Flat Earth Society
Originally Posted By: thor
...if you only worked half as hard at actually trying to answer the question as you did trying to skirt it.
This is quite rich coming from the guy who STILL continues to ignore my question!
What would you expect an animal in the process of evolution to look like?
Originally Posted By: bobaliciousAnd speaking of research, I have of yet failed to see any of your own research put on the table. So put up or shut up. Since you've done all this internet research, you should have no problem answering my question then...right?BTW, you must have skipped (or chose to ignore) information on the affects upon all types of radioactive dating that cataclysmic events have on them...in other words, all radioactive dating is highly questionable. And the further back in time one goes, the more questionable the accuracy is. We're not talking percentages...we're talking orders of magnitude in error. This has only recently been discovered. Add to that that any type of radioactive dating requires that particular isotope be present in the item being dated...which is not always the case. The whole dating scheme that scientists have relied upon as being correct becomes more and more questionable as time goes by, and we learn even more that we don't know concerning what we thought we did know.Imagine a world where all we think we know is based on what we can find on the internet. Control what is on the internet, and you can control what people think they know. Interesting concept, isn't it?
Do you really not understand, thor? You asked two questions: one in the form "Why (statement)?", and the other in the form "How come (statement)?". I argued that both statements were false. That is not skirting the questions, it is demolishing them. If the statement is false, the question is a nonentity. (Consider the answer to the questions "Why does the sun rise in the evening? How come it sets in the morning?".) Do you really not understand this?
(A further thought comes to mind that perhaps you do not understand that "speciation" means the process of evolving into new species - that is, evolution in practice - and that therefore observations of speciation are the observations of evolution that you don't think exist. But if you had had the courtesy to read the link you would have known this.)
Speciation does not describe, in any stretch of the human imagination, evolutionary means. You either don't understand what you're talking about, or are merely making a weak attempt to avoid a question you don't want to have to publically answer.
As for the "missing link", please tell me what you know about Lucy, and why scientists were so excited (initially) about her discovery? (Bonus points if you can tell me how they got the name "Lucy" :wink: )
Go and read the link I gave you.
I did. There's nothing other than circumstantial speculation mentioned. No scientific DNA tests mentioned...only an observed different behavior which CAN be the process of natural selection. The only genetic point mentioned is genetic drift...which occurs with many species, not just this one. But this does not create a new species. You're reaching. Why?Now go read my post.
Sigh Very sad.
Evolution Observed Within a Human's LifetimeI think the article speaks for itself.
Originally Posted By: CiderEvolution Observed Within a Human's LifetimeI think the article speaks for itself. Yes...after the fact. It's been observed before, and I'm sure will again many times. But...nothing has been observed in the process, as I originally stated. Nothing. Period. One day it's not there...the next it is. New insect species are turning up all the time...no new news there.As far as natural selection goes, it has never...I repeat...never introducted new genes into the gene pool. As a result, it's impossible for natural selection to be the method that has populated the earth with a plethora of new species. This concept is so simple it's inconceivable that folks can't understand it...until one can realize and acknowledge the power of brainwashing things into folks as if they're a proven facts, when no such things have ever occurred. Never. Not even once.
You don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Originally Posted By: CiderYou don't know what you're talking about, do you? That is exactly what somebody who's been brainwashed would say. Life on this planet started with less complex creatures and advanced to more complex ones. Without a method of explaining how more complex genes were introduced (which natural selection does NOT explain), you have no logical explanation for the occurance of evolution...at all. Period. You and the others just don't get it.And...you can talk all day long about moths, beatles, insects and such...you still haven't found anything in the process of evolving. You haven't found a fish beginning to grow legs. Only a fish with legs. You haven't found a bird beginning to grow wings...only a bird with wings. You haven't found a whole extrememly long list of things which, if evolution took place the way the athiests state it did, should be there. Including the missing link which would (in some scientists views) explain how we got here. You can't find them...scientists can't find them (and they've been looking a loooong time)...Darwin couldn't find them, and you won't either. Because THEY DON'T EXIST! NEVER HAVE!!! Species appear on this earth with the changes made...they don't gradually happen ACCORDING TO THE EVIDENCE GATHERED. And athiest/scientists/whoever have absolutely no explanation for any of it. However, they will avoid this subject like the plague whenever confronted by somebody who questions their unproven theories. They will attempt ridicule as a last resort...but will never be able to answer the question: "How did it happen!???"
Ah, thor, how comfortable it must be to have a brain so impervious. The rest of us can only wonder how a brain can actually get like that, and shudder.
Do you have an intelligent comment to make concerning my post, or are you just here for the slander?
I and others have already given intelligent comments, but you don't understand them, or even try to understand them.
I understand them and intelligently reject them as irrelevant to the issue at hand. You want to talk about mosquitos in subways, but that does not come anywhere close to explaining evolution as it occurred over the past several thousand years. It doesn't even explain how the mosquito got here to begin with. I'd settle for that, believe it or not. But if you could explain that, I'm sure you already would have.
You said "How come no animal or other form of life has been discovered while in the process of evolving?". I gave you two counter-examples disproving the assertion within your question, including one carried out under observation in the laboratory, and pointed you to some others. Cider gave you another. Then after all that, you say "you still haven't found anything in the process of evolving". You either don't understand anything, or you simply pretend to yourself that anything that challenges any of your ideas doesn't exist. I suspect the latter, but it's not a pretty sight.
Niether you, nor anybody, has shown an example of, per my example, a fish growing legs. No fossils have ever been found of any in-between stages for any creature. Everything was always fully functional! One day there were no legs...the next day they were there and working. No in-between steps where new genetic material was introduced...now half-grown legs, for example. You come up with an example or two concerning natural selection, where we have a little genetic drifting and no new genes being introduced, and you call it evolution. Genetic drifting will never account for a new species requiring new genetic information. It's like throwing a rock into the water on the beach and expecting the resultant ripples to drown the city of Tokyo on the other side of the world. It's rediculous. And to see for yourself how rediculous, start delving into exactly what must happen for genetic drifting to account for the creation of new species on the scale of, say, a bird becoming a duck (or the other way around). Go ahead. Try it. You will begin to see that it is not something that could possibly happen overnight. There would be in-between stages where the evolution was not complete, if things are as you say they are. But no evidence of any such thing is ever found. EVER!!! In addition to that, how would this extremely complex drifting propagate itself? It would have to simultaneously happen in both male and female of the species in order to propagate itself. Figure the odds of that happening...you'd more likely turn over a rock and find that a wrist-watch had assembled itself due to random events. Preposterous. Now factor into those odds the necessity of this happening for every single species ever discovered. Ludicrous. Open up your eyes and mind, for they are both closed.
You asked for examples of the process of evolution. You got them. Now you say the process of evolution means a fish growing legs overnight. It doesn't. (Though if you catch some tadpoles and keep them and feed them, you will be able to observe yourself a fishy creature with gills growing legs over quite a short space of time.)I've already explained that substantial evolution generally takes place in small populations or sub-populations (normally under stressed conditions). Since most bodies don't fossilise, the chances of seeing this in the fossil record are miniscule. But the formation of new genes is quite easily seen - for example in the development of antibiotic resistance. Until penicillin was discovered half a century ago, bacteria had no use for β-lactamases - now genes producing them are ubiquitous. Genes for resistance to many other antibiotics have arisen even more quickly.
Originally Posted By: thorNiether you, nor anybody, has shown an example of, per my example, a fish growing legs. No fossils have ever been found of any in-between stages for any creature. Everything was always fully functional! One day there were no legs...the next day they were there and working. No in-between steps where new genetic material was introduced...now half-grown legs, for example. There are several good transitional fossils of fish evolving into tetrapods: 1. Most fish have anterior and posterior external nostrils. In tetrapods, the posterior nostril is replaced by the choana, an internal nostril opening into the roof of the mouth. Kenichthys, a 395-million-year-old fossil from China, is exactly intermediate between the two, having nostrils at the margin of the upper jaw (Zhu and Ahlberg 2004). 2. A fossil shows eight bony fingers in the front fin of a lobed fish, offering evidence that fingers developed before land-going tetrapods (Daeschler and Shubin 1998). 3. A Devonian humerus has features showing that it belonged to an aquatic tetrapod that could push itself up with its forelimbs but could not move it limbs back and forth to walk (Shubin et al. 2004). 4. Acanthostega, a Devonian fossil, about 60 cm long, probably lived in rivers (Coates 1996). It had polydactyl limbs with no wrists or ankles (Coates and Clack 1990). It was predominantly, if not exclusively, aquatic: It had fishlike internal gills (Coates and Clack 1991), and its limbs and spine could not support much weight. It also had a stapes and a lateral sensory system like a fish. 5. Ichthyostega, a tetrapod from Devonian streams, was about 1.5 m long and probably amphibious. It had seven digits on its rear legs (its hands are unknown). Its limbs and spine were more robust than those of Acanthostega, and its rib cage was massive. It had fishlike spines on its tail, but these were fewer and smaller than Acanthostega's. Its skull had several primitive fishlike features, but it probably did not have internal gills (Murphy 2002). 6. Tulerpeton, from estuarine deposits roughly the same age as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, had six digits on its front limbs and seven on its rear limbs. Its shoulders were more robust than Acanthostega, suggesting it was somewhat less aquatic, and its skull appears to be closer to later Carboniferous amphibians than to Acanthostega or Ichthyostega.The transitional sequence from a land mammal to whales: 1. Pakicetus inachus: latest Early Eocene (Gingerich et al. 1983; Thewissen and Hussain 1993). 2. Ambulocetus natans: Early to Middle Eocene, above Pakicetus. It had short front limbs and hind legs adapted for swimming; undulating its spine up and down helped its swimming. It apparently could walk on land as well as swim (Thewissen et al. 1994). 3. Indocetus ramani: earliest Middle Eocene (Gingerich et al. 1993). 4. Dorudon: the dominant cetacean of the late Eocene. Their tiny hind limbs were not involved in locomotion. 5. Basilosaurus: middle Eocene and younger. A fully aquatic whale with structurally complete legs (Gingerich et al. 1990). 6. an early baleen whale with its blowhole far forward and some structural features found in land animals but not later whales (Stricherz 1998). The whale's closest living relative is the hippopotamus. A fossil group known as anthracotheres links hippos with whales (Boisserie et al. 2005). The common ancestor of whales and hippos likely was a primitive artiodactyl (cloven-hoofed mammal); ankle bones from the primitive whales Artiocetus and Rodhocetus show distinctive artiodactyl traits (Gingerich et al. 2001). Originally Posted By: thorAnd to see for yourself how rediculous, start delving into exactly what must happen for genetic drifting to account for the creation of new species on the scale of, say, a bird becoming a duck (or the other way around). Go ahead. Try it. You will begin to see that it is not something that could possibly happen overnight. There would be in-between stages where the evolution was not complete, if things are as you say they are. But no evidence of any such thing is ever found. EVER!!!Meet Gansus, the oldest fossil found of a modern bird. It lived about 110 million years ago and was an aquatic bird. It had webbed feet and flight feathers but lacked clawed wingtips or hollow bones. It is believed to be the ancestor of all bird species today, if not a close relative. Originally Posted By: thorFigure the odds of that happening...you'd more likely turn over a rock and find that a wrist-watch had assembled itself due to random events. Preposterous. Now factor into those odds the necessity of this happening for every single species ever discovered. Ludicrous.In 1972, Henry M. Morris wrote in his work The mathematical Impossibility of Evolution: Originally Posted By: Henry M. MorrisSuccessful production of a 200-component functioning organism requires at least 200 beneficial mutations. The odds of getting that many successive beneficial mutations is r200, where r is the rate of beneficial mutations. Even if r is 0.5 (and it is really much smaller), that makes the odds worse than 1 in 1060, which is impossibly small. Morris's calculation assumes that all the beneficial mutations must occur consecutively with no other mutations occurring in the meantime. When one allows harmful mutations that get selected out along the way, 200 beneficial mutations would accumulate fairly quickly -- in 200/r generations using the assumptions of Morris's model. (The real world is quite a bit more complicated yet. In particular, large populations and genetic recombination via sex can allow beneficial mutations to accumulate at a greater rate.)-----------------------------Now, about this Genetic Drift business, you really don't seem to understand it very well. First I'll give you the best summary of it that I've seen so far: Originally Posted By: An Introduction to Genetic Analysis 4th ed.If a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error. If in a population of 1000 individuals the frequency of "a" is 0.5 in one generation, then it may by chance be 0.493 or 0.0505 in the next generation because of the chance production of a few more or less progeny of each genotype. In the second generation, there is another sampling error based on the new gene frequency, so the frequency of "a" may go from 0.0505 to 0.501 or back to 0.498. This process of random fluctuation continues generation after generation, with no force pushing the frequency back to its initial state because the population has no "genetic memory" of its state many generations ago. Each generation is an independent event. The final result of this random change in allele frequency is that the population eventually drifts to p=1 or p=0. After this point, no further change is possible; the population has become homozygous. A different population, isolated from the first, also undergoes this random genetic drift, but it may become homozygous for allele "A", whereas the first population has become homozygous for allele "a". As time goes on, isolated populations diverge from each other, each losing heterozygosity. The variation originally present within populations now appears as variation between populations. So from that, what can we discern? Originally Posted By: thorYou come up with an example or two concerning natural selection, where we have a little genetic drifting and no new genes being introduced, and you call it evolution. Genetic drifting will never account for a new species requiring new genetic information. It's like throwing a rock into the water on the beach and expecting the resultant ripples to drown the city of Tokyo on the other side of the world. It's rediculous. There is a review article in the journal Nature Reviews Genetics published back in 2004 called The Origin of New Genes, Glimpses From the Young and the Old. Its quite interesting, it summarizes dozens of research projects in laboratories around the world on different mechanisms by which new biological information arises through the process of evolution by natural selection. Originally Posted By: The Origin of New GenesMechanism: Exon shuffling: ectopic recombination of exons and domains from distinct genesExamples: fucosyltransferase, jingwei, Tre2Comments: ~19% of exons in eukaryotic genes have been formed by exon shufflingMechanism: Gene duplication: classic model of duplication with divergenceExamples: CGβ, Cid , RNASE1BComments: Many duplicates have probably evolved new functionsMechanism: Retroposition: new gene duplicates are created in new genomic positions by reverse transcription or other processesExamples: PGAM3, Pgk2, PMCHL1, PMCHL2, SphinxComments: 1% of human DNA is retroposed to new genomic locationsMechanism: Mobile element: a mobile element, also known as a transposable element (TE), sequence is directly recruited by host genesExamples: HLA-DR-1, human DAF, lungerkine mRNA, mNSC1 mRNAComments: Generates 4% of new exons in human protein-coding genesMechanism: Lateral gene transfer: a gene is laterally (horizontally) transmitted among organismsExamples: acytylneuraminate lysase, Escherichia coli mutU and mutSComments: Most often reported in prokaryotes and recently reported in plantsMechanism: Gene fusion/fission: two adjacent genes fuse into a single gene, or a single gene splits into two genesExamples: Fatty-acid synthesis enzymes, Kua-UEV, SdicComments: Involved in the formation of ~0.5% of prokaryotic genesMechanism: De novo origination: a coding region originates from a previously non-coding genomic regionExamples: AFGPs, BC1RNA, BC200RNAComments: Rare for whole gene origination; might not be rare for partial gene origination Originally Posted By: thorIn addition to that, how would this extremely complex drifting propagate itself? It would have to simultaneously happen in both male and female of the species in order to propagate itself.This shows quite a lack of understanding of genetic drift. The fluctuations in frequency occur in both females and males. It is not a rare occurrence, it ALWAYS happens. What makes the difference is if the fluctuation is propagated or if it is balanced out by the local population. Originally Posted By: thorOpen up your eyes and mind, for they are both closed.Is that open enough for you, big boy? I have countered every argument you have made in that post logically with scientific evidence. And what will your response be? Same as usual probably, you'll ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, or if you muster up all of your intellectual prowess, you may shake your head and say "Nuh uh!"
Originally Posted By: IneligibleYou asked for examples of the process of evolution. You got them. Now you say the process of evolution means a fish growing legs overnight. It doesn't.You're right...it doesn't happen overnight. So where are all the fossils of it happening at all (the in-between steps)??? Surely one or two must exist with all the evolving going on for thousands of years. (And no...I did not get any examples of this. Why not?) Quote:I've already explained that substantial evolution generally takes place in small populations or sub-populations (normally under stressed conditions). And where oh where is your hard evidence for this!???? Do you have any examples? WHY NOT? Where did you get these ideas? Why do you believe them not to be only theories, without any evidence to back them up? What is your definition for "substantial evolution"? Can you quote at least a few sources, or are these ideas all your own?
