Evolution

Not sure if what I believe falls into intelligent design - but I feel that evolution has happened - it's just that it has happened they way God wanted it to.

To me, believing in Big Bang is just as big of a stretch as believing in God.

 

I am currently in medical school, and without evolution nothing in the human body would make sense. Evolution IS happening all the time... just take a genetics course... or a biology course for that matter. Why are so many obese? Evolution plays a part. There's a reason why fast food just tastes so damn good.

Take a page from Europe's history... populations in Europe contain a gene/allele alteration that makes a higher percentage of the population resistant to HIV infection... something that is not seen to a significant in Asians/Middle Easterners.
Why is this?
-greater exposure to AIDS
-genetic alterrations from the plagues that ravaged Europe

Another example... Cystic Fibrosis... a genetic mutation that gave greater survivability during those said plagues when so many lives were lost.

Yet another... sickle cell anemia... heterozygotes for the disease are resistant to malaria without having the side effects of the homozygous recessive version.

People tend to focus on what an ape looks like in terms of evolution... they look all the same to me... so there's not mutation going on. As a matter of fact, it's going on all the time. Search albino Hopis (sp?) in google, for example. Ape behaviors are also surprisingly very human in nature... I have a story about that from a zoo... but I really have to get back to studying .

I am sorry, but the idea of a God/creator is total bull...but I could go on forever about that, and like I said I gotta get back to studying!

 

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." – Adam Savage, MythBusters

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 21 2006, 08:46 AM) [snapback]322830[/snapback]</div>

I guess your qualifier stopped me from responding. Evolution is a real phenomon which can be observed realtime in some short lifecycle life forms. The Darwinian theory of natural selectiion seems quite plausible. I don't know that the basic theory of evolution has as a cornerstone the assumption that ALL life forms descended from a SINGLE common ancestor. The theory is a theory of how life evolves, not where it sprang from.

 

Here's another example... blondes are expected be pretty much gone by the year 2250 or so... they may only be found in Finland or one of the European countries... due to blonde hair color being a recessive trait.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 21 2006, 03:52 PM) [snapback]323119[/snapback]</div>

Okay, I'm going to be generous and assume that you're merely ignorant. If you're really a creationist troll, then congratulate yourself for making me bite. You don't seem to understand the scientific standard of proof, else you would realize that the statement "so far it has proven true" is nonsense.
The most relevant part of my post was:

There iss nothing in the theory of evolution that presupposes that all life sprang from a common source. I have been wrong many times, and if I am this time then point me to something authoritative that says I am.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Sep 21 2006, 09:02 AM) [snapback]322849[/snapback]</div>

Everyone knows the arboreal components in our locomotor repertoire were given to us in the Garden of Eden, otherwise we would have never gotten close to that snake to get the fruit!

 

What kind of evolution ya'll talking about? I think you need to define that for instance someone said that drug-resistant basterial proves that evolution is a working concept. I think it would be more accurate to say that drug-resistant bacteria proves that adaptation is a working concept.

http://www.sparknotes.com/biology/evolutio...n/section1.html

This fellow claims three but most discussions center around two . . .

Microevolution-the variations that occur within the kinds such as dogs and wolves having a common ancestor.

Macroevolution-one kind animal changes into another like an amoeba slowly becoming something outside of it's own species.

The below is a good read also.

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/theory.htm

Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 21 2006, 07:43 PM) [snapback]323206[/snapback]</div>

I came back to delete (or at least temper) my post, deciding that I wasn't too proud of the tone, but alas the posts you're not so proud of are always read immediately.

So... I spent some time creating what I believed to be a cogent, if not brilliant (and I hoped respectuful) response and somehow managed to close my browser without pushing the "post" button. I'm tired now, but did want to take time to apologize for my rudeness. I doubt that we have any real disagreement, and I didn't really intend to spawn a debate -- simply wanted to explain my reason for not being able to vote in the poll.

I basically think that to define the theory of evolution as the belief that all life forms on earth share a common ancestor, as you did your poll question, is to oversimplify and to confuse one hypothesis arising from the theory with the theory itself. The hypothesis that there is a single common ancestor is not essential the the primary hypotheses of evolution through adaptation and natural selection. Although the hypothesis is certainly consistent with current genetic science, it cannot be said to have been proven. In science hypotheses are tested, and may be rejected, but can never really be said to be proven.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Sep 21 2006, 03:54 PM) [snapback]323013[/snapback]</div>

First, I am not a creationist, as you think. I am me. I just don't happen to buy evolution as fact, that's all.

I also believe the dinosaurs were here. And I believe there are descendants of dinosaurs still on the planet.


I just think, that we were put here, got here, by means other then evolution. Someone said, that evolution is still happening right now, but we can't see it. Okay, maybe. And maybe you can say that we are 'evolving' by the various reactions we have to things now, that we did not have say fifty years ago. But what if we are not evolving, just adapting to the world as it changes?

It's rather amusing to me, that here we are, arguing over things that happened so long ago, with no tangible evidence to prove it beyond doubt. Where is it written, that we must know everything?

As a sound engineer, I can explain how a microphone takes analog sound, and transfers it to a recorded medium, and then back again to a analog sound. I can explain it. But there is still a bit of mystery, as to how it really happens at all in the first place.

Maybe that makes no sense. Sorry.

And, to take what you said, and switch it:

Scientists misrepresent God, because it's the only way they can argue against Him.

And you may not be a scientist. I just thought it's thought provoking to take that line and spin it.
One thing is 100% a fact, and to say otherwise is just your ego talking: NO ONE knows how the universe was created in the first place. We have theories, and all, but not one person knows just how it all got started.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Sep 22 2006, 06:51 AM) [snapback]323247[/snapback]</div>

This is one of the more intelligent attempts to try to counter evolutionary theory. But it's still wrong.

"The most important requirement of empirical science is that any object or phenomenon we wish to study must first be observable"

That's just a plain wrong assumption, and you would need to throw away 95% of modern science if you accept it. No atomic theory, no general relativity, no photons, no electrons, no molecular genetics. Obviously, the writer realised this, and added the word "empirical" to somehow feel more comfortable with that claim. But, in the same paragraph, he explicitely states that the only alternative is to consider it a belief. So, according to him, if you can't observe it directly, it's a belief. What a shame that someone who claims to have a PhD makes such a statement.

The point is, it is only necessary to observe the effects of a phenomenon in order to make it a valid subject for scientific study. Because those effects allow you to challenge your theory, and falsify it. Being able to observe the effects makes it refutable. You can see the results of evolution every day, and verify if they are conform the theory.

"In conclusion, evolution is not observable, repeatable, or refutable and thus does not qualify as either a scientific fact or theory"

Evolutionary theory is refutable, because it makes claims and predictions about properties of currently living organisms. Claims that you can verify. And, if you leave out "refutable", the phrase becomes directly conflicting with the basics of science. Let me give you one example: the birth of a star. We have never seen it happening, and can not reproduce it. Yet, we have a fairly detailed scientific theory of how this takes place. This theory is in accordance to many observed effects, and hence has a lot of credibility. The structure of present-day stars makes the theory of the birth of a star refutable.

Further on, the distinction between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution" is synthetic. In a few decades, bacteria aquire so much evolution that you can only validly label it as a fundamental change, a "macro-evolution". Even to the extent that new species emerge, such as Shigella from E. Coli.

If you want to have another example of evolution-at-work, there is an extremely fascinating study that shows that Helicobacter strains (carried by a lot of people) co-evolved with their hosts
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...gi?artid=387319

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Sep 22 2006, 12:02 AM) [snapback]323237[/snapback]</div>

Good point. I assume that the arboreal components were lost when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden and forced to do a proper day's work by the sweat of their brow ridges.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 22 2006, 10:27 AM) [snapback]323347[/snapback]</div>

Thanks for the link. I have ordered his book, "The God Delusion". I liked his "Ancestor's Tale" very much.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

Creationism is the belief that the world and everything in it was created, more or less in its present form, by god. There's also the hybrid belief that the world evolved, and then god created the human race in its present form, so that everything else evolved, but we did not. Of course there are other beliefs as well. Most religions have their own distinct beliefs about how the world came to be. And there are what I might call origin agnostics: people who believe in god but have no opinion about how the world began or how we came to be on it.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

It sounds as though you are saying that you believe that other creatures evolved, but we did not.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

Evolution is a slow process. It is so slow that fifty years is like an eye blink when you are watching a glacier melt: it is melting, and eventually will be gone, but in an eyeblink it does not appear to have changed at all.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

That's a pretty good definition of evolution by natural selection.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

We have literal mountains of tangible evidence: the fossil record, to begin with; and then observations here and now, of the evolution of organisms that reproduce rapidly enough to be observed evolving (changing) in a period of decades rather than millennia. The development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria is an example.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

Mystery will always be with us. If you love mystery, study science. Truth is stranger than fiction, and the mystery of reality as revealed by science is far more spectacular than the artificial mystery of religious mythology.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

Scientists do not argue against god. Most scientists believe in god. A few are atheists, but very few of those bother to argue against god. I am an atheist. But in arguing against the existance of god I make no representations about god, because god does not exist, and therefore one cannot represent god. And I do not argue against god; I argue against the belief that there is a god.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

I am not a scientist. I am a scientifically-literate layman who believes that science is the appropriate tool for understanding how the world works. Science does not address the question of god. They are different realms. Science addresses the knowable; religion addresses the unknowable. The problem arises when religion makes claims about the knowable, and then gets its knickers in a knot because science shows religion to have erred. As for example that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, or that we humans are the blood relatives of most, if not all, of the other animals and plants we see around us.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 01:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

This is a separate question from evolution. Science has a pretty clear picture of how the universe got from the first millisecond or so to the present. How it began and what happened during that first millisecond are still shrouded in mystery, as the energy levels during that first millisecond or so are beyond the reach of present day machinery to recreate.

And finally, I wish to agree with pogo, who beat me to it, and say that it is not necessary for all life to have a common ancestor, though it seems likely. There may have been several distinct origin-of-life events. One of those led to all the plants and the animals we encounter in daily life. Others may have led to obscure and arcane life forms in extreme environments, such as the deep sea, or under the surface of the Earth. But evolution is observable, and the evidence for it is overwealming.

Don't confuse evolution (observable change) with the question of origins.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Sep 22 2006, 04:07 AM) [snapback]323276[/snapback]</div>

science is not capable of addressing supernatural questions. science is based in the physical world.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 22 2006, 11:43 AM) [snapback]323397[/snapback]</div>

well, i think it's a little more significant than just a copy of DNA. since we continually run into the "junk DNA" argument... RNA is a copy of DNA that is being transcribed, or actually used by the cells. most of this RNA is then translated into protein. proteins mediate the majority of cellular function. differences in expressed proteins (especially during development for multicellular organisms) leads to huge structural, tissue, organ and organ system development- that is, if the tissue/organ/organ systems are applicable