Muad'Dib

Hi Charles Darwin,

Could you give an example of something you consider to be a scientific fact, and the ground on which you base that assessment?

Thanks,
Muad'Dib

Charles Darwin

I said that there is, in fact, no explanation for how life and her species are supposed to have evolved, and you responded that this is "Completely false. Life evolves via mutation, selection, drift, migration, and the mating system." Very good, and astrology works by the stars right? C'mon, is it not clear that I'm talking about scientific explanations. You know, that actually explain *how* it is supposed to happen. You don't have any details, why not just admit it? This is not trivial. I'm not asking for where the bullet was manufactured in a murder case. I'm asking for the very basics which "mutation, selection, drift, migration, and the mating system" do not come even close to explaining. How did echolocation arise (and no, telling me it is simple is not sufficient). This is an example of a fundamental problem with evolution which you'all cannot just explain away as a minor detail.

I wrote that "You think evolution created these chromosomes, even though you don't know how it could have done said task. Nor do you have the slightest idea of what function said design might serve." And you responded:

CD, perhaps you shouldn't go around telling people what they can or can't do without first testing them on it. Such rhetoric is no different than lying about someone else, which is not a good way to opperate in an intellectual discussion.
1. Chromosomes are simply a DNA polymere, packaged with proteins. No mystery there.
2. Chromosomes function to keep the hereditary information togering in a well controled location(s) so that when cell division occurs there is low chance that one of the daughter cells is missing something. Chromosomes are also important in regulating gene expression.

You missed my point. I was talking about the subject at hand (ie, the presence of the telomeres in the middle of the chromosome) not chromosomes themselves.

Charles Darwin

Originally posted by Charles Darwin
I see. You and the other folks -- I see a pattern. Of course we cannot believe they were created, so ..., evolution must be true. We were talking about a scientific fact, but this is a switch. What you are really saying is this is a metaphysical fact. Given your metaphysical position, evolution is a fact. Ok, I'll buy that.

I'd be delighted to join in on a religious discussion, including personal beliefs, but my personal religous beliefs have precisely zero influence on whether evolution is a scientific fact or not.

Regarding the question of horse evolution, I did not dodge the question but said I don't know how they got there (maybe that was in another post).

Charles Darwin

However, for a range of reasons, evolutionists already believe that the ape split off first; then later came the human-chimp split.

Charles Darwin

Originally posted by lpetrich

Charles Darwin quote on endosymbiosis: You mean the story that a big cell ate up a little cell and forever after the little one was there, working away to produce all those ATPs via that convenient electron transport chain that just happened to be there, with its series of re-dox steps that just happened to be there, and the ATPase which just happened to be there? Well, you're right, I don't buy it.

Except that various bacteria also have electron-transport chains and membrane-based ATP synthesis. And it is not difficult to imagine a process of natural selection that results in the selection of an aerobic organic-eating bacterium as the endosymbiont rather than a bacterium with a different metabolism. Imagine a protoeukaryote eating lots of different kinds of bacteria and some of them staying inside, with the most useful of them helping their hosts reproduce more than the others.

I'm not doubting that we can contrive explanations, where we are free to imagine.



Charles Darwin quote: Aside from all this complexity, there is thorny little problem of organelles common to prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Doesn't quite fit the theory of endosymbiosis.

So what? Genome-less organelles like ribosomes and flagella are directly produced by their host cells.

I was referring to membrane-bound organelles, independent of the plasma membrane, such as things like acidocalcisomes which are found in both some prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Charles Darwin

I really don't know, but again, my personal opinion on the matter has precisely zero influence on whether evolution is a scientific fact or not.

Charles Darwin

Yes, I got the point. No need to keep repeating. Evolution is a fact for you.


I don't follow. How am I extrapolating?

Charles Darwin

Pretty complicated.

GunnerJ

This pithy non-answer speaks for itself.

The Lone Ranger

First of all, for the umpteenth time, evolutionary theory doesn�t attempt to explain the origin(s) of life. As far as evolutionary biology is concerned, life may be the result of purple goblins from the 12th dimension. What matters is what has happened since the origin(s) of life.

To claim that evolution is a flawed theory because it cannot explain the origin(s) of life is no more logical than would be the claim that quantum mechanics is a flawed theory because it doesn�t explain why some genes are dominant and others are recessive.

Of course, how life arose is relevant to evolutionary biology, since life must first exist in order for it to evolve. Knowing more about how life may have arisen would also be quite useful to biologists, since it could very likely give us clues as to the chemical idiosyncracies displayed by living organisms. [Why do all living organisms use the same 20 amino acids, for example? Are these the �best� combination of amino acids for building proteins, or is it just chance that these were the ones that the first living organisms used?] So, the origin(s) of life is certainly of interest, but it nonetheless lies outside the scope of evolutionary theory.

You seem to want very much for evolutionary theory to be something that it is not, and never was.

Evolutionary biologists consider it a fact � that is, established beyond any reasonable doubt � that all extant organisms are related through common descent. I�m curious as to how this idea could be said to make no sense.


Here�s an overview of evolutionary theory. Please tell us where it breaks down.
[LIST=1][*]All populations of organisms have the potential for very high growth rates. If one does the math, it�s easy to show that even very slowly-reproducing animals like elephants produce enough offspring that the planet would be literally covered with elephants in just a few hundred years if all elephants that are born survived and produced young of their own.
[*]Resources (food, nesting sites, etc.) are necessarily limited in supply. Since the Earth is not infinite in size, this is an uncontroversial statement.
[*]Conclusion: Since populations can potentially grow so fast, and since resources are limited in supply, more individuals are born than the available resources can possibly support. Thus, there will inevitably be competition for resources. (Competition does not necessarily mean fighting, by the way.) [If you think this conclusion is false, please explain.]
[*]There is a great deal of variation among individuals within a population.
[*]Variation is largely heritable. That is, individuals tend to resemble their parents, grandparents, and so forth more than they resemble random members of the population.
[*]Survival and reproduction of individuals often depends upon the heritable traits they possess.
[*]Conclusion: Since there is competition for resources, those individuals who happen to possess heritable traits which make them well-suited to their environment are more likely to survive and pass those traits on to offspring than are those individuals unlucky enough to be born with traits which make them poorly-suited to their environment. This phenomenon is called natural selection. [If you think this conclusion is false, please explain why.]
[*]Conclusion: Given that those individuals that are well-suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce than are those that are poorly-suited to it, the genetic makeup of populations is expected to change over time, as traits which make their bearers well-suited to the environment become more common and traits which make their bearers less well-suited to the environment become rarer. This process is called evolution. [If you disagree with this conclusion, please explain why.][/LIST=1]


No one disputes that natural selection occurs, and that populations evolve as a result. Nor is there any disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth is more than four billion years old. Fossils have been found in rocks that are almost four billion years old.

Given the age of the Earth and the amount of time that living organisms have been around, and given that populations do evolve, it is an inevitable conclusion that we should expect to see quite a lot of evolutionary change over time. Indeed, field studies often document rates of evolution hundreds or even thousands of times greater than are necessary to explain the rates of change implied by the fossil record.

There are three possible reasons why we wouldn�t expect substantial amounts of evolution to have occurred.
[LIST=1][*]The Earth isn�t as old as the evidence indicates and/or life hasn�t existed for as long as the evidence indicates. [If you think this is the case, please explain why the geologists, astronomers, and paleontologists are wrong.]
[*]Some sort of mechanism exists which prevents populations from evolving beyond a certain point. Given that genetic variation within a species sometimes equals or exceeds the genetic variation between species, this seems unlikely, to say the least. Geneticists have consistently found that the genetic variation between species (or genera, or families, or even between kingdoms, for that matter) is qualitative, not quantitative. [If you think such mechanisms exist, please explain why the geneticists are wrong. Also, please show us where the mechanism(s) are: do they prevent evolution between species, and how? Do they work at a higher level and prevent evolution between genera? Do they prevent evolution between families? Where are they, and how do they function?]
[*]Populations of organisms evolve at rates that are far slower than studies indicate, and/or mutations (the ultimate source of new alleles) are far rarer than studies indicate. [If this is the case, please explain to us why the thousands of studies in question are wrong.][/LIST=1]



So you say. I don�t believe that you can, and I challenge you to do so. Please provide 29 �validations� for the flat-earth model that are drawn from peer-reviewed literature.




Indeed? I was taught in my GIS courses that one must take the curvature of the Earth into account if one wants to locate something accurately even on a small-scale map. Indeed, this is one of the biggest problems that mapmakers face: flat maps that cover an area of more than a few square miles inevitably distort features.

Engineers designing long bridges must take the Earth�s curvature into account, because a bridge that�s more than half a mile long or so must be build with the Earth�s curvature in mind. (Granted, it�s not a major concern, since a half-mile long bridge isn�t a rigid structure. If it were, this would be a major concern.) Artillery officers must take into account both the fact that the Earth�s surface isn�t flat and that the Earth rotates when plotting shell trajectories (after all, artillery pieces have been capable of firing shells over the horizon for over a century). Certainly, navigators of ships and aircraft must take into account the Earth�s curvature when plotting courses.

Physicists and engineers most certainly don�t use models which assume the Earth�s surface isn�t curved. Their models (quite correctly) assume that the curvature is small enough that it doesn�t matter if you�re concerned about something as small as a single building, but must be taken into account on larger scales.


You seem to think that evolution is not a falsifiable theory. In fact, it would be quite easy to falsify it. Ridiculously easy, in fact. Here are just a few ways.

As soon as it was discovered in the 1950s that DNA encodes genetic traits, it was predicted by biologists that there would be a correlation between how closely-related organisms appeared to be, and the similarity of their DNA. Specifically, it was predicted that those organisms which comparative anatomy, the fossil record, and comparative behavior suggested were close relatives would share very similar DNA, while organisms which appeared to be very different would have dissimilar DNA. Exactly as predicted, molecular analyses showed beyond any doubt that those organisms which independent lines of evidence suggested were closely-related were closely-related, genetically. Had the DNA turned out otherwise, this would have been a deathblow to evolutionary theory. We would have had to go back to the drawing board.

While we�re on the subject of genetics, if it had turned out that different species share different genetic codes, this would have completely falsified the notion of common descent.

Another very easy way to falsify evolutionary theory would be to find fossils where they couldn�t possibly exist, according to the theory. The existence of fossils of modern mammals in Precambrian sediments, for example, would immediately falsify evolutionary theory. Interestingly, no such �out of place� fossils have ever been found, despite decades of diligent searching.


The scientific community has concluded that the evidence in favor of the fact of evolution is overwhelming. The evidence which leads to that conclusion is publicly-available, and the reasoning has been explained. Your claim is that we�re wrong in our conclusion. The burden of proof, therefore, is on you to show us why we�re wrong.

Good luck.

Michael