Jimi

The Discovery channel says a lot of things that are only theoretic and speculative.

Bigeme

True. True. But I'm still leaning toward humanity not really physically evolving after the use of tools came about.

Anyway that whole line of thought has nothing to do with evoltuion as a whole. I wish I could contribute more, but most of the opinions that guide my stance would be offensive to some people.

Jimi

You should say what you have to say, that's what this place is all about.

3nigm4tic

Jumping in kind of late on this one...

As said a couple of times above, overall, Im feel tht evolution (given the HUGE amount of time we are dealing with, etc.) is a plausible theory. That said, I think that the origins of the universe/original life seem unlikely to have come about purely scientifically, thus my vague belief in a God/Creation force. However, as far as evolution is concerned, I definately don't believe in a "zap! here's man!" theory, more of a God is an omnicient geneticist than anything else (gee I bet I'll catch a lot of flak for that analogy!)... Guided evolution, if you will, or even evolution set in motion by a creator force and then watched from afar.... who knows, the original life in the universe might have set our whole planet up as a genetic experiment and are just watching to see how this new sub-species works out. (that's out there, but honestly, given the huge inadequcies of our knowledge about this kind of thing, hardly impossible)

lastexit

God created the universe and then evolution started. How else would you explain the clear sequencing of the fossil record and the geologic time scale? Did all of the millions of species of organisms on earth all exist simultaneously? I've never seen a dinosaur and dinosaur fossils aren't found with human fossils. Whales have vestigial structures, including a pelvis, the hind limbs, and finger muscles. But I've never seen a whale walk, and why does it have legs? Because the species evolved! The same way insects genetically evolve to become immune to pesticides and cows are bred to prouduce more milk. There are a million other examples of stuff like this.

I can understand how someone will want to believe in creationism because of their religious beliefs, but most mainstream religions accept it or take a "no official position" stance. God didn't create the universe in six gregorian days and rest on the seventh--it's symbolism. Why is it so hard for some evangelicals to realize that evolution is just another part of God's intelligent design? When I think of creationists I think of the conservative preachers who argued back in 1850 that the neck of a baby giraffe will grow longer than its parents neck if the parent had to strech farther to reach leaves on a tree. They are the same people who thought the (flat) Earth was the center of the universe.

But evolution is not atheistic, and to think it is is as absurd as denying it. What belief is more rational, believing that God possessed people to write a book or that species evolved slowly over millions of years in order to adapt to a changing environment? As far as I'm concerned, evolution is science fact.

Jimi

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Whales don't have vestigial "limbs", they have a pelvis and a couple small vestigial bones. Snakes have the same. The only problem with that idea, though, is at how animals in the different eras changed so abruptly.

Evolution isn't a fact. It will never be proven. Neither, for that matter, will religion. Evolution has good ideas, but not any real supportive evidence. There have never been any fossils collected that show any crosspoints between one species of Homo and another, or any other genera for that matter.

mikesantana

I'm with you Jimi. Evolution alone, since it's driven only by random DNA mutations and natural selection, doesn't convince me, even allowing trillions of years.

Strictly, the initial creation of life is a separate issue from evolution, since evolution only seeks to explain the variations in living beings. Anyway, random creation of the first RNA and DNA strings is almost too incredible to contemplate even if you accept that evolution explains everything else.

What is fact is that evolution allows variations over time of a creature to change in such a way as to exploit its environment better: this is what Darwin actually observed. Generally, natural selection favours better fitted individuals to survive and reproduce. This is NOT the same as becoming a completely different kind of creature. Darwin and others have extrapolated well beyond what the evidence actually supports: it's only a theory.

Dog breeders (or Rose breeders come to think of it) produce "improvements" by deliberately selecting individuals with a preferred characteristic. Over enough generations a characteristic becomes "fixed". A dachsund is very different from a rottweiler, but they're still dogs. And no rose breeder hopes to produce a lily, let alone a dog!

Also, I don't believe than even God (or a super Alien) could selectively breed all the species that have ever existed from a simple initial life form, and why would he? If you suppose any supreme being (I'm a Christian) creating life in the first place, why not engineer the specific creatures he wants? Our scientists are beginning do some relatively trivial examples of genetic engineering now, but they have not proposed a mechanism for producing a genuinely new creature, just a significantly modified one.

The fact is that for humans to survive at all requires the existence of a huge number of animal species, which in turn depend on plants for oxygen generation. I'm not talking about food here (that's another part of the problem). For example, without spiders there would be no control of insects, without insects there would be no breaking down of dead animal and plant tissue, without bacteria there would be no decomposition, hence no recycling of nutrients. This is a gross simplification of just one tiny part of the eco-system.

Are we supposed to believe that all this came about randomly? And then humans "evolved" from some ape at just the moment when all these other creatures had produced a viable and stable self-sustaining environment that we could live in, one that we would have designed for ourselves?

That's why muts like me still need a God, even if he actually created the Alien who created my ancestors. A Jehova's Witness told me once, God created Dinosaurs as a bulldozing crew to clear parts of the planet so mammals and eventually humans would have space to live, then killed them off when their work was done. Makes about as much sense as random chance, ie: not much!

lastexit

Bones from the atavistic hind-limbs of a humpback whale. A. From top to bottom, the cartiliginous femur, tibia, tarsus, and metatarsal, arranged as found in situ in the whale. B. Enlarged detail of the femur and tibia shown in A. (scale is not the same as A). C. Detail of the tarsus and metatarsal shown in A. (Image reproduced from: Andrews, R. C. (1921).

That's not a vestigial limb? (http://edwardtbabinski.us/whales/rudiments03.html)

I think the bigger problem with the whales having legs is: what the fuck would a whale have legs for if they weren't used to walk with. And if it's not because they evolved, then why did God give whales legs? The mechanisms of evolution are theories, evolution is a fact.

mikesantana

Of course evolution is a fact! What is not a fact is that evolution alone accounts for all species that have ever lived: that's only a theory.

I'll allow that there might have once been whale variants that walked, they breathe air after all, and they are similar in many other ways to sea-lions which do "walk". It's a reasonable assumption that whales as we know them have evolved from "walking wales". Or maybe even that whales and sea-lions evolved differently from a common ancestor.

This is not evidence that whales "evolved" from something that was not at all "whale-like", in particular non-mammalian. Maybe they did, but at least show me some archeological evidence.

Depends what standard of evidence you want for a fact: more than likely (civil court), beyond a reasonable doubt (criminal court), beyond any doubt (mathematical proof)? I feel that at least the "criminal" test should be applied, though I would prefer mathematical certainty, but I don't think the "evidence" would even stand up in civil court.

Similar problem with humans. There is evidence of other humanoid variants (Australopithecus, homo-erectus, etc), but no "missing link" connecting any of these with us, or each other, or any ape. Several interesting theories, but no convincing evidence. And yes, homo-sapiens does have a vestigial "tail", so the ape connection is tempting. But not fact.

Of course whales have evolved, everything else has, including us: we are taller and more intelligent than a few generations ago, and that is a fact. But what did the first whale evolve from? And with what did it breed? And how?

The jumps from asexual cell division to sexual reproduction to egg-laying to live birth are particularly difficult to explain as evolutionary steps. You would need at least 2 individuals to acquire the same very radical random mutation, with complementary sexual organs, within reasonable proximity, and within a single lifetime, for a population to even begin to exist. These are revolutionary steps, not evolutionary!

This is very different from the massive timescales over which much more modest evolutionary changes happen! Expert chicken breeders need several generations of carefully selected animals to obtain a particular reproduceable egg size. Un-managed evolution might produce the same mutation (if advantageous to the bird), but would take a lot longer, certainly much longer than a chicken-lifetime. What chance of the chicken becoming live-bearing, at the same time as a male...

I don't have a "better" theory, but that doesn't mean that "evolution explains everything" is true. After all, everyone thought Newton had all the physics answers: one neat theory fits all! Then Einstein added another layer of theory, and so on. But Newton wasn't "wrong", he just didn't have all the answers, and we still don't (get your head around string theory if you can).

And I'm no Einstein or Newton!

Jimi

I think we're arguing words, rather than the actual "limb". That's not what I would classify as an actual "limb".
We have an appendix. What is an appendix for?

The Tuatara of New Zealand has a vestigial third eye. Why?
(I do, however, have my theories.)

There are a lot of things that can't be explained by simple common sense, and neither of our points can be. For a whale to have evolved from a walking creature to a whale would have taken too long than the period given. Not only that, but why aren't fossils found of the animals leading from an argentinasaurus to a whale?

There is a lack of complete evidence. It's all circumstantial. As Americans, we believe that nothing is certain unless it is proven, unless it suits our desires. As I've stated, evolution has absolutely no supporting evidence, outside of circumstance.

The closest evidence we have to support evolution is the similarities between Homo sapiens, and Homo erectus, but even still, there's no link between the two, which brings us to the ever evasive "missing-link". They call it missing for a reason.... there is no link.

zeppy

You are correct, Jimi, however creationism has no real supporting evidence aside from what a few men wrote down a very long time ago. Either way, I don't believe we will ever be remotely close to the correct answer, and to assume we are is a foolish idea. (IMO)

Jimi

I don't think anyone is 100% correct. I have my ideas, you have your ideas, there's no reason for people to get in an uproar because people don't agree with them.

The lack of evidence in evolution, however, is where I base some belief in a higher-power. I don't just believe in God because the Bible tells me to do so, I believe in God because of my own research and deductive reasoning.

Juan.©amaney

Werd. The topic has been discussed and most everyone has made their points. Lets move on to other topics. Closed.

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Juan.©amaney

Reopened.

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