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Evolution answers

justintime said:
I provided a link where even the theory of the origin of life is questionable raised by a world leading evolutionary biologist Dean Keyon.
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World leading? In what way is or was he world leading?
This is the guy that wrote Of Pandas and People, the book that was famously pulled apart in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
 
Evolution is a scientific fact. Life on earth is in a state of evolutionary change. Evolutionary algorithms are often used in computer aided designs.

All you need are:
- A variable population,
- Selection and
- Reproduction with some errors
and you have evolution regardless of the medium.

If it is being suggested in the OP that evolution does not account for the origin of life then that is technically correct since the conditions necessary for evolution did not exist prior to the existence of living things.
 
Dissolution said:
World leading? In what way is or was he world leading?
This is the guy that wrote Of Pandas and People, the book that was famously pulled apart in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.
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Even if he was, it's irrelevant. Challanging experts is something scientists specialize in. Citing Dawkins, Darwin, Keyon, or anyone else as if we were incapable of arguing with such big names demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand what science is.
 
Brian-M said:
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What exactly do you mean by "missing link"? If you're talking about transitional fossils between humans and apes, then there are lots of confirmed "missing links"
...
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I'm glad to see someone finally ask this question (though I seriously doubt that justintime will be able to come up with any sensible answer for it). If you're going to claim that science lacks an evidence that you want to see in support of a theory, you should damn well be able to define exactly, and in terms of that theory, what it is you expect to see. Way too many times (and I suspect that, if justintime tries to answer this question, it won't be any different) the definition ends up being something along the lines of Kirk Cameron's idiotic "crocoduck." That particular strawman betrays such a misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory actually predicts that it's not even wrong. No fossil ever found has been or will be half-one-thing-half-another like a crocoduck- it will be its own species in transition between others. As a matter of fact, it's not "evolutionists" who need to find a crocoduck, it's the creationists, because such a thing would disprove evolution- it would be just the miracle they need to show that goddidit.


Another basic misunderstanding that creationists have of the TOE is that they seem to see it as a normative process; and, by that misunderstanding, in competition with god, who is "normative" personified (actually, I guess, "deified"). It's not; evolution is a process that has outcomes only, no goals- man is no more an aim of evolution than a hurricane is an aim of weather processes. And it's this misunderstanding that leads to the natter about "losing genes," as opposed to "gaining genes," proving that evolution can't work; that's only so on the assumption that evolution is only possible in the one normative direction of "gaining." Actual, non-normative change is only change, no matter how it comes about it.
 
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Akri said:
They're scientists, not Jesus. They've made no claim to infallibility, nor is there any reason to hold them to such a standard.


The irony....
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Amazing, isn't it? The thing that makes any science strong- its open-ended self-corrective nature- is the thing that, in the creationist mind, makes this one weak. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that it's also the major difference between science and religion.

Though I'm not sure why, if justintime sees this as a weakness in science, he feels so compelled to have creationism aspire to be a science.
 
justintime said:
But that is exactly the point. Evolutionary Theories are full of retractions, false hypothesis and misleading conclusions. There were so many missing links discovered but none confirmed. Someone once said micro-evolution ( Variations within a species) has some scientific basis because it accepts the differentiation and diversification of species. The rest is all speculation and conjectures.
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There are a number of strange anomalies in nature that are explained elegantly by evolution theory and not at all by any competing ideas. The length of the laryngeal nerve in the giraffe is a good example.

What is your theory that explains these anomalies better?
 
aggle-rithm said:
There are a number of strange anomalies in nature that are explained elegantly by evolution theory and not at all by any competing ideas. The length of the laryngeal nerve in the giraffe is a good example.

What is your theory that explains these anomalies better?
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Another one closer to home is the vas deferens in humans. Simply put, they go the long way 'round, something that no deigner would do. For that matter, any semi-competant designer would realize that placing such an important cargo in such a weak and vulnerable spot is a bad idea. Certainly after the first catastrophic failure.

Other examples include the lack of gills in whales and dolphins, the hips in snakes, fangs in horses, the geographic distribution of any organism, ring species...the list is, for all practical purposes, endless.

I believe Darwin had a list of anomolies that evolution explained in his book; if not, finding such lists is trivial, as every evolutionary biology textbook ever produced has at least one chapter devoted to it.
 
pantsorama said:
How many populations have ever survived being reduced to two?
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Depends on the species. Fruit flies might be able to--it's speculated that very small numbers of fruit flies made it from one Hawaiian island to the next, so each species probably arose from a very small initial population. That said, I can't think of anything that's survived truly only having two members of the species.
 
pantsorama said:
How many populations have ever survived being reduced to two?
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Hypothetically, the Komodo dragon might be able to survive with a population reduced to one...
Wikipedia said:
The Komodo dragon, which normally reproduces sexually, has also been found able to reproduce asexually by parthenogenesis. A case has been documented of a Komodo dragon switching back to sexual reproduction after a known parthenogenetic event. It has been postulated that this gives an advantage to colonization of islands, where a single female could theoretically have male offspring asexually, then switch to sexual reproduction with them to maintain a higher level of genetic diversity than asexual reproduction alone can generate.
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Scientists will take credit for anything and everything. Unfortunately not many accidental discoveries in evolution have been dramatic.One can even say most of evidence for evolution were discovered accidentally. Fossils found in Canada, Middle-east, China contradict the Out of Africa theory and even suggestions that migration occurred at times quite different from the original theory.
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I'm probably going to regret writing this, but, please, tell me more about these Canadian fossils.

:D
 
justintime said:
Evolution is not a science it is a theory...
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This leads me to one of two conclusions:

1) You are a troll, saying outrageous things just to get a responses, or...

2) You honestly do not know what a scientific theory is.

Normally signified with a capital T, The Theory of Evolution ranks with...

Germ Theory, Quantum Theory, Gravitational Theory, the Special Theory of Relativity, and so on.

Or are these also not science in your book?

Please edify yourself here so we can all speak the same language, as it were:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory
 
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