Creation vs. Evolution

[lamont]

So, some textbooks have outdated information in them (well, it may or may not be outdated). I'm missing your point about how that refutes evolutionary theory.

you mean the information has ... evolved?

 

[Thalassamania]

See this link:http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncas/evolution/#E.%20EVOLUTION%20OF%20HORSES

Synopsis: Even thought we know that the commonly used series of pictures does not show an accurate timeline in the evolution of the horse. We know even better now how horses evolved therefore the inferences from the pictures are not a problem.

Here's the links' own summary:

In summary, the treatment of the evolution of horses (not just the isolated quotation) in Biology, A Journey into Life, is a reasonable summary of assessment of our current hypotheses. It is pretty unreasonable to ask the author of any text to be explicit about each segment of the scientific world-view, especially in a book for beginners in the field. By the nature of the beasts, textbooks must shorten, abbreviate, and encapsulate most of the materials they present. The original scientific works often contain so much data, analyses, and theory that only experts in the fields are capable of determining whether or not conclusions are justified. Interested students can get from the textbooks the gist of arguments and find out where to go to dig further into the issue. Only then can that same student read what was really said, by whom, and based on what data and logic.

Was I supposed to get something different from this or have you come around to the Darwinian view point? The authors are making about the same point that I did when I advised about 12 credits in upper division Zoology.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Anyone whose outlook is this finely tuned should have no problem understanding Darwinism,

While I sure can't claim to be an expert, I don't know that I do have any trouble understanding darwinism.

at its base is the idea that at least one occurrence of the improbable (a mutation that is positive rather than negative) is a stone-cold certainty given sufficient throws of the dice.

Just within the confines of this statement, the question becomes, are there sufficient throws of the dice to account for the scope of evolution that we're talking about...single cell to complex...and are each of the combinations needed even possible?

If we're talking about dice, each combination is just as likely as another with each throw. Does it really work that way with DNA?

 

[ShakaZulu]

You guys should be out there diving.....hmmm, guess that is me too?

 

[lamont]

You guys should be out there diving.....hmmm, guess that is me too?

viz is ultra crappy around here due to all the rain and flooding in the PNW lately...

 

[MikeFerrara]

Warthaug and Thassalmania have both posted many citations regarding this. I have no doubt that you will find them unsatisfactory.

Why would you assume that I would find them unsatisfactory?

I specifically asked about the range of experiment/observation as it related to the range of the inferences.

 

[Cacia]

I think it is an exponential function....once you get two mutations doesn't it get more and more probable?

 

[Soggy]

Why would you assume that I would find them unsatisfactory?

Because for every cited, documented fact that has contradicted your belief system, you have come back and said, essentially, "that's not good enough." Historically speaking, I have no reason to believe that you will accept any evidence presented to you.

Somewhere back a thousand posts or so, you denied that evolution was even a theory. Have you moved passed that, yet?

I, for one, have learned a ton from this thread, both about evolution specifically and human nature in general.

 

[Doc Intrepid]

If we're talking about dice, each combination is just as likely as another with each throw. Does it really work that way with DNA?

It does not work that way with with Darwinism, per se, because the samples are not randomly selected.

Giraffes, for example. 'Survival of the fittest' would suggest that a long neck is advantageous in times of drought, because when lower shoots and leaves have all been eaten the animals with longer necks can still reach higher forage that animals with short necks cannot. Ergo, over time longer-necked animals will survive longer, hence breed more frequently over time with other longer-necked animals, hence over time neck length will tend to increase for this animal.

Thus evolution would tend to be driven by environmental parameters and breeding for desirable traits, and not random chance.

 

[lamont]

It does not work that way with with Darwinism, per se, because the samples are not randomly selected.

Giraffes, for example. 'Survival of the fittest' would suggest that a long neck is advantageous in times of drought, because when lower shoots and leaves have all been eaten the animals with longer necks can still reach higher forage that animals with short necks cannot. Ergo, over time longer-necked animals will survive longer, hence breed more frequently over time with other longer-necked animals, hence over time neck length will tend to increase for this animal.

Thus evolution would tend to be driven by environmental parameters and breeding for desirable traits, and not random chance.

Yeah, evolution is a combination of two forces. The first is random mutation. The second is natural selection.

The result is something that actually looks a lot like a neural network. Natural selection forms a manifold of a survivability function across the entirely genespace. The random mutations in individuals make the organisms map out the local neighborhood on that manifold and find local maximum of survivability. Given a large enough time more of the manifold is mapped out by individual organisms with mutations which are less likely to occur on small timescales -- as those mutations find other areas of local maxima in survivability and new species and sub-species are born. And, of course, the survivability manifold changes over time, due to the effects of other species or changes in the enviornment, with gradual changes producing evolution towards different forms, and sharp changes generally producing extinction.

The mistake that anti-Evolutionists make is that they look at something which is mathematically similar to a neural network and missing that connection, ascribe the appearance of intelligence to God, while it is actually inherant to the process.

Again, we still can't get past a basic understanding of what a scientific theory is in this thread. We also can't get past a basic understanding of the theory of evolution and keep arguing about weither or not its all random. If evolution were just entirely random with no other forces involved then the anti-Evolutionists would win since it would be obvious to everyone that the theory was wrong. The Evolutionists are not quite that stupid though, which is something that the anti-Evolutionists just can't quite seem to grasp. The problem here is not with the theory of Evolution but it remains with the understanding of the theory of Evolution that the anti-Evolutionists hold.

And this is a fundamental problem with this whole argument. 3000 posts later and we're still arguing over the basic biology 101 concepts involved in the theory of Evolution and cannot move on. The anti-Evolutionists do not understand the theory of Evolution and do not want to understand it.