"Dead Animals Don't Evolve"?

[John Jones]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I have had a running discussion with an IDer. She seems to understand nothing about modern evolution theory, and ends every post with the phrase "Dead animals don't evolve."

I'm not trying to sway her from her creationist beliefs. I just call her when she misrepresents the theory of evolution, as I understand it. She seems to think Lamarckism is the latest scientific theory going.

I'm at a loss to understand what "dead animals don't evolve" even means.

Can anyone enlighten me?

 

[macdoc]

Do you not have better things to do with your limited time on the planet than try and unravel of the mysteries of the mind of a religious idjit??

 

[John Jones]

As a matter of fact, I don't.

 

[madurobob]

Its pretty simple, really. X would kill an animal not suited to X. If an animal without proper design (wings for flight, air bladder for plumbing the depths of the ocean) encounters X then the animal is killed. Thus evolution cannot possibly account for the design of the animal that allows it to survive/thrive in X, there simply must be an intelligent designer.

But, more succinctly, what macdoc said.

 

[knusper]

She seems to believe that evolution is about nature correcting mistakes by quickly redesigning designs that were bad enough to let a creature die?

 

[Prometheus]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I have has a running discussion with an IDer. She seems to understand nothing about modern evolution theory, and ends every post with the phrase "Dead animals don't evolve."

I'm not trying to sway her from her creationist beliefs. I just call her when she misrepresents the theory of evolution, as I understand it. She seems to think Lamarckism is the latest scientific theory going.

I'm at a loss to understand what "dead animals don't evolve" even means.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Here is one version of the IDiots' argument.

It's basically a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution which begs the question as to intelligent design.

It typically doesn't help enlighten hardcore IDiots to point out that live animals don't evolve either.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Purely a guess, but maybe it's meant to be a Creationist argument about the alleged inability of evolution to explain mimicry. ETA: Similar arguments for warning coloration in animals that are dangerous for predators to eat.

Another guess is just the very general misunderstanding Creationists have that evolution claims that individual organisms do the changing. I've heard them say something like, put a fish in an aquarium and wait to see if it turns into something else. In fact, the theory of evolution by natural selection does not conflict with the observation that every individual organism dies the same species it was when its life began.

Similarly, I recall a Creationist (sorry--I use the term Creationist since I consider ID to be a bogus term used to repackage Creationism in a failed attempt to persuade the courts that it's not a religious doctrine) comparing the fossil record to a movie with many of the frames of film missing. He said consider one frame with a picture of a candle on a table, and another frame where you have an electric lamp on the same table. You don't conclude that the candle turned into an electric lamp. Again, evolution does not predict that any organism will change species in its lifetime. The variation that natural selection acts on is inter-generational.

Just curious, have you asked the guy what that remark in his sig is about?

 

[Foster Zygote]

How curious.

It might be best to come right out and ask what exactly she means by that statement.

If madurobob is correct, then the obvious answer is that X doesn't always result in death for an individual without a certain adaptation. X simply makes it more likely that individuals with a certain adaptation will pass on the genes for said adaptation to the next generation. Thus the genes for the favorable adaptation will increase in frequency in subsequent generations.

 

[madurobob]

How curious.

It might be best to come right out and ask what exactly she means by that statement.

If madurobob is correct, then the obvious answer is that X doesn't always result in death for an individual without a certain adaptation. X simply makes it more likely that individuals with a certain adaptation will pass on the genes for said adaptation to the next generation. Thus the genes for the favorable adaptation will increase in frequency in subsequent generations.

Yup. And, as Prometheus said, its a fundamental (ha!) misconception of how evolution works. No individual animal, living or dead, evolves. Groups evolve, species evolve, not individuals.

 

[Myriad]

Yeah I've encountered this framework of misconception before. The same person is also likely to believe that every caterpillar evolves into a butterfly (while the theory of evolution fails to adequately explain how).

What madurobob said. Individuals don't evolve. Populations evolve.

Respectfully,
Myriad

ETA: You might also try countering with, "Of course dead animals evolve. If they didn't, zombie cats wouldn't be able to fly." It is every bit as likely to convince your correspondent as the real answer.

 

[John Jones]

...Just curious, have you asked the guy what that remark in his sig is about?

Yes. The only reply I get is that I'm too stupid to see the evidence that's right in front of my face.

When I ask about the evidence, she becomes abusive and says: "The same evidence I've presented time and again, and you're too blind too see."

I'm not trying to convince her of anything, I just won't let straw-man representations of evolution stand without challenge. There might be fence-sitters lurking who would be taken in by this 'logic'.

This is not a creationist forum, BTW.

She seems to think that evolution requires individuals of one form to consciously desire evolving to another specific form.

Anyway, I just thought maybe someone else had heard the 'dead animals don't evolve' argument, and could explain it.

It sounds like a bunch of muddled thinking to me.

 

[Denver]

Perhaps some visual aids would help your friend.

I think you should sit down with that person, and draw some pictures, showing an ancestor, with layers of descendants, some with new attributes. Show how some of those attributes (or lack thereof) allowed some to die sooner without producing many descendants, and how other attributes (or lack thereof) allowed some to survive longer and in turn produce more descendants.

Go generation by generation. If they still don't get it, go another generation, and so on. Wait until you're in it a ways before mentioning that these generational layers may be not just a few like you're drawing, but may takes hundreds or thousands to produce a change significant to survival (showing that some changes may effectively do nothing at all).

Maybe the visual, step-by-step approach will be useful to your friend's understanding

 

[Foster Zygote]

Yes. The only reply I get is that I'm too stupid to see the evidence that's right in front of my face.

When I ask about the evidence, she becomes abusive and says: "The same evidence I've presented time and again, and you're too blind too see."

In other words: she's got nothin'. This sort of evasion is so transparent that I'm amazed that people who use it think that they're fooling anyone.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

That just seems like a stupid thing for even an anti-evolutionist to say. Dead hair doesn't grow either, and all the evidence you need for that can be gathered from the floor of your local barber shop. But that doesn't demonstrate a single thing in regards to hair growth.

 

[jasonpatterson]

This statement is so stupid, as it is phrased, that I figured google was the only hope in finding out a meaning. I searched for it and didn't find much of anything (this thread is the first link.) I did see this tidbit about anglerfish (a bizarre, super deep-sea, monster fish thing, in case you don't know what it is) that includes the sentence. As stated earlier, it seems to be saying that an anglerfish couldn't have evolved from a surface fish because no surface fish could survive the conditions that an anglerfish lives in.

Basically, it's a statement made by someone who has no idea about how evolution works, or more probably, someone who is willingly breaking the ninth commandment to not bear false witness, i.e. lying. It would be fun to patiently explain how evolution explains this type of situation then inform her that continuing to make a blatantly incorrect statement to advance her argument is lying and thus a sin.

 

[madurobob]

She seems to think that evolution requires individuals of one form to consciously desire evolving to another specific form.

Yes, seen that before, too. Here is another link from the same series Prometheus linked to, this one about Giraffes:

We all know that dead animals don't evolve anything, even though evolution demands its creatures realize they need an improvement before that improvement begins to evolve.

That's a grade-school level strawman right there... and probably similar to what your creationist foil is spouting. She clearly has no understanding of evolution but what she's learned from links like the one above. You could do the noble thing and try to educate her, but she's likely not interested. But, you can help prevent her filling other young minds on that forum with such drivel.

(ETA: in that link, just change the number at the end - "MOGC 01.htm", "MOGC 02.htm", etc... to see lots more complete misunderstanding/misrepresentation of evolution)

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Yes. The only reply I get is that I'm too stupid to see the evidence that's right in front of my face.

When I ask about the evidence, she becomes abusive and says: "The same evidence I've presented time and again, and you're too blind too see."

I'm not trying to convince her of anything, I just won't let straw-man representations of evolution stand without challenge. There might be fence-sitters lurking who would be taken in by this 'logic'.

This is not a creationist forum, BTW.

She seems to think that evolution requires individuals of one form to consciously desire evolving to another specific form.

Anyway, I just thought maybe someone else had heard the 'dead animals don't evolve' argument, and could explain it.

It sounds like a bunch of muddled thinking to me.

Oh, pfff... "right in front of your face..." That's a whole lot of tap-dance dodging right there. Said person is campaigning, not arguing. I would've walked away at that point, muttering complaints about people who strike poses of understanding without having sufficient knowldge to actually explain themselves.

Then again, you may have your own quite legitimate reasons to engage with this person. So don't take my write off as being something that applies to you; if you think you can give her a decent argument, go for it. If nothing else, passionate debate helps warm the blood during these cold winter months.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes. The only reply I get is that I'm too stupid to see the evidence that's right in front of my face.

When I ask about the evidence, she becomes abusive and says: "The same evidence I've presented time and again, and you're too blind too see."

I guess my response (after first considering whether I even want to continue conversing with this person) is to submit the idea that her response is just a dodge. Even if the argument is self-evident, she should be able to articulate the argument. The fact that she won't might just be a cover-up for the fact that she can't.

Until she can articulate otherwise, you could tell her, you will operate on the assumption that she cannot, and consider the un-expressed argument to be invalid (or non-existent).

This is not a creationist forum, BTW.

Call me cynical, but I operate under the assumption that someone advocating ID is a Creationist until I see evidence to the contrary.

"cdesign proponentist" is pretty damning evidence.

She seems to think that evolution requires individuals of one form to consciously desire evolving to another specific form.

Yes, that sounds like some version of Lamarckism. (BTW, your tag on that word is typoed.)

Anyway, I'm just thought maybe someone else had heard the 'dead animals don't evolve' argument, and could explain it.

Check out the Creationist arguments about warning coloration and mimicry of same and similar stuff. They claim evolution can't explain how a trait that can only be effective if the predator eats the prey animal could evolve.

In fact, when Bates first described mimicry like this, he offered it as evidence of selection as opposed to Lamarckism. If your person thinks evolution=Lamarckism, this could be the kind of error she's thinking of.

 

[John Jones]

That just seems like a stupid thing for even an anti-evolutionist to say. Dead hair doesn't grow either, and all the evidence you need for that can be gathered from the floor of your local barber shop. But that doesn't demonstrate a single thing in regards to hair growth.

She's typically a poster of very stupid arguments. I'm not attempting to convince her of anything. She's incapable of understanding.

I'm loathe to let her 'arguments' stand unchallenged lest well-meaning, but uninformed people take them as fact.

She has made this 'no dead animals evolve' statement so consistently that I thought there must be some published author of that argument. She couldn't have come up with it on her own.

 

[John Jones]

Yes, that sounds like some version of Lamarckism. (BTW, your tag on that word is typoed.)

How do I correct the spelling in that tag?

Edit to Add: Nevermind. I think I fixed it.