Evolution in Five Easy Steps

Vanity | 21 August 2006 | PatrickHenry (vanity)

[PatrickHenry]

Everyone be nice.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping The List-O-Links

A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 390 names. See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped. To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit, and How to argue against a scientific theory.

[Rudder]

Excellent primer.

Someone send a copy to Ann Coulter so she can stop making a fool out of herself.

[Vaquero]

Ann is appealing to what she believes a big part of the base.

I dont believe she actually buys it, which is dishearting. She should have just worked her way around it.

[js1138]

The genetec bottleneck you describe does not need to be caused by environmental change. It can result from migration or scattering of seeds to a new and isolated location.

[ml/nj]

Over great periods of time, depending on environmental factors and the occurrence of mutations, a separate group can (if it doesn't go extinct) evolve into a new species;

And then Tinker Bell lived hapily ever after.

ML/NJ

[PatrickHenry]

The genetic bottleneck you describe does not need to be caused by environmental change. It can result from migration or scattering of seeds to a new and isolated location.

True. I'm hoping my subtitle (It's far more complicated than this, but you must start somewhere) will bail me out of such oversights.

[kittykat718]

There is a guy in a class I take who loves to stand up and spew this kind of stuff. It's always mind-numbing to listen to him. With him loving his own intellect and his vocabulary and the sound of his own voice, he cares not that most of the people in the class were lost at the first sentence.
You guys should get together.

[Physicist]

There is a guy in a class I take who loves to stand up and spew this kind of stuff.

He's called "the teacher".

[dmz]

Someone send a copy to Ann Coulter so she can stop making a fool out of herself.
____________-

It's gonna take a lot more than that.

[js1138]

Barbie says, "math is hard."

As a former student, and not a particularly good one, I can empathise. I don't criticise people for finding concepts hard. I criticise them when they take their lack of understanding and assert that all scientists for the past three hundred years are wrong.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I didn't see Jack Nicholson mentioned anywhere. ;)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Why would you want to be in a science class?

[Dante Alighieri]

Great piece! A nice, easy-to-understand summary of how evolution works.

[schwing_wifey]

Beautiful, elegant explanation of a difficult concept for some people.... thank you.

[King Prout]

bttt

[highball]

Well done. This ought to be required reading before posting on an evolution thread.

Someone send a copy to Ann Coulter so she can stop making a fool out of herself.

Okay, I admit that I'm not up on all her positions - what has she said and when?

[Dante Alighieri]

Did you read Godless: The Church of Liberalism? She devoted chapters 8-10 on Evolution and why she thought it was false. I was appalled at the arguments, which seemed to be ripped off the TalkOrigins "List of Creationist Claims" page. She used every recycled PRATT argument in the book. What's worse, Dembski and crew supposedly tutored her to help her write these sections. If you judge a tree by its fruits, it doesn't bode too well for neither the fruit nor the tree.

[muawiyah]

Ultimately this 5 point spread is sourced to the activities of a "demigod" identified as "nature's filter".

Gotta' do better than that if you want to knock down the

deus ex machina folks who want you to believe "God did it" in a New York second.

Several of the points make no sense in light of what has been found regarding the human genome, "jumping genes", and so forth.

[longshadow]

I understand that the Grand Master at DarwinCentral™ was reviewing an early draft of your essay during the recent Annual DarwinCentral™ Ball and Symposium in the Galapagos Islands, and was very impressed by your efforts. Has he mentioned any meritorious commendation or other honorarium that he intends to bestow upon you for this fine work?