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 #1301

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 5:20 pm That's rather odd, how do you reconcile affirming "I don't believe absolutely everything is explainable by science" while disapproving of "people throwing up their hands and declaring one thing or another to be unsolvable by science"?
Through understanding of the context in which the post was presented.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1302

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #1296]
So the very first life already possessed the ability to evolve? is that right? Surely the development of new biological function like an ability to evolve requires evolution does it not?
If the first life replicated via some sort of RNA and/or DNA process, then the base nucleotides making up the RNA/DNA would be subject to mutations in the progeny the same way that this happens now. No copying process is perfect. And we know that mutations happen in living things after they are "born" as well (although I suppose "replicated" would be more approproatey to whatever the first living population was).

The "ability to evolve" only requires a replication process that isn't perfect, or changes in RNA/DNA after formation via some external agent such as radiation, chemicals, etc.. Why should the first population of living organisms have perfect replication systems and not be subject to mutations, drift, etc. (ie. evolution)?
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Sherlock Holmes

Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1303

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

DrNoGods wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 6:31 pm [Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #1296]
So the very first life already possessed the ability to evolve? is that right? Surely the development of new biological function like an ability to evolve requires evolution does it not?
If the first life replicated via some sort of RNA and/or DNA process, then the base nucleotides making up the RNA/DNA would be subject to mutations in the progeny the same way that this happens now. No copying process is perfect. And we know that mutations happen in living things after they are "born" as well (although I suppose "replicated" would be more approproatey to whatever the first living population was).

The "ability to evolve" only requires a replication process that isn't perfect, or changes in RNA/DNA after formation via some external agent such as radiation, chemicals, etc.. Why should the first population of living organisms have perfect replication systems and not be subject to mutations, drift, etc. (ie. evolution)?
So in order to evolve an organism requires some minimal level of functionality, an ability replicate itself. That ability has to emerge, has to develop before evolution can kick in.

But what process besides evolution can lead to successively increasing functionality in organisms? what can explain the increase in functionality from the most rudimentary primitive simple life to simple life with an ability to evolve?

The point I'm trying to make here is that a considerable level of sophistication is needed just for the simplest evolvable life to exist, and that life cannot get that sophistication from evolution so what can explain inert matter developing into a self replicating nano machine that is capable of sustained evolution?

Just to get to the point of being able to evolve is huge, yet how can that be achieved without evolution? what evidence is there that nature can do that?

This is the kind of thing James Tour was talking about in that lecture I shared. You remember Tour, he's the famous scientists who has awards for scientist of the year and innovator of the year and umpteen more things to his credit that several people here dismissed as a dufus.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1304

Post by Sherlock Holmes »

This is the simplest known life on earth:

Image

It contains 816,394 base pairs organized as 687 genes and has the ability to replicate, I estimate that's about the same as 204 K Bytes of data - how did it get there if evolution is the only way to "grow" genetic data? how did the first data arise? How did the ability to evolve, evolve?

For evolution to just begin would requires some minimal data content - yet where could that have come from?

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1305

Post by brunumb »

Eloi wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 3:04 pm As a side note: evolutionists have to prove not only what they say about animals (which they had never done), but about plants as well...I don't know if they've ever invented a botanical family tree...have they? Just curious. ;)
What alternative to evolution do you propose and, more importantly, what can you present as proof of this alternative? Note that your alternative must account for all of our observations concerning living things on this planet from its beginning.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1306

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #1306]
This is the simplest known life on earth:
This is an organism living today after 4 billion years of evolution. We have no idea what the first population of replicating "things" were and they may well have been far simpler. This old Talk Origins article goes through some possible scenarios:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

We have no idea what the actual steps were from collections of chemicals in the presence of liquid H2O, heat, lighting, winds, mixing, etc. for hundreds of millions of years, to the first replicating thing that cold be called "living." But there's no reason to believe the first entity was as complicated as something that is alive 4 billion years later.

No doubt there is a lot of complexity involved, but there's no evidence that it didn't arise naturally rather than having been "created' by a hypothetical god being of some sort. The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it. The Talk Origins article claims that Mycobacterium genetalium is the simplest known genome. Maybe one of the biologists can chime in, but I have no trouble believing that the first living populations could have been far less complicated than anything around today.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1307

Post by brunumb »

Diogenes wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 3:55 pm In a scientific field we rely on experts. Their qualifications are at issue. JW.org does not use qualified scientific experts to support their [pseudo]scientific claims.
It doesn't help that the JW leadership also discourages higher education because they believe it's a waste of time.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1308

Post by brunumb »

DrNoGods wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:45 pm The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it.
Of course we know the mechanism. ;)

God creating bacterial DNA:
Image
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1309

Post by JoeyKnothead »

brunumb wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 8:21 pm
DrNoGods wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:45 pm The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it.
Of course we know the mechanism. ;)

God creating bacterial DNA:
Image
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1310

Post by Miles »

brunumb wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 7:59 pm
Diogenes wrote: Fri May 20, 2022 3:55 pm In a scientific field we rely on experts. Their qualifications are at issue. JW.org does not use qualified scientific experts to support their [pseudo]scientific claims.
It doesn't help that the JW leadership also discourages higher education because they believe it's a waste of time.
And dangerous!


.

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