Evolution is Fact

[InfiniteNow]

As much as that thing below your fingertips is a keyboard or mouse, evolution is fact.

 

Why are we still having this argument in the year 2008?

 

Watch, and enjoy. The first part is shown below.

 

 

(See all here: 'Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss' by RichardDawkins.net - RichardDawkins.net )

 

YouTube - Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss - Discussion (Part 1) http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZLctxRf7duU

[Thunderbird]

"Evolution is a fact, in the sense of common ancestry" yes, but the the base of the tree, or a common ancestry of the first phyla is still debatable.

[HydrogenBond]

The argument is not evolution, per se, but how things evolved. The existing scenario doesn't sit quite right with a wide range of people. An analogy is saying gravity is caused by pixie dust and then showing that gravity exists with tons of data to prove it. One side of the argument sees all the data which proves gravity does indeed exist, but it fails to understand the pixie dust premise may need some work. The alternatives ignore the data because they are concerned that pixie dust may not be the correct base assumption. One does not get the same divided reaction against atoms because the assumptions sit well with almost everyone.

 

The bottom line is all statistical based theory is not fully rational, but is an approximation for reason, when one is not able to provide reason. This means there is still some room to be rational. If we just close the deal then we are trying to shut out reason with an approximation for reason. This starts to look like a form of religion.

 

Let me give a loose analogy using a dialog between reason and statistics. Statistical studies show cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. One may reason, I see the data, and it looks good, but give me your line of reasoning so I can determine if I will develop cancer or not. Well, all smokers are at risk. What about the people who don't develop cancer. If they were at risk how come their risk was different than another person's risk? That is not important. What is important is if everyone just believes we will save lives. So what you are saying is, I need to use faith, since there are no reasons for me, but there is a good correlation for the herd.

 

If I join the herd does that mean I can no longer try to find reason for myself since that might rock the boat? Exactly, you will be kicked out of the herd and kicked by it. We have political clout and have ways to get you in line or away from the line. Isn't this type of science tactic repressive to the power of reason? Who needs reason, it is way overrated when politics or religion get involved.

 

Now I understand your reasons. If we use statistical fog then the herd is easier to keep in line. It also allows the priests of the tradition to sit on high directing the herd within the fogginess of fear caused by lack of reason. Does that mean you are setting the ground work for a modern religion? The other religions are not going to like that. They will have to compete. But I can see the beauty of using the pre-rational math; even if it quacks like a duck, you can call it a science goose, so you are exempt from separation of church and state. This gives you extra clout to assure recruitment and the conformity of the herd. It will no longer be free choice or reason. Good luck, but I think I'll pass, and try to look for reasons on my own.

[C1ay]

As much as that thing below your fingertips is a keyboard or mouse, evolution is fact.

 

Why are we still having this argument in the year 2008?

 

"Evolution is a fact, in the sense of common ancestry" yes, but the the base of the tree, or a common ancestry of the first phyla is still debatable.

 

 

Why? In spite of the fact that Darwinians never make the claim that evolution is responsible for the origin of life, there are still those that want to argue that it's not the origin of life. If these people would take the time to learn just a little bit of science maybe they'd learn that creationism and evolution are NOT competing theories about origins, that they are about two different things completely. Until then the argument continues...

[Thunderbird]

Why? In spite of the fact that Darwinians never make the claim that evolution is responsible for the origin of life, there are still those that want to argue that it's not the origin of life. If these people would take the time to learn just a little bit of science maybe they'd learn that creationism and evolution are NOT competing theories about origins, that they are about two different things completely. Until then the argument continues...

 

The only thing I am referring is the origin of the phyla, I think the evidence is leaning just as much toward independent emergence of complex body plans from a common cellular ancestor.

 

Instead of one tree it would be a grove of trees. .

[Ahmabeliever]

The only thing I am referring is the origin of the phyla, I think the evidence is leaning just as much toward independent emergence of complex body plans from a common cellular ancestor.

 

Instead of one tree it would be a grove of trees.

 

Please expand on this for me. Pretty please. :hihi:

[Thunderbird]

Please expand on this for me. Pretty please. :hihi:

 

In the current tree of life scenario all the original animals came from simpler animals that came from one really simple animal like sponge, But that may not be the case as the fossil evidence suggest every thing showed up all at once very complex to start with. ..which can be explained scientifically though science of emergence.

[freeztar]

that may not be the case as the fossil evidence suggest every thing showed up all at once very complex to start with.

 

What fossil evidence are you referring to?

[kcl0341]

I entirely agree with InfiniteNow that evolution is fact. The following message is quoted form my essay "Was the universe created by God?"

 

 

In a world of stable populations where each individual must struggle to survive, those with the “best” characteristics will be more likely to survive, and those desirable traits will be passed to their offspring; and that these advantageous characteristics are inherited by following generations, becoming dominant among the population through time. They were more adapted to their surroundings. This is natural selection. Darwin further infers that natural selection, if carried far enough, makes changes in a population, eventually leading to new species. He puts forward myriad observations as demonstrations of this, and also claims that the fossil record can be interpreted as supporting these observations. Darwin imagined it might be possible that all life is descended from an original species from ancient times. Modern DNA evidence is consistent with this idea.

 

Further evidents to prove the Theory : Evolution occurs whenever a new species of bacterium evolves a resistance to an antibiotic which previously was lethal to that bacterium. Evolution is the observation that biological organisms evolve. In other words, descendants are seen to have gone through a type of genetic modification process when compared to their ancestors. The modification is most often the result of natural genetic synthesis, and the differential traits manifested may be translated into changes in the genetic composition of the population. As the populations of organisms change over time, the organisms are often observed to be well suited to their environments, and many different species of organisms resembling each other closely, are indicative of evolution

 

Charles Darwin ‘s theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. Salt crystals tend to be cubes because this is a stable way of packing sodium and chloride ions together. In the sun the simplest atoms of all, hydrogen atoms, are fusing to form helium atoms, because in the conditions that prevail there the helium configuration is more stable. A crystal such as a diamond can be regarded as a single molecule since its internal atomic structure endless repeated.

 

Before the coming of life on earth, some evolution of molecules could have occurred by ordinary processes of physics and chemistry. There is no need to think of design or purpose or directness. If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and rejection of unstable ones.

 

King Lee (kcl0341)

[Thunderbird]

What fossil evidence are you referring to?

 

Pretty much all of it, at the Cambrian strata.

[Eclogite]

Thunderbird, I think you may be arguing against the common perception of evolution as held by lay persons, rather than the consensus view adopted by most palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists. The matter is dealt with extremely well by Stephen Gould in A Wonderful Life, in which he explores the significance of the Burgess Shale. This is the remarkable outcrop in British Columbia which demonstrates, as you point out, that we moved rapidly from simplicity to complexity; from two or three phyla to more than we have today.

 

While some professionals may still represent life as evolving towards ever increasing complexity since the Cambrian, it is not my impression that this view is held by many. However, I am not one of those professionals and I have formed this impression from reading text books, research papers and popularisations on the subject.

[Thunderbird]

I entirely agree with InfiniteNow that evolution is fact. The following message is quoted form my essay "Was the universe created by God?"

Darwin imagined it might be possible that all life is descended from an original species from ancient times. Modern DNA evidence is consistent with this idea.

Common DNA does not necessarily mean a common ancestral species.

Further evidents to prove the Theory : Evolution occurs whenever a new species of bacterium evolves a resistance to an antibiotic which previously was lethal to that bacterium.

resistance does not mean the bacterium is a new species, we do not create new species.

 

Charles Darwin ‘s theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people.

Actually

Charles Darwin was very little to do with the science your suggesting here.

 

 

 

Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. Salt crystals tend to be cubes because this is a stable way of packing sodium and chloride ions together. In the sun the simplest atoms of all, hydrogen atoms, are fusing to form helium atoms, because in the conditions that prevail there the helium configuration is more stable. A crystal such as a diamond can be regarded as a single molecule since its internal atomic structure endless repeated.

Stability is only half the equation when speaking about life and evolution. The other is instability. life operates at the edge of chaos.

 

 

 

Before the coming of life on earth, some evolution of molecules could have occurred by ordinary processes of physics and chemistry. There is no need to think of design or purpose or directness. If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and rejection of unstable ones.

 

King Lee (kcl0341)

Your correct that there is no need to have a designer, or God in a scientific process, however people should understand what Darwin did not explain about the evolution of life from non-life. You are incorrect in the assumption that this model can be utilized to explain the origin of the first cell.

 

This represents one of the major misinterpretations of Darwinian models, That they can be extended back to explain the origin of life, like you are suggesting here.

[Thunderbird]

Thunderbird, I think you may be arguing against the common perception of evolution as held by lay persons, rather than the consensus view adopted by most palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists. The matter is dealt with extremely well by Stephen Gould in A Wonderful Life, in which he explores the significance of the Burgess Shale. This is the remarkable outcrop in British Columbia which demonstrates, as you point out, that we moved rapidly from simplicity to complexity; from two or three phyla to more than we have today.

I'm confused about the “as I point out about complexity“. When looking at the complexity of the Cambrian it appears to me the phyla level complexity of morphology started

at the highest level than began to drop off, later complexity expanded again on the level of the species and systems. The complexity could very well existed in the single cell before the Cambrian, this scenario just makes more sense given the evidence we have . The problem I have just to make things clear has to do with all the forms showing up at once. What I would like to see is a few forms linking all these other forms together from the fossil record. I think once you have a basic but complex phyla level morphology that you find in the Cambrian they stay fairly stable within a certain morphological mean. This is what I am observing.

While some professionals may still represent life as evolving towards ever increasing complexity since the Cambrian, it is not my impression that this view is held by many. However, I am not one of those professionals and I have formed this impression from reading text books, research papers and popularisations on the subject.

 

I think complexity builds on one informational level and then very suddenly emerges into a whole new level when a threshold is reached. Our massive brains seemed to have show up suddenly. Look at our world in the past 5000 years, seemes like another leap to me.

[Not half- but whole!]

As to the original point of the thread, why evolution is still debated...

In the lay person's eyes evolution and biogenesis synonymous. While in reality they are two distinct and independent concepts (but there are some aspects of evolutionary theory that can help ion the examination and explanation of biogenesis).

Biogenesis is debated because it directly confronts the creation aspect. This is questioning the basics premise of most faiths. We came into being by the benevolence x,y,or z deity/ies, not some accident or coincidence. This can make people resistant to theories that conflict with personal beliefs, even more so when the individual is not scientifically oriented. They have very little desire to explore or examine a conflict between science and faith.

 

Another issue that seems to being confused is complexity and diversity. As life evolved into the "void" there was a massive explosion of diversity. There was no competition so a wide variety of lifeforms could "try it out". As the the oceans became more crowded, competition increased and the basic lineages that had evolved had the first "conflicts". Those more suited to their current environment eliminated those that were not. The first reductions in diversity... The remaining lineages then began the arduous trek and became more complex and refined for their particular environments.

 

resistance does not mean the bacterium is a new species, we do not create new species.

 

This is a bit ambiguous IMO. There is still no solid consensus as to what exactly constitutes a species. This is a interesting discussion though... perhaps a new thread.

[Thunderbird]

Another issue that seems to being confused is complexity and diversity. As life evolved into the "void" there was a massive explosion of diversity. There was no competition so a wide variety of lifeforms could "try it out". As the the oceans became more crowded, competition increased and the basic lineages that had evolved had the first "conflicts". Those more suited to their current environment eliminated those that were not. The first reductions in diversity... The remaining lineages then began the arduous trek and became more complex and refined for their particular environments.

 

 

Sounds very logical, the "void" creates diversity, and so does the opposite senerio that is popular that competition drove the engine of diversity.

 

In ether scenario there should be a archetypal precursor that is ubiquitous in the record and stable in form for a time prior to the arival of the major phyla showing up.

 

Something that had all the characteristics of cephalopods arthropods and chordates. Mammals, birds, snakes, these forms all came from one form. This is easily seen, why not in the Cambrian ?

[InfiniteNow]

:xparty:

Purple unicorns

:hihi:

 

 

So, yeah. Evolution is fact.

 

 

Has anyone posting here actually watched the entire dialog I posted? :doh:

 

Care to share your reactions? <definite thread killer, as clearly nobody has watched>

[ughaibu]

I dont see any reason to assume there was an original common ancestor, is there any reason that various forms of proto-life leading to distinct ancestral lines should be ruled out?