What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

[Cainkane1]

As I see evolution its merely a random collection of events that are either good or bad. Something that enables a person to pass on his or her genes. An asthmatic hunchback with a personality disorder is for instance less apt to have offspring than an adonis like man with a genius IQ. Natural selection at work.

 

[Oppressed]

There are a lot of natural processes which have a great deal of randomness in them but are still part of a designed ordered system.

For example, you can place certain liquids in particular quantities into a jar. The molecules will randomly move around in the jar and begin reacting with each other a predictable manner and grow by design a solid crystal. The aspects of randomness or chaos in the system is a required component for the ordered design to take place.

Having chaos and randomness in a system does not exclude that system from having designed order.

 

[articulett]

As I see evolution its merely a random collection of events that are either good or bad. Something that enables a person to pass on his or her genes. An asthmatic hunchback with a personality disorder is for instance less apt to have offspring than an adonis like man with a genius IQ. Natural selection at work.

Yes, but any genetic traits that enhance reproductive success get passed on exponentially while the losers die out... this gives the appearance of direction and design or order. What is selected from the pool of randomness is determined by the most successful replicators, and so most scientists will say that natural selection is not-random, but "biased" or "determined" in comparison to the relatively random changes at the genome level. (random because they happen irrespective of their use to the organism created.)

It looks directed...like the genes knew what to evolve next by virtue of the fact that only the winners are getting their genes passed on exponentially, while the losers don't stick around to let us see the trillions of failed (genome tweaked) mutants. Scientists are careful to show the ways it is not random to avoid the creationist canard that "scientists think this all came about randomly" which to them is as impossible as "a tornado in a junkyard building a 747"-- and thus makes some "intelligent designer" look necessary.

 

[Rodney]

Rodney,
there are tons of observed speciations

So name ONE that is speciation in the Darwinian sense.

...it's just that creationists like to change the definitions as they go. For creatures with larger geneomes, it takes many generations of genome tweaking to get an animal that can no longer produce viable offspring with it's ancestor-- donkeys and zebra share a common ancestor... but they have evolved separately for so long that their offspring tend to be sterile. But they do exist.

I'm sure you've been sent to and ignored talk origins regarding speciation. It's just the oldest creationist ploy... you can't see it, so it must not be true. do you know we've never actually taken a tape measure around the edge of the earth or dug a hole all the way through to confirm that it's a sphere? But it was a sphere, even when humans presumed that would make the water spill out.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

And yet you take an old book written about events that occurred long before the life of the author-- nothing is first hand... it's all based on revelation and very old memories and interpretation in a time where such people didn't know about schizophrenia, epilepsy, false memories, and the many ways people fool themselves... You take this many transcribed, barbaric, crazy text and call it true. While you ignore the overwhelming and ever growing facts that anybody can grasp if they don't think they are doing something "good" by believing a silly old primitive tale that is indistinguishable from the thousands of similar tales people have been making up for years.

If by some wild stretch of the imagination you were indoctrinated with the wrong story the way Muslims were... how would you expect to know? What do you expect would be different if evolution WAS the fact that scientists are telling you it is? Or do you think by pretending they don't know while you do makes your version more likely to be true? Truer than the Amish? The Jehovah Witnesses? Mormons? Moonies? Muslims? Scientologists? Because you haven't got any more evidence for your theory than they have. And the actual truth is true for everybody even if they don't accept it.

Gravity, atoms, math, germ theory, and evolution-- they are all true and the same truth for everybody. It's just too damn bad that your omniscient invisible friend didn't give anyone a heads up. You can learn the facts that humans are privileged to know for the first time... or you can pretend you already know the answers and confuse yourself and others so they don't understand actual useful information. There is no science alternative-- science is about evidence... alternatives are not... they are about using areas of incomplete knowledge as a means of obfuscating and inserting magic.

Sorry, but you haven't even attempted to refute Milton's critique of Boxhorn. As Milton notes:

"It is true that Boxhorn does list a number of scientific observations, yet -- almost incredibly -- not a single one of these observations can be described as 'speciation' in the Darwinian sense, except by employing the kind of Double-Think used by officials at George Orwell's Ministry of Truth."

 

[mijopaalmc]

I think that biggest problem that both the creationists and all those who argue that evolution is non-random have is that they both don't understand how order can come from randomness. They both see order and say, "This must have come from some sort of orderly process." The only difference between the two is that creationists appeal to the supernatural to derive that order whereas scientists appeal to some inherent order in the naturalistic laws of evolution. Neither need be the case because the laws of probability guarantee that with continued sampling a random variable whose probability distribution has finite moments will converge on its mean value.

 

[articulett]

So name ONE that is speciation in the Darwinian sense.


Sorry, but you haven't even attempted to refute Milton's critique of Boxhorn. As Milton notes:

"It is true that Boxhorn does list a number of scientific observations, yet -- almost incredibly -- not a single one of these observations can be described as 'speciation' in the Darwinian sense, except by employing the kind of Double-Think used by officials at George Orwell's Ministry of Truth."

Nope... the fruit fly is true evolution. We fed one strain and it's quickly generating offspring a very limited food supply... they evolved to survive and maximize that food supply over time. When normal fruit flies were introduced, they did not mate or produce offspring with the mutants. The mutants could only mate with each other. That is a new species. That is observed. And it's not the only one as noted. It's just a real simple example. Once you understand genomes... you can understand evolution. We can SEE it:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=2199739#post2199739

Even your hero, Behe, admits common descent. You can pretend it isn't true all you want. But your ignorance on the subject doesn't change the facts.
How does creationism explain the link above, btw--or is it unable to actually explain anything... just pick holes and understanding about evolution? What happens on the genome (information) level is fairly random... what survives and is widely incorporated is not.

 

[Schneibster]

Most people don't understand how order can come from randomness, and your example, mijo, is merely the tip of the iceberg. Consistent energy flows in matter seem to generate order as a side effect; an incredible range of phenomena seem to share this as a common factor.

 

[Rodney]

Nope... the fruit fly is true evolution. We fed one strain and it's quickly generating offspring a very limited food supply... they evolved to survive and maximize that food supply over time. When normal fruit flies were introduced, they did not mate or produce offspring with the mutants. The mutants could only mate with each other. That is a new species. That is observed. And it's not the only one as noted. It's just a real simple example.

You mean simple-minded , because Milton has refuted Boxhorn; see http://www.alternativescience.com/talk.origins-speciations.htm

Boxhorn: 5.3 The Fruit Fly Literature

5.3.1 Drosophila paulistorum Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).

Milton: I had to read this twice to assure myself that it wasn't a practical joke. Boxhorn is saying that two fruit flies which he asserts are different species, successfully mate and produce offspring (thereby proving conclusively that they are not different species but the same species.) He calls the offspring 'hybrids' in an attempt to smuggle their 'different' species status in by the back door. Later some of the offspring exhibit 'behavioural isolation' (like Chihuahuas and Great Danes) but this is irrelevant as a sign of species status. So where, in all this, is there an instance of speciation -- or one species turning into another?

Boxhorn: 5.3.2 Disruptive Selection on Drosophila melanogaster Thoday and Gibson (1962) established a population of Drosophila melanogaster from four gravid females. They applied selection on this population for flies with the highest and lowest numbers of sternoplural chaetae (hairs). In each generation, eight flies with high numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed and eight flies with low numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed. Periodically they performed mate choice experiments on the two lines. They found that they had produced a high degree of positive assortative mating between the two groups. In the decade or so following this, eighteen labs attempted unsuccessfully to reproduce these results. References are given in Thoday and Gibson 1970.

Milton: No evidence is presented here that it was physiologically impossible for the lines to interbreed, merely that they preferred not to ('assortative mating') thus there is no evidence of speciation.

Boxhorn: 5.3.3 Selection on Courtship Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster Crossley (1974) was able to produce changes in mating behavior in two mutant strains of D. melanogaster. Four treatments were used. In each treatment, 55 virgin males and 55 virgin females of both ebony body mutant flies and vestigial wing mutant flies (220 flies total) were put into a jar and allowed to mate for 20 hours. The females were collected and each was put into a separate vial. The phenotypes of the offspring were recorded. Wild type offspring were hybrids between the mutants. In two of the four treatments, mating was carried out in the light. In one of these treatments all hybrid offspring were destroyed. This was repeated for 40 generations. Mating was carried out in the dark in the other two treatments. Again, in one of these all hybrids were destroyed. This was repeated for 49 generations. Crossley ran mate choice tests and observed mating behavior. Positive assortative mating was found in the treatment which had mated in the light and had been subject to strong selection against hybridization. The basis of this was changes in the courtship behaviors of both sexes. Similar experiments, without observation of mating behavior, were performed by Knight, et al. (1956).

Milton: Once again, Boxhorn relies on the weak definition of species to shoehorn this experiment into his bogus list of speciation events.

 

[articulett]

Rodney, hybrids are infertile... species produce viable offspring. Donkeys and Zebras share a common ancestor. They can still mate, but the offspring are sterile. Hence they are considered separate species...
the same goes for donkeys and horses, as well as horses and zebras.

Dogs, on the other hand, evolved from Wolf ancestors (and yes... there are still wolves)-- the two can still mate and produce fertile offspring, hence dogs are a subspecies of wolf... they are not a separate species. If you look at human and chimp chromosomes you can see exactly what the big change was between us and our common ancestor... which lead us to be unable to produce offspring with each other. It was the fusion of two chromosomes... we can SEE it. I know nothing is enough to make a creationist believe, but scientists have already gone way beyond that. the same tests that are used to determine paternity and forensic testing are also useful in telling how closely any two life forms are related and when they last shared an ancestor. We can see what was passed on and what changed in our billions of base pairs that code the encyclopedia for life.

And I wish you'd answer me regarding Behe and his concession that humans and apes share a common ancestor. The evidence is overwhelming. We see new strains all the time in single celled organisms-- that's speciation itself. It would be as ridiculous to see speciation in animals with huge genomes because it doesn't happen in a single generation (except in the bible where god poofs things into existence and puts them on an ark.) That would be like asking for tape measure proof of the dimensions of our planet. Creationists always obfuscate and ask for the impossible, because their goal is not to understand what scientists know. They insult scientists while seemingly unaware of their vast ignorance and confirmation bias... and so science goes on and ignores the crazies.

You have the opportunity to learn the facts or wallow in your ignorance thinking you know the facts, but not having a clue. Get your science from scientists, not primitive texts.

 

[Rodney]

Rodney, hybrids are infertile... species produce viable offspring. Donkeys and Zebras share a common ancestor. They can still mate, but the offspring are sterile. Hence they are considered separate species...
the same goes for donkeys and horses, as well as horses and zebras.

Dogs, on the other hand, evolved from Wolf ancestors (and yes... there are still wolves)-- the two can still mate and produce fertile offspring, hence dogs are a subspecies of wolf... they are not a separate species. If you look at human and chimp chromosomes you can see exactly what the big change was between us and our common ancestor... which lead us to be unable to produce offspring with each other. It was the fusion of two chromosomes... we can SEE it. I know nothing is enough to make a creationist believe, but scientists have already gone way beyond that. the same tests that are used to determine paternity and forensic testing are also useful in telling how closely any two life forms are related and when they last shared an ancestor. We can see what was passed on and what changed in our billions of base pairs that code the encyclopedia for life.

And I wish you'd answer me regarding Behe and his concession that humans and apes share a common ancestor. The evidence is overwhelming. We see new strains all the time in single celled organisms-- that's speciation itself. It would be as ridiculous to see speciation in animals with huge genomes because it doesn't happen in a single generation (except in the bible where god poofs things into existence and puts them on an ark.) That would be like asking for tape measure proof of the dimensions of our planet. Creationists always obfuscate and ask for the impossible, because their goal is not to understand what scientists know. They insult scientists while seemingly unaware of their vast ignorance and confirmation bias... and so science goes on and ignores the crazies.

You have the opportunity to learn the facts or wallow in your ignorance thinking you know the facts, but not having a clue. Get your science from scientists, not primitive texts.

Evolution may be a fact, but you still haven't refuted Milton's critique of Boxhorn.

 

[articulett]

Evolution may be a fact, but you still haven't refuted Milton's critique of Boxhorn.

I think all the major scientists in the world would find that Milton has roundly been refuted. Speciation HAS been observed. Hybrids come from separate species. They are sterile. I just don't think you understand enough science to understand how he's just playing a semantic game. But that is all creationists have--obfuscating semantic games.... and what else are you going to use when there are no facts in support of your alternative creation story?

 

[Oppressed]

I feel that this thread should really be titled “What evidence is there that evolution was directed by intelligent oversight and control”.

I don’t believe there is any evidence of this. Not the slightest, tiniest bit.

But I also believe there is overwhelming evidence that evolution has a natural ordered design to it because of the fundamental laws of physics which dictate how our very existence works.

How anyone can look at the result of evolution and examine the tremendously complex natural ordered design of DNA and the process of growing full complex living structures which include Humans can say evolution does not have designed order to it.

But as for evidence of an intelligence supernatural being overseeing and manipulating the process, I know of absolutely no evidence at all. Well, not credible evidence that is.

 

[articulett]

I feel that this thread should really be titled “What evidence is there that evolution was directed by intelligent oversight and control”.

I don’t believe there is any evidence of this. Not the slightest, tiniest bit.

But I also believe there is overwhelming evidence that evolution has a natural ordered design to it because of the fundamental laws of physics which dictate how our very existence works.

How anyone can look at the result of evolution and examine the tremendously complex natural ordered design of DNA and the process of growing full complex living structures which include Humans can say evolution does not have designed order to it.

But as for evidence of an intelligence supernatural being overseeing and manipulating the process, I know of absolutely no evidence at all. Well, not credible evidence that is.

I agree very much. I think once you understand how natural selection increases the "winners" exponentially, and culls the losers so we never see evidence of all the failed mutations, you can really get a sense of how things can appear designed, and it gives you a good framework for asking questions as to what drove particular features and why. The various life forms and the environment drive the evolution of each other...with specialization becoming one of natural selections many "tricks"...

 

[Meadmaker]

I feel that this thread should really be titled “What evidence is there that evolution was directed by intelligent oversight and control”.

Except that that would be an entirely different question.

Some people don't find the actual question that mijo asked to be very significant. In fact, if you go back to about page 9 or thereabouts, you will find that mijo didn't find the question that he asked to be very significant. To me, the interesting question is why some people think that when he asked his question, so many people figured he must have been asking a different question, such as the one that you posed.

 

[articulett]

Except that that would be an entirely different question.

Some people don't find the actual question that mijo asked to be very significant. In fact, if you go back to about page 9 or thereabouts, you will find that mijo didn't find the question that he asked to be very significant. To me, the interesting question is why some people think that when he asked his question, so many people figured he must have been asking a different question, such as the one that you posed.

Because no intelligent people would assume that he was really just asking "what is the evidence that evolution is not "of or related to a probability distribution"?-- Moreover, he claimed he was curious as to why Dawkins, et. al. call natural selection "not random"... but he still does not understand, nor do you understand why Dawkins and all people of respectability in biology will say that the answer to Mijo's question is "natural selection"... but of course no one would guess that he's using a loose definition of random that appears in no peer reviewed texts but seems very similar to known creationist obfuscation. And no one who wants to be clear calls anything with any randomness a "random process". But creationists sure do.

 

[autumn1971]

The title of the thread says it all. I understand that evolution is a process directed through natural selection, but, as I understand it, natural selection is based on the probability, not certainty, of an organism with a specific "fitness complement" (i.e., the set of genes that contribute to its survival and reproduction relative to others of the same species). An individual whose fitness complement confers a greater chance of survival and reproduction is only more likely to survive and reproduce that one with a fitness complement that a lesser chance, but the survival and reproduction is not determined to such an extent that all the individuals with a specific fitness complement don not survive and reproduce. Thus, it is possible for one individual with a certain fitness complement to survive while another individual with the same fitness complement doesn't.

I only ask this, because I am thoroughly disappointed in the evidence that I have received from the posters in this thread. No-one to my knowledge has either explained how a process that operates on probability is non-random or directed me toward a resource that does. They all seem to be more interested, as is most of the literature on the internet that doesn't specifically deal with non-random genetic processes such as mutation and unequal cross over, in refuting the creationist straw man that holds that organisms in their current state are far too complex to have arisen by chance.

I would appreciate it if someone could point me toward some literature (especially of the peer-reviewed kind)that explain clearly and concisely why evolution is non-random.

Any biology journal.
Any chemistry journal.
Any medical journal.
The physics journals might be a little harder to make a definite inference from, but them too.
Any geological journal.
Any paleontology journal.
I hesitate to add mathmatical journals, as evidence indicates that you are unable to comprehend that there are subtler maths than those your calculator can do.

To wit, look anywhere that is even vaugely intelligent, and you will find evidence.

 

[autumn1971]

"Anything that involves probability" is a good definition. It is the basis for all of probability theory and statistics. It is you who thinks that it is meaningless because you claim that it describes everything. You are obfuscating because because you have used every other definition of "random" to try to refute me when I have explicitly about the only definition I have been using.

You are not possibly trying to be serious when you say that "anything that involves probability" is random. By your insane and indefensible position, everything is random!
The best you can do at this point is claim that God is randomness, and politely excuse yourself from the adult's table.

 

[articulett]

You are not possibly trying to be serious when you say that "anything that involves probability" is random. By your insane and indefensible position, everything is random!
The best you can do at this point is claim that God is randomness, and politely excuse yourself from the adult's table.

That's exactly what he's doing... and pretending it's a rigorous and academically valid thing to do. He ignored peer reviewed papers and top experts in the field as well as multiple people on this forum to conclude that evolution really is random. He just thinks Dawkins and the peer reviewed papers are wrong and that he's right even though he has no ability to explain the exponential increase of order due to the copying of the best copiers and the elimination of the worst.

To him the order is the same kind of order as a tornado in a junkyard producing a 747-- or even just the same kind of order that gives a tornado it's spiral shape...

It's hopeless... this is exactly what Behe does. Mijo has worn out all effort of those who would answer his question because he has his answer-- evolution IS random and that is that. Hence, most people have given up and put him on ignore. And per his loose definition of random, evolution IS random... no matter how uninformative or misleading that may be... and yes... just about everything else is too. The semantic games he uses are interesting, but par for the course for those who aim to obfuscate.

Do not bother trying to get him to concede that he has a poor understanding and conveyance of evolution. He cannot compute. All these pages... not a single concession... he's the same as on page one. Evolution is random to Mijo and Dawkins and all the other scientists quoted are wrong. (He did quote some scientists but you have to really do some semantic twisting to infer that they are saying anything close to "evolution is random"-- they aren't... but to mijo-- anything involving probability or the word stochastic is random-- Really! And so is anything containing any randomness.)

 

[Oppressed]

I had a thought about evolution that I have not read anywhere and I do not know if it has and evidentiary support.

I believe that with Humans, breeding through a large gene pool results in low mutations and thus low probability of evolutionary change or at least that such change become very slow. But, if the breeding gene pool becomes very small, the result is high rate of mutations thus a corresponding high rate of evolutionary change.

I think there may be an underlying mechanism which, when it detects the gene pool is very low, it begins higher levels of mutating in order to achieve a higher gene pool. Since this is a quite risky business, most of the mutations would likely fail. This would likely be true across all species.

Anyway, I don’t know if I am explaining this very well or if there is supportive evidence for this. I certainly have not read anything about this.

I have not done an in-depth study of evolution but maybe some of the people here have. Has anything like this been considered?

 

[Meadmaker]

I had a thought about evolution that I have not read anywhere and I do not know if it has and evidentiary support.

I believe that with Humans, breeding through a large gene pool results in low mutations and thus low probability of evolutionary change or at least that such change become very slow. But, if the breeding gene pool becomes very small, the result is high rate of mutations thus a corresponding high rate of evolutionary change.

I think there may be an underlying mechanism which, when it detects the gene pool is very low, it begins higher levels of mutating in order to achieve a higher gene pool. Since this is a quite risky business, most of the mutations would likely fail. This would likely be true across all species.

Anyway, I don’t know if I am explaining this very well or if there is supportive evidence for this. I certainly have not read anything about this.

I have not done an in-depth study of evolution but maybe some of the people here have. Has anything like this been considered?

There is no underlying mechanism that "changes the mutation rate". However, there has been an observation that a mutation, if it occurs, is more likely to spread through a small, isolated, population than through a large, stable, population.

Look up "punctuated equilibrium".

Warning: If you want to understand the mathematics of why this might happen, it helps if you've studied probability theory.