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Topic:
Evidence of Evolution
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
6/3 4:47pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Moreso, there's a great number of people that consider evolution to be accurate that are theistic.
As for what would lead to needing wings.... what about if you looked at a small animal, like a squirrel, that spends most of its life in the trees, and when being able to jump larger distances both removes dangers of falling and could aid in getting to food or getting away from preditors. Then there's an evolutionary benefit from being able to glide further, and you can make the progression, over a long enough time span, you can get up to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_squirrel
And it could get to wings given enough time.
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LostOnHoth
Registered:
Feb '00
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Date Posted:
6/3 7:56pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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I agree somewhat but atheism and evolutionism seem inseperable.
Whilst they are two separate concepts it follows that atheists are more likely to believe in evolution over creationism simply because atheists rject the concept of a "creator".
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king_alvarez
Registered:
May '07
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Date Posted:
6/4 7:00am
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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TrulyGhent posted:
And why have mothers not evolved with four arms, that would help them quite a bit.
To add to what others have already said, it's also quite possible that the cost of having four arms outweighs the benefits of having four arms. You can't ignore the cost of a specfic trait as this is responsible for traits disappearing, which is abundantly evidenced in nature.
TrulyGhent posted:
Also, would you explain the "environmental pressures" that would necessitate the growing of wings?
I think "necessitate" is really a poor word choice as that suggests that evolution occurs in such a way as to produce a needed trait, that is, with a specific goal in mind. This is simply not true. A better word might be "favor," that is, "environmental pressures that would favor species with wings."
Additionally, evolution isn't a process that always produces the best possible trait or a perfectly adapted species. In fact, this is many times not the case. There are many cases of species and traits that are not as well adapted to their environment as they could be (which is evidence suggesting that if we were designed, we certainly were not designed intelligently).
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VadersLaMent
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
6/4 3:37pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Creationism = defeated.
Intelligent Design = defeated.
Some still cling to those and spout of the falshoods from them, but basically they are out. Buuuuuuuut of course that is not the end. Ready?
"STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
And just in case that link breaks:
Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy
By LAURA BEIL
Published: June 4, 2008
DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.
Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”
The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”
Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.
Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.
“Very often over the last 10 years, we’ve seen antievolution policies in sheep’s clothing,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that is against teaching creationism.
The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.
Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.
What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.
“ ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom.
The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”
“Why in the world would anybody not want to include weaknesses?” Dr. McLeroy said.
The word itself is open to broad interpretation. If the teaching of weaknesses is mandated, a textbook might be forced to say that evolution has an “inability to explain the Cambrian Explosion,” according to the group Texans for Better Science Education, which questions evolution.
The Cambrian Explosion was a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began around 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms. Scientists are studying how it unfolded.
Evolution as a principle is not disputed in the scientific mainstream, where the term “theory” does not mean a hunch, but an explanation backed by abundant observation, and where gaps in knowledge are not seen as grounds for doubt but points for future understanding. Over time, research has strengthened the basic tenets of evolution, especially as advances in molecular genetics have allowed biologists to read the history recorded in the DNA of animals and plants.
Yet playing to the American sense of fairness, lawmakers across the country have tried to require that classrooms be open to all views. The Discovery Institute has provided a template for legislators to file “academic freedom” bills, and they have been popping up with increasing frequency in statehouses across the country. In Florida, the session ended last month before legislators could take action, while in Louisiana, an academic-freedom bill was sent to the House of Representatives after passing the House education committee and the State Senate.
In Texas, evolution foes do not have to win over the entire Legislature, only a majority of the education board; they are one vote away.
Dr. McLeroy, the board chairman, sees the debate as being between “two systems of science.”
“You’ve got a creationist system and a naturalist system,” he said.
Dr. McLeroy believes that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. “I believe a lot of incredible things,” he said, “The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.”
But Dr. McLeroy says his rejection of evolution — “I just don’t think it’s true or it’s ever happened” — is not based on religious grounds. Courts have clearly ruled that teachings of faith are not allowed in a science classroom, but when he considers the case for evolution, Dr. McLeroy said, “it’s just not there.”
“My personal religious beliefs are going to make no difference in how well our students are going to learn science,” he said.
Views like these not only make biology teachers nervous, they also alarm those who have a stake in the state’s reputation for scientific exploration. “Serious students will not come to study in our universities if Texas is labeled scientifically backward,” said Dr. Dan Foster, former chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
“I’m an orthodox Christian,” Dr. Foster said, “and I don’t want to say that Christianity is crazy.” But science, not scripture, belongs in a classroom, he said. To allow views that undermine evolution, he said, “puts belief on the same level as scientific evidence.”
Dr. Foster is a veteran of the evolution wars. He met with Mr. Perry in 2003 when the “strengths and weaknesses” argument last appeared, and more recently he worked to oppose an application by the Institute for Creation Research, which supports the teaching of creationism, to award graduate degrees in the state. (It was rejected on April 23, but the institute has said it will appeal.)
This time around, however, scientists like Dr. Foster see more reason for worry. Although the process might drag on till next spring, a state-appointed committee of science educators has already begun to review the curriculum requirements. Although the state education board is free to set aside or modify their proposals, committee members will recommend that the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase be removed, said Kevin Fisher, a committee member who is against the teaching of creationism.
“When you consider evolution, there are certainly questions that have yet to be answered,” said Mr. Fisher, science coordinator for the Lewisville Independent School District in North Texas.
But, he added, “a question that has yet to be answered is certainly different from an alleged weakness.”
Mr. Fisher points to the flaws in Darwinian theory that are listed on an anti-evolution Web site, strengthsandweaknesses.org, which is run by Texans for Better Science Education.
“Many of them are decades old,” Mr. Fisher said of the flaws listed. “They’ve all been thoroughly refuted.”
If there is one thing I find as the most obvious form of propoganda here is when anti-science groups give themselves scientific sounding names as the two above, The Discovery Institute and Texans for better Science Education.
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Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God--Michael Shermer
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DorkmanScott
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
6/4 4:11pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
- Date Edited:
6/4 4:13pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
DorkmanScott
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What are the weaknesses of evolutionary theory?
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Quixotic-Sith
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '01
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Date Posted:
6/4 4:19pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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DorkmanScott posted:
What are the weaknesses of evolutionary theory?
Some people find it hard to spell.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
6/4 4:39pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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DorkmanScott posted:
What are the weaknesses of evolutionary theory?
Offhand, the two things I'd think would be that too often, people try to extend it to the origin of life, and cite its inability to explain that as a weakness, however thats a lack of understanding on what the evolutionary theory focuses on, rather than a problem with the theory.
The other would be that its not a full explanation of all details, but again, thats not understanding what the theory focuses on, and misrepresenting 'gaps' as weaknesses.
I think this was a key section:
article posted:
Evolution as a principle is not disputed in the scientific mainstream, where the term “theory” does not mean a hunch, but an explanation backed by abundant observation, and where gaps in knowledge are not seen as grounds for doubt but points for future understanding. Over time, research has strengthened the basic tenets of evolution, especially as advances in molecular genetics have allowed biologists to read the history recorded in the DNA of animals and plants.
Its an issue, I think, of people not understanding how science works and a weakness in education.
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SWBob
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
6/5 1:34am
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Just a question. I for one support evolution, but when i try to explain it to no followers of the evelutionary theory, they bring up the missing link think. What is evolutions stance on that. I get on forgeting that and i'm stuck looking like a fool.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
6/5 2:03am
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Alright, my understanding of it although this is not my field of science, so anyone that focuses on this specifically, correct away:
Well, we're working with fossils that are millions of years apart in age..... there will always be the ability to add in "missing links" in the gaps simply because its really not reasonable to expect to find a fossil every generation of the process of evolution.
I'd think that in general, the "missing link" is a bit of a misnomer as we're still working with fossils going millions of years into the past, and showing increasing complexity and development as they get more recent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
If I showed you a picture of myself as a child, and a few more from a couple weeks ago, you're not going to request to see pictures every day in between to see that that was really me because the jump in hight and other changes require a missing link in there.
Its strong evidence we have now, and more fossils will help us get a better idea when specific developments occured, but there's not a massive gap where a whole bunch of things occured that the term "missing link" seems to imply. You could always stress that evolution as a theory is just meant to be the best example of what we observe, and ask them what they think the explanation is that we see a steady progression over time, and how that fits the data and all.
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SWBob
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
6/5 3:08am
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Thanks.
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"There will be pages. Lots and lots of pages. Most of them will have letters on them,
and a vast majority of those letters will be in the Roman alphabet"
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Minister of Internal Affairs and CoW Senator
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king_alvarez
Registered:
May '07
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Date Posted:
6/5 7:11am
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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SWBob posted:
Just a question. I for one support evolution, but when i try to explain it to no followers of the evelutionary theory, they bring up the missing link think. What is evolutions stance on that. I get on forgeting that and i'm stuck looking like a fool.
The "missing link" argument by creationists is bit disingenuous. For every "missing link" that is found, in the mind of the creationist, two more missing links are then created.
The truth of the matter is that the absolute rarity of fossilization makes the fossil record that we do have very impressive.
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Because there are no story-book romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, "What do you really want?"
Because life... is not a movie. Everyone lies. Good guys lose. And love... does not conquer all.
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VadersLaMent
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
6/5 1:32pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Yes the tactic is actually another form of goal post moving. You move the posts back because you can never have every living thing that ever existed to study, therefore you can always claim a missing link.
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Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God--Michael Shermer
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king_alvarez
Registered:
May '07
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Date Posted:
6/11 12:52pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Interesting stuff...
Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.
The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.
...
But sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations – the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.
...
That meant the "citrate-plus" trait must have been something special – either it was a single mutation of an unusually improbable sort, a rare chromosome inversion, say, or else gaining the ability to use citrate required the accumulation of several mutations in sequence.
To find out which, Lenski turned to his freezer, where he had saved samples of each population every 500 generations. These allowed him to replay history from any starting point he chose, by reviving the bacteria and letting evolution "replay" again.
...
The replays showed that even when he looked at trillions of cells, only the original population re-evolved Cit+ – and only when he started the replay from generation 20,000 or greater. Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve.
Lenski and his colleagues are now working to identify just what that earlier change was, and how it made the Cit+ mutation possible more than 10,000 generations later.
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Because there are no story-book romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, "What do you really want?"
Because life... is not a movie. Everyone lies. Good guys lose. And love... does not conquer all.
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ShaneP
Registered:
Mar '01
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Date Posted:
6/11 3:27pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Interesting. 
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VadersLaMent
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
6/11 4:08pm
Subject:
RE: Evidence of Evolution
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Even more evidence creationists will ignore. 
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