Evidence for Evolution

[Rían]

Chrys, if you think that evolution is what happened, then that is certainly your choice

I don't know if you mean me or not, but "ancient philosophy" has nothing to do with why I think evolution did NOT happen and some form of creationism DID. I conclude this based upon my evaluation of actual, observeable scientific evidence.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Chrys, if you think that evolution is what happened, then that is certainly your choice

I don't know if you mean me or not, but "ancient philosophy" has nothing to do with why I think evolution did NOT happen and some form of creationism DID. I conclude this based upon my evaluation of actual, observeable scientific evidence.

and can you say that without religious beliefs coming into it?
becaus ei dont see that it is possible, as we have explored before...
really trying not to sound arrogant here

[Nurvingiel]

Maybe rather than intending to say that evolution is a fact, that is one of the assumptions that the author has to make when writing a paper. IOW the author assumes people already know that the theory of Evolution is, in fact, a theory.
Therefore they can discuss aspects of the theory without saying "in the theory of..." every time "evolution" is mentioned.

EDIT: *waves to Chrys and RÃ*an in cross-posting*

[Rían]

Eärniel, as I ponder your post and the question in general, I think that many of the problems are caused by the ambiguous use of the word "evolution". It's used in several ways, some of which are very different. Some of the ways it's used are these:

1. it's used to refer to the current proposed mechanism of the theory of evolution (ie beneficial mutations and natural selection);

2. it's used to refer to minor changes in a species (the Galapagos finches' change in beak length);

3. it's used to refer to MAJOR changes in a species (a bird species changing to the point where they can no longer interbreed); and

4. it's used to refer to major whopping changes above the species level (one-celled prototype to a bird).

I have no problem with 2 and 3; I think they happen and are observeable. I think some misunderstandings happen when a person uses sense #1 and another person doesn't realize they are using it. I have a problem with #4; I don't see any observeable evidence to point to this happening.

Your article referred to the evolution of the frog. I think that frogs have certainly changed quite a bit from the original created frog or frogs. I think life was created with a huge amount of flexibility to adapt to environmental changes, and I would love to see a "fast motion" playback of what actually happened some day But I do NOT think that frogs came about from one-celled prototype things, and I don't think there's any good evidence to support this idea.

Just some quick musings - I really need to scoot and pick up the kids!

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Last Child of Ungoliant

and can you say that without religious beliefs coming into it?

Yes, and I have, over on the creationism thread (which unfortunately I haven't had the energy to get going - I've been very busy on two other threads and I just can't post as much as I used to)

really trying not to sound arrogant here

Well, IMO your first post was a bit arrogant ("clung", "child" and "rags"), but this post wasn't

*waves to Nurvi on her way to the car*

[Insidious Rex]

Hey look. A dinosaur missing link. What do ya know...

Dinosaur 'Missing Link' Found in Utah

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Digging in the badlands of east central Utah on a tip from a repentant poacher, researchers have unearthed the fossil remains of a dinosaur "missing link" -- a primitive plant-eater that had recently evolved from the carnivorous raptors that also produced modern birds.

The long-tailed dinosaur ate plants but had the big-bellied body of a meat-eater gone to seed, a made-to-order victim for any passing marauder -- except for the powerful, ropy arms and the four-inch talons on the ends of its forepaws.

"They probably used the claws for self-defense," said Utah state paleontologist James I. Kirkland. "Or maybe they were herding animals who just hung out together and hoped the predators would eat someone else."

The discovery of Falcarius utahensis, or "sickle-maker from Utah," so named because of the claws, supports earlier research linking the plant-eating dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs to the raptors, but also opens the possibility that therizinosaurs may have originated in North America rather than Asia, as previous evidence had suggested.

The findings are being reported in the Thursday edition of the journal Nature .

"It's an extremely significant find," said Matthew Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who was not a member of the Utah team. "Before this discovery, the oldest known animal recognized as a therizinosaur came from China, and this one is just as old and seems to be more primitive anatomically. It appears to be the final piece of the puzzle."

Kirkland said in a telephone interview that he first became aware of Falcarius in 1999, when colleagues showed him a box of bone fragments they had bought at a fossil show in Tucson, Ariz. The bones supposedly came from "private land," Kirkland said. It is illegal to excavate fossils on public land without a permit.

Kirkland said he tried "over a number of years" to ascertain the location of the site and finally got directions from an acquaintance of the excavator. When Kirkland still couldn't find it, Lawrence Walker, anxious to see his discovery properly recognized, admitted his role and guided him in.

In rugged country about 140 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Kirkland found the jumbled remains of "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of Falcarius embedded in a two-acre stretch of pebbly, 120-million year old mudstone on a mesa top once washed by the waters of an ancient spring.

"Ninety-nine percent of the bones were the same animal," Kirkland said, but the site offered few clues about how so many Falcarius died suddenly in the same place. "Personally, I favor poison," he said, either from botulism from dead animals in the water, or "some kind of microbial bloom." The spring might also have belched a cloud of carbon dioxide, methane or sulfur dioxide, asphyxiating the herd.

"It was pretty exciting," Kirkland recalled. He turned to Walker, warning him "that I wasn't going to call the FBI, but if they call me up, I'll have to tell them." Sure enough, federal agents approached Kirkland as soon as he asked for a permit.

Walker eventually pleaded guilty to theft of government property, paid a $15,000 fine and spent five months in prison.

Kirkland's team began excavating in 2001. Falcarius measured about 12 feet from the tip of a long neck to the end of a long tail. Like raptors, it stood upright and had the powerful hind legs of a running, carnivorous predator. But its teeth were tiny and leaf-shaped, designed for shredding forage, and it had an atypically wide pelvis capable of supporting the large gut needed to digest vegetation. And the back legs were slightly bowed and thickened, suggesting a more sedentary lifestyle.

"It looks like a long-necked raptor," said team member Scott Sampson, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Utah's Utah Museum of Natural History. "We're not saying it's a vegan. Maybe an omnivore."

The key features were the arms and claws, more powerful than those of many raptors, but not big or blocky enough to support a large, plant-eating quadruped.

"The claws look like blades on a scythe," said Lamanna. "They could swing their arms with quite a bit of force."

[Insidious Rex]

Oh well so much for the old eye argument...

Multi-eyed jellyfish helps with Darwin's puzzle

14 May 2005

DARWIN famously wrote in On the Origin of Species that the eye is so complex that its evolution by natural selection seems "absurd". The key to the puzzle, he argued, was to find eyes of intermediate complexity in the animal kingdom that would demonstrate a possible path from simple to complicated. Now, a detailed study of the eyes of the box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) has thrown up one of these fascinating intermediate stages.

Box jellyfish, or cubozoans, are bizarre, highly poisonous predators (New Scientist, 8 November 2003, p 34). "These are fantastic creatures with 24 eyes, four parallel brains and 60 arseholes," says Dan Nilsson, a vision expert from the University of Lund in Sweden.

The eyes occur in clusters on the four sides of the cube-like body. Sixteen are simply pits of light-sensitive pigment, but one pair in each cluster is surprisingly complex, with a sophisticated lens, retina, iris and cornea, all in an eye only 0.1 millimetres across.

The lens structure is unusual because the refractive index - the extent to which it bends light - is graded from one side to the other. Because the image is focused way behind the retina, it appears blurry. So cubozoan eyes are good for spotting large, stationary objects, while filtering out unnecessary detail such as plankton drifting with the current. From here it would be an easy step to evolve an image-forming eye.

[Rían]

Ah, another example of an eye perfectly suited for the animal for which it was designed.

I guess evolution supporters will find what they want to see, even if it's not really there. There's LOTS of different kinds of eyes, but still NO evidence of them actually changing from one eye type to another. And if changing WERE to start to take place, then the intermediate stages would certainly be less efficient and the animals would be selected against and DIE and the change would be halted.

It's just WAY too much for me to swallow. It's just statistically impossible. And saying it would be an "easy step" to evolve an image-forming eye just seems incredibly naive to me, and shows the author's bias. I think it is just more straightforward and likely that these different types of eyes were designed. Why should I accept such a statistically impossible model such as evolution? I just think creationism is more likely.

Your apparent buying-into of this "easy step" thing (because you said "Oh well so much for the old eye argument") just mystifies me - you who want scientific evidence? What we actually see are different types of eyes that work great for the needs/environment of different creatures. IMO, any suggestion of one type changing into the next, and then the next, is just wishful thinking to support the bias of the thinker. How many beneficial mutations would it take for that "easy step"? Millions, I would guess. And again, EACH STEP would have to be advantageous, or the organism (and the change) would die out.

Just too much to swallow for me. Feel free to believe those guesses if you would like, but it's just too improbable for me to believe.

[Insidious Rex]

Your conception of statistics, biology and evolution or vastly wanting. But hey Im not surprised. Never give up the fight no matter what right?

[Rían]

Well, if I think I'm right, then why give up? I just don't see the actual data supporting evolution very strongly. The most important parts of evolution are, IMO, entirely conjectural.

Similarity does NOT necessarily mean one changed into another! Similarity can also come about from reuse of good design. Eyes are amazing things, and the different types of eyes, as I said, are IMO wonderfully designed for each creature and its environment. Cars have wheels and bikes have wheels; that doesn't mean bikes grew up and changed into cars.

I think it's kinda like this: 2 people walk on the beach and see a lovely sand castle. They come back later and see it slightly worn away. They come back later still and see just a mound of sand, and deduce, correctly, that this was a sequence brought about by natural causes without intent. Their deduction is aided by the fact that the previous day, they sat at the beach the whole day and actually SAW something similar happen.

The next day, they see a pile of sand. Then they come back later and see a taller mound with the beginnings of walls and windows. Then they come back later and see a beautiful sand castle. The evolutionist then incorrectly deduces that it was a sequence brought about by natural causes without intent, while the creationist correctly deduces that it was NOT. Neither one of them have EVER actually SEEN a sand castle build itself or be built by causes without intent, yet the evolutionist will still stand by his deduction even tho he's never seen anything like that happen - in fact, he's only seen the reverse happen. The creationist recognizes hallmarks of design, based on observation of human design and implementation, and knowledge and observation of how the world has operated, and correctly deduces that there was a designer involved. Both men are making a deduction; the difference is that the creationist's deduction is more supported by actual, observeable information.

I just can't swallow the huge number of chance occurrances - and RELATED chance occurances with EVERY step having to be advantageous somehow - that you have to swallow to believe in evolution. Also I can't swallow the lack of ACTUAL evidence that changes on the order of one-celled gushy thing to man happened. The existence of amoebas and of man does NOT necessarily mean that man CAME from amoebas. It's possible, but just not probable, IMO. Again, the number of beneficial mutations required, with EACH tiny step being beneficial, just staggers my mind.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by rian

Cars have wheels and bikes have wheels; that doesn't mean bikes grew up and changed into cars

what a strange notion! cars and bicycles are mechanical, artificial beings, whereas organic beings are not limited to the same rules as mechanics

i dont believe anyone had ever suggested that bikes had evolved into cars (no matter how cool that would be)

[Rían]

Well, I find evolution a "strange notion"

And by all the observable rules in nature that I'm aware of, change is limited and does NOT allow the one-celled-thing to man type of change.

[Radagast The Brown]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I guess evolution supporters will find what they want to see, even if it's not really there.

So would creationists.. everyone sees what they want to see, and every evidence, or proof, can only make their belief stronger.

I think it's kinda like this: 2 people walk on the beach and see a lovely sand castle. They come back later and see it slightly worn away. They come back later still and see just a mound of sand, and deduce, correctly, that this was a sequence brought about by natural causes without intent. Their deduction is aided by the fact that the previous day, they sat at the beach the whole day and actually SAW something similar happen.

The next day, they see a pile of sand. Then they come back later and see a taller mound with the beginnings of walls and windows. Then they come back later and see a beautiful sand castle. The evolutionist then incorrectly deduces that it was a sequence brought about by natural causes without intent, while the creationist correctly deduces that it was NOT. Neither one of them have EVER actually SEEN a sand castle build itself or be built by causes without intent, yet the evolutionist will still stand by his deduction even tho he's never seen anything like that happen - in fact, he's only seen the reverse happen. The creationist recognizes hallmarks of design, based on observation of human design and implementation, and knowledge and observation of how the world has operated, and correctly deduces that there was a designer involved. Both men are making a deduction; the difference is that the creationist's deduction is more supported by actual, observeable information.

That's one point of view...
People who don't believe in God - because of many reasons - think it's impossible God, or any other higher, all-knowing being did it. And therefore - when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

For reasons... (and I do know how much people talk about the holocaust) (heard of a poll that said many people think jews talk on the holocaust too much. Didn't like it) An example would be that disaster. How can one believe in a God, after he passed such horrors? How can God, who everyone says he's all good, can do that? Or not stop it for the matter.
How can you convince someone who have been in a camp in Germany that there's God?
And there are plenty of other exmaples.. of millions of innocent people murdered only for being in one nationality or another.

If God is so great... how could he let things such as those happen? And will let them, probably, happen over and over again in the future?

(just btw - people that came out of Germany, after hte holocaust, either didn't belive in god anymore [the majority] or has stronger belief [as 'God saced them'])

[Count Comfect]

Originally Posted by Rian

And by all the observable rules in nature that I'm aware of, change is limited and does NOT allow the one-celled-thing to man type of change.

What precisely are you referring to? Rules of gravity would allow a tiny speck to agglomerate an entire planet around it given the right conditions and enough time, for instance. No one is saying evolution happened overnight - several billion years is a long time for things to happen in. One-celled-thing to man is not all that big - the big jump is actually whatever went from "random amino acids, nucleic acid, and other junk" to "one-celled-thing."

[Spock]

jumping in and out of this discussion

Carl Sagan stated: If we consider the statistics of one, our own case--and take a typical time from the origin of a planetary system to the development of a technical civilization to be 4.6 billion years--what follows? We would not expect civilizations on different worlds to evolve in lock step. Some would reach technical intelligence more quickly, some more slowly, and-- doubtless--some never. But the Milky Way is filled with second- and third-generation stars (that is, those with heavy elements) as old as 10 billion years.

So let's imagine two curves: The first is the probable timescale to the evolution of technical intelligence. It starts out very low; by a few billion years it may have a noticeable value; by 5 billion years, it's something like 50 percent; by 10 billion years, maybe it's approaching 100 percent. The second curve is the ages of Sun-like stars, some of which are very young-- they're being born right now--some of which are as old as the Sun, some of which are 10 billion years old.

[Insidious Rex]

DRAKE EQUATION

N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

It expresses the number (N) of "observable civilizations" that exist in our Milky Way galaxy as a simple multiplication of several, more approachable unknowns.

R is the rate at which stars have been born in the Milky Way per year, fp is the fraction of these stars that have solar systems of planets, ne is the average number of "Earthlike" planets (potentially suitable for life) in the typical solar system, fl is the fraction of those planets on which life actually forms, fi is the fraction of life-bearing planets where biological evolution produces an intelligent species, fc is the fraction of intelligent species that become capable of interstellar radio communication, and L is the average lifetime of a communicating civilization in years.

[Rían]

That equation fits in very well in the evolution thread - conjecture upon conjecture, small actual data figures that are hugely extrapolated upon, multiplication upon multiplication of error. I mean, it can't be helped that there are no actual, measureable figures for those variables, and that it's just an educated guess at their actual values, but it's just a classic example of the way that evolution works, too - certain things are observed and then (IMO) wild and baseless extrapolations are made, based on pre-existing biases, and often treated as facts. And errors are compounded and built upon - as Chesterton observed:

by G.K. Chesterton
Science is weak about these prehistoric things in a way that has hardly been noticed. The science whose modern marvels we all admire suceeds by incessantly adding to its data. In all practical inventions, in most natural discoveries, it can always increase evidence by experiment. But it cannot experiment in making men; or even in watching to see what the first men make. An inventor can advance step by step in the construction of an aeroplane, even if he is only experimenting with sticks and scaps of metal in his own back-yard. But he cannot watch the Missing Link evolving in his own back-yard. If he has made a mistake in his calculations, the aeroplane will correct it by crashing to the ground. But if he has made a mistake about the arboreal habitat of his ancestor, he cannot see his arboreal ancestor falling off the tree. ...

In dealing with a past that has almost entirely perished, he can only go by evidence and not by experiment. And there is hardly enough evidence to be even evidential. Thus while most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit or forming conclusions, as they really can be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this.

Evolution has so few facts to go upon ... not that it's the fault of the scientists that work with it or anything, it's just the nature of the beast. Loads of extrapolation and conjecture and so little direct observation... and what IS directly observed are not the important things. In fact, IMO, what IS directly observed supports creationism's claims more than evolution's claims. But evolutionists just can't give up their underlying premise, and so they twist data, or extrapolate it out, to fit their unproven and unproveable model of one-celled thing to all life we see now has come about by entirely natural (i.e., unintentional) processes.

The "missing link" article that IRex provided is a classic example. If one has a preconceived, unproven bias that different species came from other species, then one will look at the discovery of a new dinosaur as a missing link, even though there is NO proof that it was. The way it was described, this new dinosaur seems very completely and competently designed. Any idea that it was a missing link is just that - an idea - based on a preconceived notion of macroevolution. The data does NOT support that macroevolution happened. What it DOES support is that lots of different types of dinosaurs existed.

And again, it's not so much the scientists that I have a problem with as with the way evolution is talked about and written about in textbooks and journals and the popular media. That dinosaur "missing link" article is the perfect example. Totally unfounded conclusions drawn about a fossil discovery.

[The Gaffer]

Hi Rian

In science, there's stuff you can form theories about, and test empirically; there's stuff you can form theories about that can't be tested empirically. There is even stuff you can know empirically and have no idea of a theory to accommodate it.

Would you then put evolution in the same bracket as, say, astronomy, where there is no possibility of testing a theory empirically, only sets of observations to construct a theory from?

The Drake formula is cool, though didn't know it was Drake's. I remember seeing a Horizon programme years ago with a bunch of scientists coming up with the formula. More recently I saw something about an added variable: the existence of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting outside the orbit of the Earth-like planet, hoovering up rogue asteroids and the like which would wipe out complex life on a regular basis otherwise.

PS - empirical evidence can be biased too.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by rian

Evolution has so few facts to go upon

whereas creationism has none...

[Rían]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Hi Rian

Hey Gaffer - how's the little spud doing?

In science, there's stuff you can form theories about, and test empirically; there's stuff you can form theories about that can't be tested empirically. There is even stuff you can know empirically and have no idea of a theory to accommodate it.

Would you then put evolution in the same bracket as, say, astronomy, where there is no possibility of testing a theory empirically, only sets of observations to construct a theory from?

Very briefly (because I'm just running out the door, but I see you're on now) - by no means is evolution in the same class as astronomy, IMO! I would put things like chemistry in the top level of directly observable; things like astronomy in the second level, and things like evolution far down in the third. See, in astronomy, altho we can't directly observe some things, we can observe the evidence of them happening, and because we can observe similar things in the lab producing the exact same results, we can make a pretty strongly supported deduction that the same thing is happening in space. In evolution, esp. in the area of fossils, all we see are fossils of lots of different creatures. We can't do what we can do in astronomy - we can't get fish to produce birds and then we check their pre-fossiled remains to see if they match actual fossils. We just see fossils.

This is poorly written because I'm in such a hurry, and I'll expand on it later, but do you see what I mean about astronomy? We can do experiments in a lab that produce the same things we see thru telescopes, so it's a reasonable deduction that the same thing is going on. That can't be done in the most important areas of evolution, and so IMO it's WAAAAY below astronomy.

PS - empirical evidence can be biased too.

Evidence isn't biased; interpretations are.