How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[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.





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.

[brunumb]

Debate its like a match of tennis one throws the ball and the other counter attacks back.
Sir you can counter with anything you want to support that 1-6 does not show my conclusion. As long as you do that and not obfuscate again.
Waiting.

I suspect that you will be waiting a long time. If not, expect a little hand-waving and a curt dismissal. Here. Why don't you read this book. It says that God did it, so all your examples and diagrams are worth nothing.

[Edit: Oops. I misjudged. There was a long reply. Not necessarily directly addressing the points made, but significantly more than I anticipated.]

[JoeyKnothead]

A mere stating of fact don't immediately constitute it a ranting.

Do you deny having dismissed others' arguments as "claptrap", unworthy of your allegedly wise consideration?

Do you deny having said you'd set in to ignoring other's arguments?

The observer's left to ponder on if it ain't just you just projecting your own rants about others' arguments on to me here.

Hey Joey. Just think that you too could reach that level of sophistication after thirty years of debating experience.

Yeah, if I developed me a debilitating brain disorder.

Please note, the above statement refers only to my deal, nobody else's.

[cms]

Evolution seems crazy. I can see a case for micro-evolution, but macro-evolution is too far of a leap to me. A fish that becomes a frog, is not the survival of the species. Besides the fish is still surviving. If the ape became a man, why are there still apes? Apes somehow survive in hot weather with all their hair. Of course, man has lost all their hair, and for what purpose? People living in cold weather environments could sure use it. Jesus probably should have had some children so that we might eventually all become good. We've now become so "intelligent" that nothing will survive after the nukes go off. So much for survival.

[DrNoGods]

Evolution seems crazy. I can see a case for micro-evolution, but macro-evolution is too far of a leap to me. A fish that becomes a frog, is not the survival of the species. Besides the fish is still surviving. If the ape became a man, why are there still apes? Apes somehow survive in hot weather with all their hair. Of course, man has lost all their hair, and for what purpose? People living in cold weather environments could sure use it. Jesus probably should have had some children so that we might eventually all become good. We've now become so "intelligent" that nothing will survive after the nukes go off. So much for survival.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Things don't just turn into other things for no reason and the original thing disappears. Evolution is a branching system where descendents may show slight genetic differences in generation after generation and a population can develop over time that is sufficiently different from the original one that a new species arises. Differences can be driven by natural selection where, for example, some environmental event like climate change, or tectonic plate movement, or other geographical events like floods, earthquakes, etc. creates a different living condition in one location relative to another. Animals may then develop traits that help them survive and reproduce better in the changed environment, and enough of this causes speciation. Over long enough periods, fish can evolve into amphibians, who evolve into reptiles, etc. It generally takes a very long time and doesn't mean that fish have to disappear because they "turned into" amphibians (that's not how it works). There are countless other examples like the predator/prey "arms race" (Google that), to illustrate the basic idea.

Homo erectus was a bipedal early member of the genus Homo who developed a lifestyle that involved a lot of running. Excessive hair may have been a problem for dissipating all the heat and sweat that was generated, and it eventually was mostly lost (compared to a chimpanzee, for example). There may be other reasons as well, but a bipedal early Homo species who ran a lot was very different from an ape living in the trees and knuckle walking most of the time. So you'd expect evolution to result in changes of various kinds over time to better adapt to the changes. The question "if apes evolved into man, why are there still apes" is one of the most common questions for people new to evolution and don't understand how it works. This may help:

https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/2017/09/26/wh ... till-apes/

And humans ARE apes, taxonomically. We're just different from our other ape relatives.

[The Barbarian]

Every "claim" I make in this or any thread is or can always be, supported by some data, evidence or argument, whether I choose to present that is another matter entirely and does not prove that I have no supporting position, you're welcome to make that inference of course but it is just an inference.

That would be the scientific thing to do. Science is all about making inferences from evidence.

I have in many cases in this thread stated facts, facts do not require "backing up", like the fact that the fossil record everywhere exhibits discontinuity and nowhere exhibits continuity['quote]

That's not a fact, it's an incorrect assumption. There are many cases where fossils form continuous assemblages for long periods, including those where evolutionary changes are observed. Can we talk about that?

this is a fact and if you disagree then it is for you to present evidence not I.

If you assert that there are no examples of continuity, it's up to you to support it. Yeah, I know it's a tough thing when you make such an encompassing claim, but it needs to be supported by you.

Horses, for example show a continuous evolutionary record, encompassing several divergent lines, only one of which survives today.

Many lines of fossil cephalopods show continuous assemblages, evolving over time:
Gradual evolution of con-odontophorids in the Polish Triassic
January 1980
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 25
A monospecific continuum of populations of the conodont genus Gondotel!a occurs In a 23 m thick limestone set at the AnisianlLadinian boundary in the southwest margin of the Holy Cross MIs, Poland. The change in distribution of morphological characteristics of the platform element is gradual and consists in an increase in contribution of morphologically juvenile stages to the fossil populations. Purely ecological interpretation of this trend as a continuous change in population dynamics is refuted. The trend reflects a true evolution. The other elements of the apparatus Gondotella do not undergo any significant changes, except possibly for the pt element ("Enantiognathus"). Time span separating fossil populations with non-overlapping standard-deviation ranges of diagnostic features sets actually the limit to recognition of temporal sUbspecies. This is also the limit to precision of biostratigraphic zonation based upon temporal taxa. It is here proposed to introduce a nomenclatorial difference between temporal and geographical (or biological) subspecies by Insertion of a dash between specific and subspecitlc names.

[The Barbarian]

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #191]

Hey Barbarian! It's great to see you still fighting the good fight.

Jose! Good to see you again. I've always loved that Jack Chick avatar.

[The Barbarian]

This is exemplified in the Cambrian explosion, diverse, sophisticated morphologies purportedly serving as evidence for descent from a common ancestor(s) yet lacking any evidence of the hundreds of thousands of generations of imperceptible changes.

Well, let's take a look, then...

Trilobite evolutionary rates constrain the duration of the Cambrian explosion
PNAS March 5, 2019 116 (10) 4394-4399
Here we test Darwin’s hypothesis (2) and later claims of elevated evolutionary rates during the early Cambrian (e.g., refs. 6 and 7) by analyzing an extensive dataset of Cambrian trilobites using Bayesian tip-dating clock methods (17). The phylogenetic dataset is the largest and most comprehensive for trilobites compiled to date, comprising 107 species—representing most Cambrian families (sensu ref. 18) that range from Series 2 to the Furongian (ca. 521–485 Ma)—and 115 traits that cover all aspects of the preserved phenotype [107 discrete, 2 meristic, and 6 continuous (SI Appendix, Fig. S1)]. To satisfy the methodology of tip-dating, this dataset explicitly sampled autapomorphies with the same intensity as cladistically informative traits.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Anomalocaris and Opabina are descended from a common ancestor, none, and this is the case for all of the Cambrian fossils.

A great many disparate Cambrian fossilized beasts with mineralized exoskeleton and compound eyes are known, yet if they - any pair of them - are truly descended from a common ancestor then we'd fully expect to see fossil evidence of these since they too will have carried genes that produce mineralized exoskeletons.

Fortunately, we do have some understanding of these arthropods. You see, primitive arthropods (including some in the Cambrian) show homologies with the phylum Annelida. The evolution of arthropods themselves has largely involved the process of tagmosis, the reduction in and modification of once identical body segments. There's not just fossil and anatomical evidence for this:

In this Review, we discuss recent advances in understanding arthropod origins and relationships from the fields of molecular systematics, palaeontology, morphology and ‘evo-devo’. We show that the source of Darwin’s discomfort about arthropod origins, although not entirely removed, has been substantially alleviated. A new consensus is emerging about the timing of arthropod origins, as well as the relationships among arthropods (including between fossils and living taxa) and between arthropods and non-arthropods.
...
Arthropods are monophyletic Arthropods encompass a great diversity of animal taxa known fromthe Cambrian to the present day. The four living groups — myriapods, chelicerates, insects and crustaceans — are known collectively as the Euarthropoda. They are united by a set of distinctive features, most
notably the clear segmentation of their bodies, a sclerotized cuticle and jointed appendages. Even so, their great diversity has led to considerable debate over whether they had single (monophyletic) or multiple (polyphyletic) origins from a soft-bodied, legless ancestor. The application of molecular systematics to arthropods3 in 1992, however, decisively resolved the issue in favour of monophyly4. In other words, many of the morphological features shared by arthropods are likely to have a single origin and to have diversified across the group.
https://research.nhm.org/pdfs/31654/31654.pdf

But there is nothing, no trace whatsoever that such "branches" ever did exist,

See above. Genetic data including evolutionary development studies of homeobox genes confirms this finding. It's not just anatomical or fossil evidence.

Would you like to learn about some of it?

[cms]

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Things don't just turn into other things for no reason and the original thing disappears. Evolution is a branching system where descendents may show slight genetic differences in generation after generation and a population can develop over time that is sufficiently different from the original one that a new species

DrNoGods, Thanks for taking the time to explain your position. But, I see too much of a variety of creatures that are able to live in all different environments. I don't see where a major change in their forms would even be necessary. Nor do I believe that God just spoke and the earth was created in 6 days. Truthfully, I don't know how the earth was created, and I don't think anyone else does either.

[alexxcJRO]

Second, the authors mention that “Spriggina, for example, does not possess bilateral symmetry, but instead has a marked offset along the midline, and this alone is sufficient to reject a euarthropod affinity … No euarthropod claim from the Ediacaran biota can therefore be substantiated.” Thus, Daley et al. clearly reject any arthropod affinity of Ediacaran organisms such as Spriggina, also because of their non-bilaterian glide symmetry. Guess who made exactly this point before? Yes, it was Stephen Meyer (2013) in Darwin’s Doubt.

Very late Ediacaran:
We have simple slug-grade/worm-grade organisms (at least their tracks and burrows) – the first ones only making surface tracks and lacking burrowing ability. Making tracks suggests that the organisms have at least a front end and a back end, a mouth, anus, and gut connecting them. These are almost certainly bilaterians.

We have trace fossils (the traces in the sediments (worm-like sediment feeders or detritus feeders)which resemble arthropod trails or traces that show six pairs of symmetrically placed impressions, which resemble trilobite walking trails)

We have the very first biomineralized “skeletons”, e.g. Cloudina, basically a worm secreting a tube, as well as the first evidence of predatory boring.

At the beginning of the Cambrian, we start to see more complex burrowing – e.g., vertical burrowing through sediment, clearly indicating worm-grade organization and an internal fluid skeleton, i.e. a coelom. The burrows gradually increase in complexity over 10 my.

Here is why: since the authors refute the existence of stem group arthropods in the Ediacaran period before 550 million years, and euarthropods are documented already for the Lower Cambrian at 537 million years, there remains a window of time of only 13 million years to evolve the stem arthropod body plan from unknown ecdysozoan worm-like ancestors and to make the transition from lobododian pro-arthropods to the fully developed euarthropod body plan, with exoskeleton, articulated legs, compound eyes, etc. Since the average longevity of a single marine invertebrate species is about 5-10 million years (Levinton 2001: 384, table 7.2), this available window of time equals only about two successive species. Considering the implied enormous re-engineering involved, this time is much too short to accommodate the waiting times for the necessary genetic changes to occur and spread according to the laws of population genetics.

A. We don’t’ have concurrent apparition but we see gradual transition in form and complexity from

“Onychophora, Tardigrada, and a grade of Cambrian lobopodians, including Aysheaia"
to
lower stem lineage includes Jianshanopodia and Megadictyon, which have annulated bodies with unjointed lobopod walking limbs"
to

“gilled lobopodians” from Sirius Passet, Kerygmachela, and Pambdelurion which possess lateral flaps and unsclerotized frontal appendages in addition to lobopod walking limbs"
to
"Opabinia has a similar body morphology to the gilled lobopodians but a more developed head with compound eyes, a posterior-facing mouth, and a grasping appendage"
to
"Radiodonta a large clade that includes Anomalocaris and occupies the uppermost lower stem lineage position . Radiodonts lack lobopods and have a body with lateral flaps and setal blades, and a head with a pair of sclerotized appendages, circular mouthparts, and paired stalked compound eyes "
to
Transitional fossil like Kilinxia:
"Due to very special taphonomic conditions, the Kilinxia the fossils exhibit exquisite anatomical structures. For example, nerve tissue, eyes and digestive system: these are soft body parts that we cannot normally see in conventional fossils, ”said Professor ZHAO Fangchen, the study’s lead author.
It shows distinctive features of true arthropods, such as a hardened cuticle, a segmented trunk, and articulated legs. However, it also integrates the morphological features present in very ancestral forms, including the strange five eyes of Opabinia, known as the “strange wonder” of the Cambrian, as well as the iconic raptor appendices of Anomalocaris, the giant predator from the apex to the Cambrian Ocean."
https://sclate.com/argentina/a-520-mill ... tagedaily/
to
"upper stem lineage euarthropods include the fuxianhuiids , Leanchoilia and other megacheirans (“great appendage” euarthropods) and bivalved taxa, such as Canadaspis, Isoxys, and Perspicaris all of which have a segmented body bearing biramous limbs and a multisegmented head with specialized appendages"


The euarthropod stem lineage depicts a clear scenario of character acquisition, from the basal condition of an annulated body with lobopodous limbs through increasing levels of arthropodization. “














B. Argument from ignorance and lack of imagination. I can’t imagine therefore ID.

Local climate and local ecosystem conditions as I see it can be the cause in the sense of a perfect storm where more positive feedback loops activated and enforce each other in complex way leading to an exponential increase in diversity.

Similar to the activation of more positive feedback in the case of global warming in a complex mechanism of enforcement which past a certain threshold would lead to an exponential dangerous increase in temperature and lead to runaway global warming.

1. Origin of deep burrowing ("Cambrian substrate revolution”) the Ediacaran biota suffered a mass extinction( possible mobile grazing bilaterians who just ate the now helpless sessile Ediacarans) which lead to an increase in the abundance and complexity of burrowing behaviour. Which created a niche for a later radiation and also which had big effect on the substrata which transformed the seabed ecosystems. Substrate oxygenation.
This changes the nature of the ocean floor, changing what ways are now available for sessile organisms to anchor themselves and for mobile organisms to move. It opens up even more new niches involving digging to hide, or digging to find food. It further disturbs and mixes the seafloor substrate, which recycles buried nutrients much more quickly and efficiently, in turn making those nutrients much more available, allowing the ecosystems to support even more organisms with even greater metabolic needs for even more complex and active lifestyles.

2. HOX genes are the body-plan organizing genes that all animals share, and appear to have evolved some 100 million or so years before the Ediacaran, and slowly increased in complexity via duplication mutations of some ancestral single or small handful of HOX precursors. The more HOX genes available the more ways one can recombine their affects embryologically and the more complex the body plans that one could potentially create embryological programs to grow. Some time before or during the Ediacaran, the evolving HOX complex may have crossed a genetic threshold that allowed for animals to evolve larger and more complex body plans that they did not have the genetic capacity to create earlier, enabling them to exploit the opportunity provided by the increased atmospheric oxygen

3. Origin of massive biomineralization caused by increased of certain minerals because of regolith erosion, modification in rate of sea floor spreading, CO2 levels.

4. Sea level rise/climate change.

5. Rise in oxygen levels because of change in plankton levels. Sudden rise in atmospheric molecular oxygen, from around 1% to over 10%, possibly triggered by the ending of the most recent “Snowball Earth” episode of global glaciation. The increased availability of molecular oxygen meant the possibility for organisms to generate a lot more energy from aerobic respiration than they could before, enabling more energy-demanding lifestyles and adaptions, including growing larger and more complex multicellular bodies. Molecular oxygen also enables collagen crosslinking, which means animals can now produce tougher intercellular matrix to support larger numbers of cells, which in turn enables even larger and more morphologically complex bodies.

6. The advent of predation and grazing also creates the conditions that enables evolutionary arms races between predators and prey, which is a mechanism that can significantly accelerate the rates of evolutionary adaptive change.



The above 1-6 lead to increase in nutrient flux, habitable volume, oxygenation which increased food web complexity + mobile predation and created the perfect conditions which lead to an increase in the animal phyla diversity, follow up of species diversity and increased the probability of fossils creation(massive biomineralization).

C. We have Evidence of evolution and transitional fossils post Cambrian:

Evolution of tetrapods from fish.



Evolution of whales from previous walking mammals.



Evolution of birds from dinosaurus.



Evolution of humans from previous humanoids forms.



We have plenty evidence of speciation. Observational evidence.
https://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/ev ... iation.php

We have evidence of populations evolving and acquiring novel functions and novel structures (ex: FtsZ protein, bacteria developing ‘molecular scissors’ that degrades PET, clepto sea slugs steal genes from their food and incorporate them into their own DNA).

C:We don’t need to assume magical entities when we already have conclusive evidence and plenty of examples of evolution and transitional forms outside Cambrian.

Don't overlook the fact either that it is paleontologists who refer to this as an "explosion" they use that term to convey the brevity.

Here what the study they use says:
“Each of the major types of fossil evidence (BSTs, trace fossils, and biomineralized hard parts) have their limitations and are incomplete in different ways, but when they are taken together they are mutually illuminating and allow a coherent picture to emerge of the origin and radiation of total group Euarthropoda during the lower to middle Cambrian. The fossil record of euarthropods provides our most complete view of the origin and radiation of a major phylum during the Cambrian explosion. Rather than being a sudden event, this diversification unfolded gradually over the ∼40 million years of the lower to middle Cambrian.”
• Daley AC, Antcliffe JB, Drage HB, Pates S 2018. “Early fossil record of Euarthropoda and the Cambrian Explosion.” PNAS, 9 pp.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/21/5323

[Bust Nak]

No the sun does move (comes up over the mountain), that's the empirical observation, the explanation is that the earth rotates.

Okay, and with that in mind, I think I am ready to accept that "God exists" in the same sense, i.e. it is the conclusion of laypeople drawn from causal observations.