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Evolution

Nope my case is not put down in the slightest. You did not counter any of my assertions with anything approaching a fact. You hint at experiments. I ask what experiments because if there was an experiment that proves evolution it would have been headline news. It wasn't.

Well the discovery of the DNA molecule was pretty big news in it's day

New species? Besides inserting glow worm DNA to make potato plants glow in the dark - which proves nothing because genetic engineering is not evolution at work. It is man fiddling with things he shouldn't. Hasn't happened despite gazillions of generations of breeding fruit flies.

Thanks for following up the hints 'Fiddling' in this context being working with DNA which would be a waste of time if DNA didn't pass on inherited characteristics. Tell me what do you think DNA is...?

Yup its called the massive hole in the theory.

We don't know everything about the creation of life and Evolution but what we do know is solid science which only increases with every paper.

The Theory of Evolution described the function of DNA.

DNA was discovered as a consequence of the The Theory of Evolution

DNA is now for the 21st Century is now a toolbox.
 
It's only a hole in the theory if the theory is meant to explain it in the first place. The theory of evolution is about how life develops and diversifies once it exists, not how it occurs (hell, it's in the title of Darwin's book - The Origin of Species). That's all it's ever claimed to do. Creationists thinking they've undermined it by pointing out that it doesn't explain the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, or gravity, or morality, or why birds suddenly appear (oh wait, it does do that) just show that they miss the point and can't conceive of any explanation that's more complex than the one in the Bible. There's that irony again: it's not biologists who have talked the theory of evolution up to be THE EVERYTHING THEORY - it's creationists.
 
All science must be demonstrable and provable. Evolution is neither. Even the most vehemently faithful supporter of evolution will admit that evolution can not be observed to be happening.
Which, again, is quite simply not true, as has already been pointed out to you several times. Not only do we have tons of evidence of it having happened, in the form of speciation, fossils, DNA etc, but we have observed it happening. Why do you think we need new flu vaccines every few years? Why are there bacteria that can feed off man-made materials that didn't exist a few hundred years ago? The current fad among creationists does seem to be to simply shout "THERE IS NO EVIDENCE AND THERE NEVER WAS" until they go blue in the face - I suppose that's all that remains once you've spent 150 years trying to disprove something and failing every single time - but reality, fortunately, doesn't work that way.

(even Darwin admitted he might have got a few things wrong at the end of his life)
Again, such as? I've read his autobiography and I can't recall any statements of that nture.

It has so vehemently and with such religious fervour defended evolution as THE only scientific alternative to all the religious mumbo-jumbo about creation it can't gracefully back down and admit it believes as big a load of old cobblers as any one else does.
This argument is ridiculous. Why would people who have to work with it deliberately continue to use something that doesn't work, knowing they'd get nothing but fame and fortune if they disproved it? If you look at physics, for instance, it's been turned upside-down several times in the last 125 years or so alone. There have been dozens of scientists who have taken great pleasure in pointing out where Newton, and later Einstein, got it wrong (and proved them wrong as well). If the theory of evolution is so easily disproved, and in fact was never proved in the first place as the current party line seems to be, you'd think at least one of all the hundreds of thousands of scientists who've worked with it and used it as a model for 150 years would step up and say "Look, here's where Darwin got it wrong, give me my Nobel Prize and a house next to Stephen Hawking's."

The lack of any evidence of it actually happening is one objection.
It would be if there wasn't lots of evidence, true. Since there is, it's... well, still an objection, just a completely unfounded one.

The Law of Entropy is another.
There's no such thing as The Law Of Entropy. Are you thinking of the second law of thermodynamics, which in layman's terms says that entropy in a closed system always increases? It doesn't apply for the very simple reason that the Earth isn't a closed system, as it's continuously supplied with energy from a helpful outside source, which was discovered (and occasionally mistaken for a god) even by the most primitive tribes. You know, the sun. (Though the continued speciation of life could, in a non-physicist way, be seen as a form of entropy.)

The third really simple objection any one with can come up with is all the living fossils. If evolution was happening all the time continuously albeit slowly over millenia so excuse us if we can't actually observe it happening, how come it managed to turn a complete blind eye to certain species that have remained exactly the same as they are in the fossil record millions of years ago?
Ah yes, the "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys" argument. Same reason there are still Brits even though some of them emigrated to America: evolution doesn't state that every species always keeps changing - it says life evolves to fit the conditions it lives in. If a species surroundings don't change, there's no reason for the species to change.

Fourth objection - where are the transitional species? Either living today or in the fossil record. Just ONE?
How about thousands? Name one you'd like to see and I'll post a picture of it. I already did, earlier in the thread; you may have missed it. Here's a helpful list from wikipedia to get you started.

Even homo sapiens sapiens just appeared on the scene with no 'missing link'.
awww.talkorigins.org_faqs_comdesc_images_hominids2.jpg

Aah but wait, says the person with a little knowledge, what about the Cambrian explosion.
Which lasted for 50 million years. Which is a little bit longer than we've been influencing our environment.

Foucault's Pendulum says the simplest explanation must be right.
Are you thinking of Occam's Razor? Foucault's pendulum is something entirely different. And even Occam's Razor doesn't mean that "the simplest fairy tale is always right"; there still has to be some kind of proof. You said earlier that we could just google arguments against evolution; the problem with that, of course, is that like I said earlier, creationists have been very creative over the last 150 years - which means that you have lots of different, and completely incompatible, arguments against evolution. None of which have stood up so far. You have the fundamentalists who claim the Bible is absolutely 100% literally true, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that men have fewer ribs than women. (Talk about ignoring evidence.) You have the ones who spout scientific-sounding arguments about "irreducable complexity" and "macroevolution" and other terms made up specifically to invent a barrier that they have never proven exists. You have the "intelligent design" people who claim everything was created by... SOMEONE, who may have been the Abrahamic god and may have been Ridley Scott, WE SIMPLY CANNOT KNOW AND THEREFORE MUSTN'T. And you have the outright kooks who claim God's perfect creation is proven by the banana fitting perfectly in the palm of a man's hand (which you'd think would make them reconsider their opinions of gay sex, but...) If they can't even agree on something as basic as the age of the earth, how are they supposed to come up with a more workable theory?
 
Why would people who have to work with it deliberately continue to use something that doesn't work, knowing they'd get nothing but fame and fortune if they disproved it?

Actually that is not true at all. People who say anything against evolution in any shape or form are persecuted and removed from their jobs. You may not suggest holes / counter-arguments to evolution at any level in education either.

They continue to use it because A. there is incredible social pressure to do so B. there is financial pressure to do so - try getting funding to work on an alternative theory

"macroevolution"

Macro-evolution is not a creationists word - it is the word people who support evolution made up to explain away the fact that you can't see evolution happening. Because you can't see evolution happening but you can see survival of the SPECIES - they explained the dichotomy by splitting evolution into two parts. Micro-evolution within a species ie adaptation / survival of the fittest is observable but macro-evolution one species evolving into another isn't.

As I said multiplicitous experiments with fruit flies attempting to show how survival of the fittest / adaptive changes result in a change in the species have failed. De flies dey still flies. De sheeps dey still sheeps. De wolves dey still wolves. FYI you can breed dogs with wolves ie the genes are still the same. It is interesting to look at dogs and wolves. After tens of thousands of years and all the variation we have encouraged in the species dogs are genetically still wolves and all you have is an example of the incredible variation possible whilst still preserving the species. NO evolution! No new species! Just preservation.

Survival of the fittest contradicts the premise of evolution as well because mutations are rarely better / stronger / faster. The mutated and weak get killed off quick and don't pass on their defective genes. And is once again a wonderful proof of the mechanism to preserve the strength of the species.

Did you know that in any given population, with any given disease, 25% of the population will prove to be resistant to it. Truly there are incredible mechanisms built into the world to PRESERVE THE SPECIES!

I have no argument with preservation of the species - there is plenty of clear evidence of it all the time. All the examples you give of mutations etc are proof thereof. It is when there is an attempt to extrapolate that to mean evolution of species from one to another that the whole thing falls flat on its face.

New viruses are not evolution BTW as a cold virus remains a cold virus. Again I have to point out there is no evidence to support the idea that species evolve into better and more complex species. Even evil viruses have a built in mechanism to preserve the species (if you can think of viruses as species). But a new virus is not a new species. A new cold virus is still a cold virus. A new form of TB is still TB, it isn't suddenly cholera or diphtheria. (And yes I know those are all bacteria. Same principle applies. Even the bacteria don't change into new species.)

The second law of thermodynamics is also known as the law of entropy. FYI the closed bottle of gas that obeys the second law of thermodynamics also has the exact same amount of insolation as the rest of the planet, so the notion that incoming solar radiation somehow results in evolution managing to contradict the law of entropy is kind of a stretch. Especially as you consider that exposure to radiation tends to increase disorder in cells rather rapidly.

As I said the arguments really are laughable sometimes.
 
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Well let's go back to wolves and dogs, wolves physically are very similar but dog breeds are very different. What do you think is causing this?
 
HUMANS! But they are still all wolves :) Genetic variations preserve the species!

And wolves don't all the look the same.
 
OMG seriously???? What didn't I answer about that question with the statement that genetic change preserves the species? Adaptation preserves the species. Genes preserve the species. DNA preserves the species.
 
Just tell me what humans are doing to cause changes, it's a simple question. Surely you must have an answer if you believe in evidence.
 
Actually that is not true at all. People who say anything against evolution in any shape or form are persecuted and removed from their jobs. You may not suggest holes / counter-arguments to evolution at any level in education either.
Examples? And again, assuming that's true, why would that bother them if they'd become multi-millionaires?

They continue to use it because A. there is incredible social pressure to do so B. there is financial pressure to do so - try getting funding to work on an alternative theory
Again, it worked fine for Einstein, Planck, et al. What's the fundamental difference that makes it work in physics (and medicine, and engineering, and... pretty much every single science out there over the last 15o years) but not biology?

Macro-evolution is not a creationists word - it is the word people who support evolution made up to explain away the fact that you can't see evolution happening.
[Citation needed]. And for the fifth time, it has been observed happening. Why on earth would they make up a nonsense word to explain why something doesn't happen while simultaneously saying it does happen? And again, since you're still agreeing that evolution occurs but only up to a point, what is the mechanism by which a species stops evolving the second they come close to being a new species? (For the record, dogs and wolves are genetically different, and are defined as separate species - as are, for instance, cows and water buffaloes, and mouflon and sheep. That all happened over the last 10,000 years or so. Now, imagine what would happen in 10 million years.)

Did you know that in any given population, with any given disease, 25% of the population will prove to be resistant to it. Truly there are incredible mechanisms built into the world to PRESERVE THE SPECIES!
I'd like a source on that number, especially since there have been plenty of examples of diseases wiping out entire populations, but yes, there are mechanisms built in. It's called "adaptation". Which, through the magic of DNA, is passed on to future generations. Which is one of the major proofs of... can you guess? It rhymes with "plevolution".

Again I have to point out there is no evidence to support the idea that species evolve into better and more complex species.
And again, I linked you to lots of examples of it. I even included a picture so you wouldn't have to read. Exactly which of all those examples, that can be readily observed in any well-stocked museum of natural history, are you claiming don't exist?

Even evil viruses have a built in mechanism to preserve the species (if you can think of viruses as species).
Where was the HIV virus before the early 80s? (And viruses can be "evil" now? I thought that was a concept limited to creatures with free will?)

FYI the closed bottle of gas that obeys the second law of thermodynamics also has the exact same amount of insolation as the rest of the planet,
Except for being, y'know, a closed bottle.

so the notion that incoming solar radiation somehow results in evolution
I never said it "results" in evolution. I didn't bring it up; you did. I said that constantly adding energy to a system makes it not closed, which invalidates your argument that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution. It's one of the factors that makes evolution (and indeed, life itself, regardless of how it evolves) possible, not the one and only direct cause. If the earth was a closed system where the second law of thermodynamics applied, life wouldn't be able to exist under any circumstances.

Especially as you consider that exposure to radiation tends to increase disorder in cells rather rapidly.
A complete lack of radiation - ie if there were no sunlight - would increase it even further. Well, it would have made the existence of cells impossible to start with.

As I said the arguments really are laughable sometimes.
Well, we're in agreement there. :) (Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you exist. There's no proof of that, after all.)
 
It's only a hole in the theory if the theory is meant to explain it in the first place. The theory of evolution is about how life develops and diversifies once it exists, not how it occurs (hell, it's in the title of Darwin's book - The Origin of Species). That's all it's ever claimed to do. Creationists thinking they've undermined it by pointing out that it doesn't explain the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, or gravity, or morality, or why birds suddenly appear (oh wait, it does do that) just show that they miss the point and can't conceive of any explanation that's more complex than the one in the Bible. There's that irony again: it's not biologists who have talked the theory of evolution up to be THE EVERYTHING THEORY - it's creationists.

Well I for one fall into that category, because I thought that the origin of life was somehow part of evolutionary theory. I guess I didn't think that through very well. If you remove that burden from evolutionary theory I think it should make it slightly more palatable for people. From bacteria to elephant still seems a pretty tough thing to visualize, but hey, small steps right? (still working on it, but mind is open)
So the real debate in my mind isn't so much an evolutionary debate, but more an Origin of Life debate? Evolution seems to leave plenty of room available for God to have orchestrated it. I've never had much of a problem with specialization and all that stuff, you can see it in all sorts of places. The simple fact that the genetic material has such an amazing ability to adapt built right into it is a pretty wonderful thing.

Regarding the wolf/dog thing, is it possible to breed a wolf from Chihuahuas or do they lose too much genetic information on the way to becoming Chihuahuas? Just curious if the little monster can be bred back into a big one, theoretically, given enough time and effort.
 
It's certainly possible although it would take a while using just chihauhaus. Larger and more robust pups would need to be selected for breeding in order to increase overall size before looking to select more wolf like pups.
 
What if evolution progresses further? Are tentacles, extreme flexibility, and selective hearing in our future?

When Darwin started thinking about evolution the big observation he made was that organisms are adapted to their environments. Humans are different, we adapt the environment to us. This is because we are in possession of the most complex natural structure found on Earth, the human brain. Intelligence was the game changer as a consequence we are the most adaptable creature that has existed yet as far as natural selection is concerned, the least likely to physically change. This situation will continue for as long as we possess intelligence.

That wraps it up for natural selection but not for evolution...

Genetic science is taking off big time. In 2009 in a South Korean laboratory, sea anemone DNA was spliced with that of a dog, the result was a fluorescent dog. Animals that had long ago diverged into entirely different species were genetically speaking successfully blended. As expertise in the manipulation of DNA grows we may end up with designer characteristics that would've seemed impossible when the theory was postulated.
 
So the real debate in my mind isn't so much an evolutionary debate, but more an Origin of Life debate? Evolution seems to leave plenty of room available for God to have orchestrated it.
If you want it to, sure. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were a god; I wouldn't personally tinker with every single species, I'd just build a self-replicating programme that knew how to diagnose and improve itself and then let 'er rip. That's not to say there needs to be a god present, or that it's even likely, just that the origin of life is a separate question and always has been.

Regarding the wolf/dog thing, is it possible to breed a wolf from Chihuahuas or do they lose too much genetic information on the way to becoming Chihuahuas? Just curious if the little monster can be bred back into a big one, theoretically, given enough time and effort.
That's an intriguing question. I suppose it'd depend on how you go about it. If you want to go the old-fashioned route, my guess is that you could, given enough time (and patience, not to mention earplugs and poop-a-scoops, needed to select the toughest and hairiest from millions of little Paris Hilton dogs) breed a creature from a chihuahua that looked like a wolf. It wouldn't be done in a lifetime (it took us 30,000 years of admittedly not very targeted breeding to get from wolf to chihuahua) and wouldn't necessarily be a Canis Lupus Lupus, since it would* be based on a slightly different set of genes** but it would be as close to a wolf as, say, a German sheperd, and much closer related than other animals (say, the Tasmanian tiger) who have evolved naturally to a similar niche as the wolf. That's my guess, at least.

* Assuming you do it entirely by breeding, selecting for appearance and behaviour rather than breaking out the microscope and looking at the actual genes. Alternately, if you have an advanced enough genetics lab, you could simply punch in the genetic code for "wolf" and clone one in five minutes. We're still a ways away from that. And I'd still feel sorry for the chihuahua bitch who had to give birth to a wolf pup.

** The chihuahua didn't lose genes, it simply has genes that have changed over time to produce a slightly different animal. I assume that simply breeding them with each other (rather than breeding them with wolves) wouldn't reverse the change - genes aren't aware of any such concept - but you could create a new change that resulted in a wolf-like creature.
 
just that the origin of life is a separate question and always has been.

REALLY? so evolution does not postulate we evolved from unicellular organisms with no way of actually showing how it happens? And don't quote the flipping 'tree of life' at me. When that is drawn up by the very same people who propound the nonsense how can it be taken seriously? That's like asking a flat earther to draw a map of the world. You can be 100% sure its going to be flat. The origin of the thing makes it automatically suspect.

Tree of Life / Phylogenetic tree, a hypothesis of the order in which evolutionary events are assumed to have occurred.

hypothesis and assumed = evolutionary thumb suck.
 
In chapter 4 of 'God Delusion' Dawkins invoked the anthropic principle for the origin of life. He also acknowledged that it might need to be evoked for the origin of eukaryotic cells and for conciousness because these major developments seemed to be beyond Darwinian natural selection.

Wow Dawkins, the most rabid supporter of evolution, thinks natural selection can't explain some things as observed!

INCREDIBLE!
 
Meadow why are you coming back to points answered by beer good and myself while refusing to answer simple questions?

It's a very juvenile form of argument.
 
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If you want it to, sure. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were a god; I wouldn't personally tinker with every single species, I'd just build a self-replicating programme that knew how to diagnose and improve itself and then let 'er rip. That's not to say there needs to be a god present, or that it's even likely, just that the origin of life is a separate question and always has been.

Thank you for the clarification. Sincerely. I am a pretty much self educated person, and I always based my assumptions on things I had read. Most everything I have read in textbooks and on websites devoted to evolution starts off with an explanation of the origin of life (soup gets struck by lightning, dna forms, etc.), so I always just assumed that was part of the theory. That was always a huge stumbling block for me. The only other one is the idea of the little tiny, simple organisms actually developing into the diversity of life that we see today on our planet. It just doesn't "feel" possible that natural selection + time can completely account for that. And that "feeling" is not really based on any of my religious leanings, but more just my inability to imagine it.

The chihuahua didn't lose genes, it simply has genes that have changed over time to produce a slightly different animal. I assume that simply breeding them with each other (rather than breeding them with wolves) wouldn't reverse the change - genes aren't aware of any such concept - but you could create a new change that resulted in a wolf-like creature.

So, when this happens naturally, and the changes are the result of natural selection, what happens to the "original" animal? Does it typically become extinct because the new animal is better equipped to survive? Are there exceptions?
 
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