How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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Purple Knight
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How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1

Post by Purple Knight »

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.

Image

Image

This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1211

Post by The Barbarian »

William wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 11:13 pm So in a real sense, the categorizing done should visually give us a tree-like structure - starting with a 'common ancestor' and branching out...which is why we see patterns in nature - because they are there to be seen.
There's a reason for this. Adrian Bejan is an engineer, seeking to keep very small circuits cool. So he designed structures to most efficiently move heat from one place to another. In his work, he began to realize that all sorts of physical and biological structures form to most efficiently enhance flow. The "constructal law" turned out to have all sorts of applications, including accurately predicting winners in olympic races. Lightning, trees, rivers, etc. all form in the way that best enhances flow.

Design in Nature

Well worth reading if you have any interest in biology or engineering.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1212

Post by Diogenes »

Eloi wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 8:29 pm Perhaps some atheists have convinced many others by telling them the same story so much, especially when they are threatened not to continue being part of the club...
There are scientists who are less impressionable and whom no one can manipulate based on fallacies. They do not mind that club, they need real evidences.
Perhaps you can cite these 'scientists' who disagree with the entire scientific community?
"Nearly all (around 97%) of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity. Scientific associations have strongly rebutted and refuted the challenges to evolution proposed by intelligent design proponents."

[See:
Pew Research Center: "Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media" July 9, 2009.
Delgado, Cynthia (2006-07-28). "Finding evolution in medicine".
Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover page 83: "an overwhelming number of scientists, as reflected by every scientific association that has spoken on the matter, have rejected the ID proponents’ challenge to evolution."]

The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory as the only explanation that can fully account for observations in the fields of biology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, and others.

[See:
Myers, PZ (2006-06-18). "Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution?". Pharyngula. scienceblogs.com. Archived from the original on 2006-06-22. Retrieved 2006-11-18.
The National Science Teachers Association's position statement on the teaching of evolution.
IAP Statement on the Teaching of Evolution Joint statement issued by the national science academies of 67 countries, including the United Kingdom's Royal Society (PDF file)
From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society: 2006 Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (PDF file), AAAS Denounces Anti-Evolution Laws
Fact, Fancy, and Myth on Human Evolution, Alan J. Almquist, John E. Cronin, Current Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Jun., 1988), pp. 520–522]
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1213

Post by William »

The Barbarian wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 11:47 pm
William wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 11:13 pm So in a real sense, the categorizing done should visually give us a tree-like structure - starting with a 'common ancestor' and branching out...which is why we see patterns in nature - because they are there to be seen.
There's a reason for this. Adrian Bejan is an engineer, seeking to keep very small circuits cool. So he designed structures to most efficiently move heat from one place to another. In his work, he began to realize that all sorts of physical and biological structures form to most efficiently enhance flow. The "constructal law" turned out to have all sorts of applications, including accurately predicting winners in olympic races. Lightning, trees, rivers, etc. all form in the way that best enhances flow.

Design in Nature

Well worth reading if you have any interest in biology or engineering.
Even without reading the book, your brief description echo's the idea that - while we perceive mindless randomness in nature, it isn't really there.

Given the problem associated with QM, the present inability to make quantum predictions is likely to have more to do with our current lack of knowledge than any actual randomness.

This is especially true [as far as I opinion] because all the physical structures we are discussing are built up of the stuff of QM - every particle having it's non-random place in the scheme of things...

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is apparently about randomness. At the quantum level, one cannot know even by inference both the position and momentum of a particle.

But just because we cannot [at least presently] know that, does not mean randomness is truly in operation. We can only know that it appears to be...

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1214

Post by The Barbarian »

William wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 12:05 am Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is apparently about randomness. At the quantum level, one cannot know even by inference both the position and momentum of a particle.

But just because we cannot [at least presently] know that, does not mean randomness is truly in operation. We can only know that it appears to be...
This is worth considering:

The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency.
St. Thomas Aquinas
(Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1).

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1215

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

[Replying to Diogenes in post #1193]

Yes I know that the majority of scientists who accept evolution believe in evolution, that's not a surprise.

My position is that I am not satisfied with any of the arguments that claim the discontinuous fossil record is consistent with claims of a continuous, gradual process.

That's it, there are other scientists too who share this skepticism, it is ultimately a subjective interpretation of the data, some interpret it one way and some another.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1216

Post by Eloi »

DrNoGods wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 9:49 pm [Replying to Eloi in post #1194]
I do not believe in evolution, and microevolution is not macroevolution. I guess you guys confuse a lot of people with that fallacy.
Why can't successive "microevolution" result in "macroevolution? Explain why this is a fallacy. Nature sure doesn't seem to see it that way. It has happened far too many times to claim it is a fallacy, and we have proof in the fossil record. Personal incredulity has no bearing on what is true and what isn't.
You tell us: how succesive microevolution results in a new species.

Show us how, under the genetic laws we know, small adaptive changes in species (microevolution) would give rise to new species (macroevolution). You say it is happening all the time ... show us only one example of microevolution resulting in a new species in our days, and that will do it ... Or did you just feel like writing nonsense?

I guess everybody is interested in that here, because it'll be kind of the definitive evidence that such thing happens in the real life, and not only in your dreams.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1217

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to Eloi in post #1218]
Show us how, under the genetic laws we know, small adaptive changes in species (microevolution) would give rise to new species (macroevolution). You say it is happening all the time ... show us only one example of microevolution resulting in a new species in our days, and that will do it ... Or did you just feel like writing nonsense?
Nonsense? Humans are a perfect example of what you call nonsense, as we have plenty of examples between Homo habilis and Homo sapiens to show that we speciated multiple times along the way. But that is just one of many examples. The comment "in our days" (assuming that means within the lifetime of a human being ... you didn't clarify) is meaningless when it comes to "macroevolution" of something like an ape with a generational period of many years. Only a few generations of humans can exist "in our days", and speciation can take many thousands of generations. Homo sapiens have been around form some 200,000 - 300,000 years, which is over ten thousand generations, and since Homo habilis more than 100,000 generations.

If you want to see speciation "in our days" you have to look at something like bacteria with a generational time frame of tens of minutes so that there are enough generations "in our days" to realize speciation. But there are instances of rapid speciation (only a couple of thousand generations over about 8000 years) in marine animals:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1615109114

It happens much faster with bacteria ... in a matter of days:

https://cohanlab.research.wesleyan.edu/ ... -bacteria/
(full article is at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej20133

and can get very complicated:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4588065/

https://cohanlab.research.wesleyan.edu/ ... -bacteria/

Large changes in the environment can speed up the process significantly. So called "macroevolution" is just the natural result of many instances of "microevolution." It happens continuously in nature now, and always has. Humans are a perfect example of this happening.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1218

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 10:35 am [Replying to Diogenes in post #1193]
...
My position is that I am not satisfied with any of the arguments that claim the discontinuous fossil record is consistent with claims of a continuous, gradual process.
Fossilization is a process that's not conducive to recording each and every critter that ever trod the planet. So in examining fossils, we're left to reasonable and logical conclusions.

So, in explaining dis/similarities in fossils, we have us at least a couple explanations...

This critter looks it a bit like that'n, but not like that'n over yonder. This means the one's more closely related, and that other'n over there ain't invited to the family reunion. Such conclusions're of course bound to data from other fields of study.

To this explanation we get, "Goddidit". No means to ascertain which of the many godsdidit, just a bald faced, empty assertion devoid of any mechanism beyond magic. Might as well say the Easter bunny put them fossils there, only that got expensive, so he started just hiding eggs. At least with that last bit, we know eggs exist.

We get folks who think any gap - any gap at all - in the fossil record discounts the trilliobytes of other data, from other disciplines, that lies in accord with evolutionary theory. All in the name of a god they can't show ever existed to ever lift him a finger to do anything.
That's it, there are other scientists too who share this skepticism, it is ultimately a subjective interpretation of the data, some interpret it one way and some another.
There's also millions of folks who think Trump won the last presidential election.

This argument, this, "some interpret it another way" is weak. It seeks to conflate "goddidit" as somehow equal to reasonable and logical conclusions.

We notice such confusion in the debate over evolutionary theory is nigh exclusive to folks who think religious belief is on a par with rigorous scientific study.

When "goddidit" is the answer, no questions need be asked.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1219

Post by Eloi »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #3]
As I thought ... no real examples of microevolution resulting in a new species. That "it's happening all the time" was nonsense and nothing else.

When a bacteria changes to adapt itself, it does not generate any new species; it is still the same bacteria with slight changes.

In fact, genetic changes have a limit... Didn't you know? Do I have to teach you that? Are not you the experts here?

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1220

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to Eloi in post #1221]
As I thought ... no real examples of microevolution resulting in a new species. That "it's happening all the time" was nonsense and nothing else.
So you obviously did not read the papers I linked and just made another "nonsense" comment. Brilliant.
When a bacteria changes to adapt itself, it does not generate any new species; it is still the same bacteria with slight changes.
Again .. you clearly did not read the papers describing speciation in bacteria, and just dismiss it on personal incredulity. How do you think speciation happens anyway? Or do you claim it doesn't happen at all?
In fact, genetic changes have a limit... Didn't you know? Do I have to teach you that? Are not you the experts here?
Do they? Can you describe these limits? Or is this just another baseless personal opinion? I'm no expert in evolutionary biology, I'm a spectroscopist and do a lot of reading. But there are some much more qualified experts here on the subject (eg. Difflugia, The Barbarian, Jose Fly). At your level of complaining though, it doesn't take any more than a high school level knowledge of evolution to dubunk what you are arguing. All you've presented so far is personal opinion and copius use of the word nonsense.
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