why people spend so much time looking for the Higgs boson. Gravity has no quantum model, we don't really understand how it works. There's no negative mass (that we know of), even though everything else has a negative to it (physicists LOVE symmetry). It's not to say that we can't make observations, and in a classical sense understand the FUNCTION of gravity very well. For we can. We have equations and models which can accurately predict gravitational force. It's how we can do any space exploration at all. Classically it is a well understood theory. It remains a theory because there is still much we do not know about it. But you will never drop and apple and have it float away under only the force of gravity. Less you have a negative mass apple, which would be cool.
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Of course we can say that an apple will always fall straight to the ground .. until it doesn't of course.

This is a very sophisticated argument and is more a way of studying the philosophy of science than trying to prove that an apple may not fall to the ground .. I think you missed that point.

I would never place my money on an apple not falling to the ground .. yet I know that we can never truly "know" something.

Ask any scientist and they will agree with this. This is a sophisticated way of saying that some things are essentially "facts", while still holding the scientific reverence of "until they are disproven" .. make sense?
 
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MusicAdventurer said:
You will never drop an apple and have it not fall straight to the ground .. until it does of course.

This is a very sophisticated argument and is more a way of studying the philosophy of science than trying to prove that an apple may not fall to the ground .. I think you missed that point.

I would never place my money on an apple not falling to the ground .. yet I know that we can never truly "know" something.

Ask any scientist and they will agree with this. This is a sophisticated way of saying that some things are essentially "facts", while still holding the scientific reverence of "until they are disproven" .. make sense?
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I AM a scientist. What is and what isn't knowledge can always be argued. But a voltmeter is a voltmeter and it measures. Measurement defines reality. It is a measured fact that like masses attract.
 
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Redress said:
I posted an image of the fossil of a walking whale in this very thread.
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Do we need to go into how initial thoughts on how fossils go together are often way off?

Did you know there is no such thing as a Brontosaurus?
 
Ikari said:
I AM a scientist. I DO NOT agree with you.
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As am I .. clearly we were taught differently .. I encourage you to actually attempt to understand the point I am making. Its actually quite profound and enlightening.
 
MusicAdventurer said:
As am I .. clearly we were taught differently .. I encourage you to actually attempt to understand the point I am making. Its actually quite profound and enlightening.
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Not quite so much as you would think. There is quite a bit of useful philosophy, but there is also a good deal of pointless. Gravity is measured. To change it you have to measure something counter to it. There is much left unknown about gravity, but we do know that like masses attract. Studied gravity for centuries. The classical physics of gravity is well understood.
 
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MusicAdventurer said:
Some structures work better than others .. however, one has to remember that organisms only can change from what it already has. If an eye in the traditional sense is not feasible from the organism's current structure or if the environment is one any sunlight to speak of, there is less of a chance that it will evolve that way.
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but that is why the giant squid's case is intriguing... Squids are a mollusk and a invertebrate that have only connections with mammals form the most primitive of species. The giant squid lives in extremely deep water, and have developed eyes very similar to a mammals, with balls and eye-sockets even though they come from completely different lines in completely different circumstances, no other invertebrate species have such complex eyes. This may suggest that some evolutionary forms are more prevalent to exist then others, due to scientifically inconclusive reasons... but obviously just because it is not yet able to be explained right now, doesn't mean it won't... and there are a lot of strange tendency's that could happen strictly because of the gravity our planet is at and that we are carbon based.
 
Ikari said:
You know, carbon isn't the only radioactive element (isotope) out there which can be measured to date things such as rocks. It is in fact NOT how rocks are dated.
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I just used that as a general term to talk about all the dating methods. There have been numerous lava flows that created rocks in known history that have been tested by the many various dating methods. All came up way off. One flow was 50 years old and the various methods showed the rocks formed by the flow to be anywhere from 500,000 to millions of years old. It just isn't accurate.
 
Ikari said:
Not quite so much as you would think. There is quite a bit of useful philosophy, but there is also a good deal of pointless. Gravity is measured. To change it you have to measure something counter to it. There is much left unknown about gravity, but we do know that like masses attract. Studied gravity for centuries. The classical physics of gravity is well understood.
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Agreed .. gravity is "well understood". Simply because a way of thinking, specifically empiricism, seems pointless, does not make it inaccurate.
 
MusicAdventurer said:
Actually there has been evidence of micro-evolution
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I have only every heard of bacteria. But could you please post a source, cause then i am not up to date on my biology... which is true... im a physics guy after all.

And what i mean by concrete evidence, is that were scientist able to specifically make or observe and wild animal "evolve" (LOL not like Pokemon, but like witness a new species begin to develop from a local species? Were they able to find the environmental changes in why this took place?or breed a new animal species?)
 
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