A Case FOR Evolution? (page 2)

Stealth453

The bird id still a bird it didnt change into a fish !!!

Just not yet.

tetrapod.sapien

Now that I am no longer with the religion and am questioning their creationist claims, I am finding I am having to learn about real science, which is infinitely more detailed and accurate that the JW version.

cool dude. evolutionary biology is actually what destroyed my faith in the WTS and fundamentalist xianity. with the WTS, if biology, and anthropology, and genetics is telling us the closest approximation to the truth about the history of our species on this planet, the entire.... THE ENTIRE jw doctrine crumbles like a house of cards. everything from the fall into sin, inherited imperfection, and the need for salvation is irrelevant if we did not descend from adam and eve a mere 7000 YA, in the 0.000012 chance that they actually even ever existed. after that, 607BCE didn't seem like such a big deal to me.

so ya, my prediction is that you will not see the wts backing down on their creationist rampage through the minds of people who don't *know any better*. people like hooberus are another species all together. unevolved, memetically that is.

ts

Shining One

Ha ha ha. That is micro-evolution which is not in debate. Speciation has not been proven nor has it been demonstratedm, which is one reason that evolution is a THEORY. It will be trashed for good when the present generation of tenured professors and researchers die off. Evolution is in big trouble all over the world be cause the more (unbiased) research that is done, the shakier the theory becomes. Irreducible complexities are the biggest reason evolutionary belief is unreasonable.
Rex

Midget-Sasquatch

Species as defined by Ernst Mayr: "are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."

So Shining One when you said this:

That is micro-evolution which is not in debate. Speciation has not been proven nor has it been demonstratedm, which is one reason that evolution is a THEORY.

One doesn't require enormous amounts of genetic change for speciation to occur. Small genetic differences can cause substantial morphological or physiological differences. These differences may prevent indivduals from being acceptable as mates to most members of the group. That smaller group will reproduce among themselves and further small changes may even make them have sterile hybrids with the parent group. You then have a new species.

If you're looking for some tangible examples that strongly support speciation, look into the phenomenon of ring species as well as sibling species.

Arthur

Michael Shermer who writes a monthly column in Scientific American Magazine made some very good points in his book: Why People Believe Weird Things.

He writes an entire chapter about the counter-arguments that anti-evolutionists try to come up with the dismiss all of the evolutionary evidence. One of those arguments is regarding the disagreement that occurrs within the scientific field.

Shermer writes: "Creationists have misunderstood, either naively or intentionally, the healthy scientific debate among evolutionists about the causal agents of organic change. They apparently take this normal exchange of ideas and the self-correcting nature of science as evidence that the field is coming apart at the seams and about the implode. Of the many things evolutionists argue and debate within the field, one thing they are certain of and all agree upon is that evolution has occurred."

skeptic2

The statement that 'speciation is unproven' is a classic example of the Big Lie, that if you tell a lie with enough confidence people will (more often than not) assume that it must be true.

For examples of speciation, see section 5 of this page: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html. If you want to find more on the subject, I suggest Google, or your local bookshop.

skeptic2

Here's another relevant page from the Talk Origins site: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html.

skeptic2

Ha ha ha. That is micro-evolution which is not in debate. Speciation has not been proven nor has it been demonstratedm,

You can also see it in the fossil record: Penguins took about 50 million years to speciate into Penguins from an earlier species, Whales are another animal that speciated whilst also moving from land to sea, over about 20 million years.

which is one reason that evolution is a THEORY

The word THEORY as you use it developed as a slang term but has now become part of the general language. It is very different from the original scientific use of the word:

Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"

What you mean when you say THEORY is what a scientist means when he says HYPOTHESIS:

Hypothesis: a proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations

I guess in your eyes God has been dropping down hundreds of thousands of new species onto the planet over the last 4 billion years, and their similarity to a species just preceding them must be pure coincidence (a lot of luck involved in your explanation).

To argue against evolution is to argue against God's creation. You make out God to be a simpleton not capable of conceiving the breathtaking simplicity of the evolutionary process. Creationists have set up evolution as an anti-God straw man, in my view for no good reason than their own ignorance and self-interest.

funkyderek

Shiny Thing:

Ha ha ha. That is micro-evolution which is not in debate. Speciation has not been proven nor has it been demonstratedm, which is one reason that evolution is a THEORY.

Let me get this straight. You accept that a small amount of evolution can occur so that a population of finches is significantly different from the same species as little as 20 years ago, but not that such changes can accumulate to explain the variety of finch species in the Galapagos? Doesn't it stand to reason if beak size can change so quickly, that given tens of thousands of years instead of a couple of decades that enough changes might happen in a population so that it cannot interbreed with members of the original population (or other divergent branches?) Do you really believe that God created 20 or more different species of finch, put them on different islands in the same archipelago with the ability to evolve a little bit, but not a lot?

Not expecting an intelligent reply, but you gotta try.

skeptic2

Here's a good short essay describing the basic notions of scientific evolutionary theory:

Why Are Scientists Confident that Complex Biological Systems Evolved Gradually?

A Case FOR Evolution?

Share this