Is Evolution True? | Benzun's Perspective

[benzun_1999]

hi all,

What do you think about evolution?

I feel that it is not true due to various reasons.

-Benzun.
All For God.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Originally posted by benzun_1999
I feel that it is not true due to various reasons.

hi benzun,
could you state a few?

PS: the last thread with this subject got locked
https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/what-is-evolution-a-beginners-guide/

 

[rapa-nui]

Yes, evolution is true.

1. It fits very nicely with Mendelian genetics and Darwin came up with it PRIOR to reading Memdel's papers.

2. The fossil record indicates life has changed quite a bit over time, andevolution explains why better than ANYTHING else.

3. Mutations that change phenotype can be induced in lab (I've done it).

4. Speciation events have been observed.

5. Makes predictions about animal behavior that have been confirmed.

I could go on, but by all that God stuff in your post I can already see the level of thinking you operate at.

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by rapa-nui
Yes, evolution is true.

1. It fits very nicely with Mendelian genetics and Darwin came up with it PRIOR to reading Memdel's papers.

2. The fossil record indicates life has changed quite a bit over time, andevolution explains why better than ANYTHING else.

3. Mutations that change phenotype can be induced in lab (I've done it).

4. Speciation events have been observed.

5. Makes predictions about animal behavior that have been confirmed.

I could go on, but by all that God stuff in your post I can already see the level of thinking you operate at.

Welcome to the PFs, rapa-nui.

While I very much like the way you've leaid down the facts here, and I agree with you, one should be careful (IMO) of offending someone's faith in God...it's just not necessary.

Anyway, benzun, could you perhaps state some reasons why you don't believe in evolution? Also, is it the principle of evolution (that species change over time) or the theory of evolution (basically that the principle of evolution can be applied to explain all the variety of life that we have now) that you disagree with?

 

[O Great One]

Evolution is false.

Hi benzun_1999,
In spite of what everyone says, evolution is false.

1) Evolution doesn't fit nicely with Mendelian genetics, because Mendel showed that phenotypes are merely the result of different combinations of pre-existing genes. There's no new information coming into existence.

2) There's quite a bit of dispute on that point.

3) Try making random changes to the DNA of an organism and see if you don't end up killing it. Why? Because the information is highly coded and needs to be preserved. Organisms even have error correcting mechanisms in order to correct mistakes when DNA is being copied.

4) In plants, speciation is the result of copying information that's already there. (I think)

Usually the evidence for evolution is given by "similarity proves evolution". For example, some of your DNA may be similar to the DNA found in yeast.

I think that evolution will be gone by 2020 perhaps. Evolution is one of those theories that nobody believes in and everyone knows it's false, but nobody will admit it.

 

[FZ+]

Anyway, benzun, could you perhaps state some reasons why you don't believe in evolution?

Argg! Arghhh! NOOOO!

Don't use the b-word! The mechanism of evolution itself has been proven mathematically, yes, but because evolution is a science, it is nothing about belief and we cannot state it absolutely to be true. It is simply the best we have, and it works brilliantly well.

1) Evolution doesn't fit nicely with Mendelian genetics, because Mendel showed that phenotypes are merely the result of different combinations of pre-existing genes. There's no new information coming into existence.

Mutations, anyone? Mendel did not at all exclude mutations, but it extended the realm that simple re-arrangement of genes can cause, and thus confirmed Darwin's 1st assumption of a hereditary mechanism.

2) There's quite a bit of dispute on that point.

No there isn't. The only dispute comes from fundamentalist creationists who insist alternately that global conspiracies exist to manufacture fraudulent information, or selective analyse data, or are naive about the mechanism of fossilisation and expect impossible degrees of detail. There is no real scientific argument.

3) Try making random changes to the DNA of an organism and see if you don't end up killing it. Why? Because the information is highly coded and needs to be preserved. Organisms even have error correcting mechanisms in order to correct mistakes when DNA is being copied.

This is BS. Firstly, the likelihood of mutations are different for each part of the DNA strand. Secondly, the success of viruses and cancer shows the fail rate of such mechanisms. Thirdly, there is a wealth of real evidence of such events. There seems to be ignorance of mutations in viruses giving rise to resistances, of x-ray irradiation of fruitflies producing ones with additional legs etc (and still alive), or irradiation of flower seeds to produce certain types of colour, or that many inherited genetic disorders are non-fatal, and the existence of cases of spontaneous mutations like albinoism, and that 50% of mutations are reccessive, and so have no effect until propogated, and that the existence of non-fatal dominant disorders neccessitates the introduction of new characteristics.

4) In plants, speciation is the result of copying information that's already there. (I think)

That is still evolution. And this is only true for some cases.

I think that evolution will be gone by 2020 perhaps. Evolution is one of those theories that nobody believes in and everyone knows it's false, but nobody will admit it.

Sometimes I think creationists live in another universe. This is pure self-delusion, which excludes them from the continual and continually successful work that is being done in evolutionary biology.

 

[Superman89]

Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist? Think about it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

O Great One,

You are a creationist?

 

[selfAdjoint]

O Great, you said

Try making random changes to the DNA of an organism and see if you don't end up killing it.

'Tain't so McGee. Before they got so good with molecules, biologists used to get genetic variations in fruit flies and such with radiation. That was as random as you lke, and it did kill some of the bugs, but with others it made interseting and inheritable changes. Not only did they live but they had little bugs after them.

Maybe you can get away with vague overgeneralization on some sites, but here you'll be jumped on with both feet.

 

[chroot]

The misconception is so thick in here you could cut it with a monkey.

Evolution is a fact. Evolution can be aptly defined as the change in allele frequency over time, and that behavior is an indisputable scientific fact. Allele frequency does change with time, both in man-made and natural systems. We've sequenced the DNA or organisms (hundreds of thousands of times, by now, for some species like drosophila), and watched the allele frequencies change with time. There is no room for any debate on the issue.

- Warren

 

[zoobyshoe]

Originally posted by Superman89
Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why does monkeys still exist? Think about it.

Point of grammar: "...why do monkeys still exist?", not "...why does monkeys still exist?"

 

[chroot]

Originally posted by Superman89
Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why does monkeys still exist? Think about it.

Sorry, you're new here -- but you need to learn the lesson sometime: if you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut. Your statement is not an argument. You've erected a strawman version of evolution, and knocked it down. (In other words, evolution does not operate the way you would have others believe it does.) This is not intellectually honest.

- Warren

 

[Loren Booda]

I think, therefore I evolve.

What creationist says that God could not create evolution?

Won't The Church gradually accept the tenets of Darwin, just like they did those of Copernicus?

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Originally posted by Loren Booda Won't The Church gradually accept the tenets of Darwin, just like they did those of Copernicus?

The Catholic Church resolved all conflicts with evolution back in the early 1960s with logic along these lines: a day for God might be a billion years in human terms. Who are we to suppose He reakons time as we do? Also: while the proto-human thing that formed the "clay" from which He created man may have evolved from something ape-like, it didnt become man until he touched it with a spark of divinity.

I think that after the great embarrassment caused by Galileo the Catholic Church has tried to keep a finger on the pulse of science and "adjust" how literally the Bible is to be taken. I was raised Catholic and taught by nuns in grammar school in such a way as to believe completely in the Bible and in science and evolution with a total lack of conflict between the two.

 

[Superman89]

Originally posted by chroot
Sorry, you're new here -- but you need to learn the lesson sometime: if you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut. Your statement is not an argument. You've erected a strawman version of evolution, and knocked it down. (In other words, evolution does not operate the way you would have others believe it does.) This is not intellectually honest.

- Warren

I know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[wasteofo2]

Originally posted by Superman89
Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why does monkeys still exist? Think about it.

Evolution is not some magical force that happens simeltaneously in all members of a species at once, it happens in small, isolated groups.

The evidence all points to humans not evolving from monkeys, but apes.

Here's how it happened:
Africa's sahara desert is expanding and overtaking some rainforest area. You have a group of small apes (very chimpanzee like, or infact chimpanzees) which lived in the rainforest and spent most of their lives in the trees. Due to the expanding desert, there's less food and things which normally didn't prey on chimpanzees began to. Some chimpanzees left the jungle in order to not be eaten and started living in the grasslands. In the grasslands, the chimpanzees who were taller or could stand up the straightest had the best chance of spotting a predator and then running from it and therefore surviving to breed longer than the shorter, more hunched over chimps. The taller and more erect chimps lived longer and bred more, their offspring did the same, and pretty soon, the whole population of this small group og grassland chimps were relatively taller and more erect than the chimps which stayed in the rainforest.

That's just how it all got started, I could go into it way more, but that would take scores od thousands of typed characters, and I'm not in the mood to type that much now.

Aside from that, look at the flu, every year it evolves an immunity to last years vaccine and a new one must be developed. Unless of course, god is giving the flu virus upgrades each year :\

Originally posted by Ambitwistor
We didn't evolve from any existing monkey. Humans and monkeys share a common ancestral species, which was different from any existing human or monkey species, and which is now extinct. (For that matter, humans and everything else alive on this planet share common ancestors, not just monkeys.)

I've heard in a lot of places that there's a lot of evidence supporting an isolated group of chimpanzees in africe began the evolution to humans...

 

[wasteofo2]

Originally posted by Ambitwistor

If you mean literal chimpanzees, that could interbreed with chimpanzees today, then no. If you mean something chimpanzee-like, then maybe, depending on what you mean by that.

I've read a lot about it and seen a few special on the discovery/history channel, and many sources have said it was chimpanzees.

 

[einsteinian77]

Hey wasteofO2, I just got to ask what's up with that picture?

 

[Monique]

As was said humans did not evolve from chimpanzees, we are on a different evolutionary branch. Evidence is very strong thought that we had a very recent common ancestor.

What is evolution: survival of the fittest, remodeling to fit the environment. An interesting example is the prevalence of sickle cell anemia in geographical areas plagued by malaria. Sickle cell anemia is a disease of the red blood cells, which due to a genomic mutation have become sickle shaped instead of round. So this is a bad trait, BUT this trait gives partial immunity against malaria, and is thus much more prevalent in those regions. A simple example where environment has selected for people with a certain mutation. If people were to stay isolated in this region, a new kind of human might evolve with entirely different blood.

I don't understand people who say evolution doesn't exist. So the people who said it doesn't, which part of it doesn't?? That humans evolved from a lower species or that humans are evolving themselves?

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Superman89
Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist? Think about it.

That doesn't require much thinking at all.

    |
    |
 ancestor
    |
    |
   / \
  |   |
  |   |
  |   |
  |   |
  |   |
human ape

The human and ape are still around today, the ancestor most probably doesn't walk around anymore. You have to understand how evolution works: by isolation. You have a large population, out of which a few odd individuals get isolated and make their own population.

Genetic drift causes the two populations to be different, what is genetic drift? The frequencies of genetic mutations. Mutations can be negative, but they can be good too.

 

[Monique]

And if you are wondering how new genes magically are made.. there are a couple of ways I can think of and basically use the information that is already in the genome.

1) take up foreign genes
this can be done with the use of virusses, which are known to take up dna from their host, they could thus carry dna across species.

2) by duplication
it is known that genes duplicate, such a duplicated gene is then free to mutate, since a healthy copy is present.

3) by deletion
parts of genes can be deleted, leading to new functions

4) by point mutation
one base gets changed by another, leading to new functions

5) by fusion
two different genes are put together, making a new gene

If these things happen in existing genes, the outcome is usually not good, but sometimes it is tolerated and the new gene might find a new function, such as in the sickle cell example.

 

[wasteofo2]

Originally posted by einsteinian77
Hey wasteofO2, I just got to ask what's up with that picture?

It's Bradd Pitt from the moive "12 Monkeys" He plays a crazy guy and that's him getting arrested.

 

[Monique]

THATS Brad Pitt? I thought that he started to look unattractive lately, but that.. :P

 

[wasteofo2]

Originally posted by Monique
THATS Brad Pitt? I thought that he started to look unattractive lately, but that.. :P

Well, the movie "12 Monkeys" was made in 1995, and the pic is kinda shrunk from it's original proportions, and he is kinda grimacing.

Here's the original pic http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-3/134971/monkey4.jpg

here are some where he looks not so grimacy
http://pittcenter.com/img/12m/008.jpg
http://pittcenter.com/img/12m/010.jpg
http://pittcenter.com/img/12m/039.jpg

 

[einsteinian77]

I knew it was him for some reason

 

[einsteinian77]

what was the scientific theory prior to Darwin's evolution?

 

[iansmith]

Originally posted by einsteinian77
what was the scientific theory prior to Darwin's evolution?

Lamark evolution

Individuals change due to environmental influences. These acquired changes are then passed on to offspring.Thus, the diversity of organisms is a result of organisms adapting to the environment because of individual needs.

Wallace model, it resssemble natural selection.

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/pdfs/history_teachsheet.pdf

Cuvier catastrophe model

Cuvier believed that the Earth was immensely old, and that for most of its history conditions had been more or less like those of the present. However, periodic "revolutions", or catastrophes (a word which Cuvier avoided because of its quasi-supernatural overtones) had befallen the Earth; each one wiped out a number of species.

 

[Phobos]

Originally posted by Superman89
Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist? Think about it.

Hi Superman89. As explained, this is a "strawman" (false caricature). The theory of evolution does not say that every single individual of a population is changed identically into the same new species (i.e., one species replacing the other). Often, some small subgroup of the overall population experiences a greater change than the rest of the population. Therefore, you have the original (A) plus the new species (B) living simultaneously. Now those two species can go on down their own paths and can diverge further into even further species.

The other problem with your statement is, as was said, the theory does not say that modern humans came from modern monkeys. In a geneaological tree, they are more like cousins, not parents.

Gotta stop taking scientific advice from Jack Chick.

 

[FZ+]

The human and ape are still around today, the ancestor most probably doesn't walk around anymore. You have to understand how evolution works: by isolation. You have a large population, out of which a few odd individuals get isolated and make their own population.

Recent research suggests that this is not neccessary. Speciation can occur with geographical separation, simply by something that makes the population unstable and favours the extremes over the moderates.

Evolution is FALSE! If we evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist? Think about it.

In general, humans do not compete with monkeys. We occupy different niches, and they are not just an "inferior model" of us.

 

[O Great One]

evolution?

Evolution is defined as a change in allele frequency over time?
Ok, then let's say I have 7 white roses and 5 red roses and I kill all of the white roses. That would be considered evolution because the red roses increased from 41.67% of the population to 100% of the population. How can that be evolution when I started out with roses and I ended up with roses and nothing new has come into existence?