Evidence for Evolution

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Well once again remember that the primoridal soup/dust thing is a different topic. NOT evolution. Its orgins. So it proves nothing about evolution.

Isn't it a field of study called Chemical Evolution? (the primordial soup thing)

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Birds also, according to scripture, were among the first animals. This does not fit with current scientific theory so well, but I'm sure science will get there one day.

Not very likely when you look at the fossil record but one can always hope

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

this will start you out click here

Answers in genesis...?

back atcha... http://www.abdn.ac.uk/zoohons/struthers/hind_limbs.hti

Your article states "I knew, of course, that some modern whales have a pair of bones embedded in their tissues, each of which strengthens the pelvic wall and acts as an organ anchor."

This is incorrect. An organ anchor? Where did he get that from? They have no usefulness whatsoever. They are completely embedded in the tissue as he says and they have no connection to any significant organ in the animal. And the animal has no control over them motor wise. So whats the point of them? And its not just hind limbs. Whales have a number of vestigial structures that would have been fully functional in their land living ancestors including the pelvic girdle and the finger muscles. Now why would god put the same stuff into whales who swim in the ocean as he put in many terrestrial species, shrink them and make them useless? What could possibly be the motivation for doing such a thing? And why not do it to other fish?

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Isn't it a field of study called Chemical Evolution? (the primordial soup thing)

Abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) is a completely different topic from evolution. Youd have to wait till we got to the first self replicating molecule before evolution can kick in.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Not very likely when you look at the fossil record but one can always hope

Lol. I just thought of a very interesting, amusing idea. You know how many scientists now are guessing that dinosaurs might have evolved into birds? There are various evidences surrounding this belief, of course. Well, wouldn't it be interesting if the reverse actually occurred, and birds evolved into dinosaurs . . . A very interesting little idea. I'd like to talk with my Dad about it, and find out whether or not it's completely worthless.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) is a completely different topic from evolution. Youd have to wait till we got to the first self replicating molecule before evolution can kick in.

I believe you're incorrect, IRex. Or at least, you're implying the modifier "biological" in front of "evolution". The stuff we're mostly talking about in this thread is more accurately termed "biological evolution", I believe, and "chemical evolution" refers to the scientific study of how life might have arisen from non-life.

Do a search on talk-origins, your "bible" and see if you agree with me.

Here's one article: talk origins article that references chemical evolution

I'll grant that when people say "evolution", they're referring to biological evolution, but I won't grant that abiogenesis is NOT a part of evolutionary studies, and neither will some chemical evolution scientists, I would imagine!

[Jonathan]

It's almost 2 am over here but right now I'm watching a show on CNN where they make fun of the creationism/evolution debate. It's really funny

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Answers in genesis...?

back atcha... http://www.abdn.ac.uk/zoohons/struthers/hind_limbs.hti

Your article states "I knew, of course, that some modern whales have a pair of bones embedded in their tissues, each of which strengthens the pelvic wall and acts as an organ anchor."

This is incorrect. An organ anchor? Where did he get that from? They have no usefulness whatsoever. They are completely embedded in the tissue as he says and they have no connection to any significant organ in the animal. And the animal has no control over them motor wise. So whats the point of them? And its not just hind limbs. Whales have a number of vestigial structures that would have been fully functional in their land living ancestors including the pelvic girdle and the finger muscles. Now why would god put the same stuff into whales who swim in the ocean as he put in many terrestrial species, shrink them and make them useless? What could possibly be the motivation for doing such a thing? And why not do it to other fish?

wher do we start?... lets see the pelvis question click here or here

[rohirrim TR]

and the whales need those fingers for steering their way around in the water it is evidence of brilliant design

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

and the whales need those fingers for steering their way around in the water it is evidence of brilliant design

If God's designs were perfect, he would have given us mammals squid eyes. Squid eyes don't have a "blind spot" like mammalian eyes, since the squids' visual nerves aren't clumsily placed in the middle of the retina.

By the way, basically everything I've read about rudimentary animal bones and organs being useful, comes from creationistic websites. Could anyone provide a link neutral site - neither creationistic nor pro-evolution - with the same info?

There are few whale-creatures in the fossil record but they exist. What is interesting is that the older the fossils, the bigger their pelvic bones are. That's logical if the whales decended from land-living mammals. That's also what the theory of evolution would predict.

The pelvis bones are not the only vestiges from the whales' past. They also have vestigial ear muscles from the time they had ears to wiggle. They have vestigial olfactory nerves from when they could smell. They have little muscle in their vestigial diaphragm - whales fill their lungs using the movement of their ribs, not the diaphragm.

In order words, whales are full of rudimentary mammalian structures - structures that were bigger in the fossils of intermediates of land-living and sea-living creatures. Could be that some of the structures still have some function left but it doesn't change the fact that the same structures were bigger and more useful in older whale skeletons.

Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I believe you're incorrect, IRex. Or at least, you're implying the modifier "biological" in front of "evolution". The stuff we're mostly talking about in this thread is more accurately termed "biological evolution", I believe, and "chemical evolution" refers to the scientific study of how life might have arisen from non-life.

Nope. Thats abiogenesis. Look it up if you dont believe me. Its a fairly well known word in scientific circles.

Do a search on talk-origins, your "bible" and see if you agree with me.

Well unlike some people here I dont need a bible to tell me what Im supposed to believe and what Im not supposed to believe. I let science deal with that. But since you insisted I went there and found this:

The word evolution has a variety of meanings. The fact that all organisms are linked via descent to a common ancestor is often called evolution. The theory of how the first living organisms appeared is often called evolution. This should be called abiogenesis. And frequently, people use the word evolution when they really mean natural selection -- one of the many mechanisms of evolution.

So there you go.

I note that the true definition of evolution is really simply "a change in allele frequencies over time." Now you can call this the "biological" definition of evolution in an attempt to lump evolution in with abiogenesis but that would be misleading. In the context of discussing life, evolution is simply that. Nothing more. So where it all came from is irrelevant to evolution. Where as its essential to creationism. Because evolution is simply a mechanism whereas creationism isnt.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

and the whales need those fingers for steering their way around in the water it is evidence of brilliant design

actually...

The forelimbs of whales, which are used for steering, are stiff and paddle like and the muscles of the fingers, although still present, are much reduced, largely non-contractile and act more in the fashion of ligaments.

In other words, the finger musles are useless for steering. They now do the job of poormans ligaments essentially. And what kind of "brilliant" design is that exactly? Why not just put ligaments in there? Why put shrunken hardened muscle that the animal no longer has control over?

EDIT: Have a look at the link Jonathan provided. It pretty much lays everything out for you right there. Pages and pages of evidence...

[Curubethion]

What about the possibility of (gasp!) theistic evolution? That would explain all of this. (I hope I'm not being heretical, all ye fundamentalists! )

[Count Comfect]

Lief - the sudden change from human-like creatures with large brains but without (apparently) as much actual mental power as modern H. sapiens is called the "Great Leap Forward," at least in my Anthropology class last year. It is fairly well documented in the archaeological record that we go from apes with big brains who are erect (and who most anthropologists would say still share our species, actually) to much smarter ones who use more advanced tools and make other major innovations. These are our direct ancestors, and the change occurs about 50,000 years ago.

They start making tools out of other substances than stone in greater numbers. They make art, which is much less common before. They eat a greater variety of food. They make stone blades (see my previous post) instead of merely flaking off pieces of rock. They trade. They live in larger groups and bury their dead more elaborately.

There isn't a particularly brilliant explanation of this, but a couple I've heard are a)the wrinkles in the brain, which are what allow more complex neural connections, started developing more and b)the left and right hemispheres of the brain began to differentiate, allowing them to specialize.

As for "faster evolution," one of the most prevalent varieties of the theory of evolution is "punctuated equilibrium," in which not much changes for a long time, and then environment stress occurs (see - Sahara desert) and evolution proceeds very quickly. The idea is that if life is good, there isn't enough stress on the species to make it change significantly, so it doesn't. When stress increases (to a point - obviously, at some point extinction occurs) faster changes happen.

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

If God's designs were perfect, he would have given us mammals squid eyes. Squid eyes don't have a "blind spot" like mammalian eyes, since the squids' visual nerves aren't clumsily placed in the middle of the retina.

the arguement that the human eye is poorly designed is laughable, and whoever told you that needs to do some reserch, the reason our eyes have the eyeballs situated where they are is because we happen to live on land,if our eyes were exactly like the squids we would go blind, because we would have no protection from the sun, the gian squid lives in the deepest part of the ocean so its eyes don't need extra protection from the sun

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Nope. Thats abiogenesis. Look it up if you dont believe me. Its a fairly well known word in scientific circles.

Why should I look it up? I know what it is and have used it before And chemical evolution is the study of how abiogenesis might have taken place. Perhaps you're just not familiar with the term.

If you do a search on "chemical evolution science" or something along those lines, I think you'll find I'm correct.

[Rían]

Here's an example - from the National Academy Of Sciences : here. It looks like "scientific circles" here are familiar with both "chemical evolution" and "biological evolution". As are "scientific circles" in the National Science Foundation (nsf.gov) and the National Science Teachers' Association.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

the arguement that the human eye is poorly designed is laughable, and whoever told you that needs to do some reserch, the reason our eyes have the eyeballs situated where they are is because we happen to live on land,if our eyes were exactly like the squids we would go blind, because we would have no protection from the sun, the gian squid lives in the deepest part of the ocean so its eyes don't need extra protection from the sun

You're missing my point. The visual nerve in the human eye has its exit point to the brain right in the middle of the retina, which is why humans have a "blind spot" in their eye. Check out this link to understand better. The placement of the visual nerve is therefore not perfect. Nature has examples of better designs. In squid eyes the placement of the nerve is better and doesn't give rise to a blind spot in the squid's retina. This has nothing to do with protection from the sun at all. If god had given the human eye a perfect design, our visual nerve wouldn't be where it is now, because now it is basically "in the way".

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by Curubethion

What about the possibility of (gasp!) theistic evolution? That would explain all of this. (I hope I'm not being heretical, all ye fundamentalists! )

Good point. I would have no problem with this as it would keep the two questions in the right camp.

There are obvious issues with a lot of the techniques and educated guesswork which are used in evolutionary biology. I'd characterise this as "normal science" for an area where you can't directly observe macro outcomes.

I guess it's problematic because it's hard/impossible to have any kind of evolution and still believe in the literal truth of the Bible.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

If that's true, it certainly would explain things better than the current model does. I assume this is new research that you've located, for I haven't heard of it in either my own research or the history honors class that I'm currently taking (which briefly covers the prehistory of early man). I'm curious to know what the evidence in support of the new theory is.

it's not so much a new theory as some misinterpretation of current theories (which happens on both sides)

we simply do not know the intellectual capacity of a 50,000-year-ago human... we know physically, and maybe even genetically, they appeared "very similar"... but so do modern day monkeys

the "genetic difference" between someone with an IQ of 60 and someone with an IQ of 200 is unknown to us... so saying that humans were "just as smart" 50,000 years ago is making a conclusion based on no evidence

they were smart enough to use and make basic tools (as monkeys are), but that is all we know for sure