The Evolution of Theory: Defining the Debate

Breakpoint ^ | Feb, 16, 2006 | Allen Dobras

[VadeRetro]

If it wasn't for "Monks reading John" and studying MANY other things, your "prophet" Darwin would never have sailed on the Beagle.

Incidentally, the captain of said ship didn't want to take Charles aboard, as Mr. Darwin's NOSE was considered by many to be of an undesirable personality trait. This was reasonable and sufficient grounds to beach Darwin, but a number of politicos intervened.

We can number you among those who think science is argued the way religion is argued. That is, the works of the founder are canonical and trump all subsequent scholarship. Furthermore, if any personal dirt on the founder exists then all the works of the founder are discredited.

Science is not a matter of revealed word. Darwin was only the first Darwinist. He died in 1881 and is quite out of date. It doesn't matter now if you can find evidence that he barbequeued and ate human babies, or even that he married his first cousin. It's not about that.

Evolution isn't true because Darwin is a famous scientist. Darwin is a famous scientist because evolution proved true.

You don't even know how people reason these kind of questions. That's not encouraging.

[AmericaUnited]

I think you're addressing the wrong person.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"I think you're addressing the wrong person."

Your humility is admirable, but misplaced. You should be proud of the sentiments you expressed this Sunday morning. I for one took them in the spirit they were given. :)

[Tribune7]

Note that the next thing, A. africanus, over from the modern chimp looks a lot like the chimp, and it's the oldest skull in the series at 2.6 million years.

One of the big peeves of evolutionist is the claim they they believe man evolved from apes, which this chart infers :-)

How does this chart indicate that Australopithecus evolved? Agruably you can say it devolved since it's cranium is bigger than the chimps, or, more reasonably, say it was a type of primate that became extinct -- which appears to be a widely held view among scientist in good standing in the evolution club.

Regardless, the fossil record is subject to debate.

Also, J, K and L show Neanderthal man. Why would they be on a chart of the family tree of man?

[Coyoteman]

Also, J, K and L show Neanderthal man. Why would they be on a chart of the family tree of man?

That is not a relationship chart, but rather a mug book. It shows a lot of the main fossils, in relation to modern chimp and modern human, but it does not imply any specific relationship between adjacent fossils.

This chart from a few years ago attempts to show relationships:

http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/environment/eePages/eeDating/HumanEvol_info.html

[VadeRetro]

One of the big peeves of evolutionist is the claim they they believe man evolved from apes, which this chart infers :-)

For those not blinded by religious horror it ought to be absolutely obvious. Not much of an inference.

How does this chart indicate that Australopithecus evolved? Agruably you can say it devolved since it's cranium is bigger than the chimps, or, more reasonably, say it was a type of primate that became extinct -- which appears to be a widely held view among scientist in good standing in the evolution club.

Why would you say it devolved if it is more adapted to bipedalism than any previous fossil primate and had a larger cranial capacity? You're not making any sense here.

It became extinct in the sense that there are no living representatives of that species. However, it is a fine candidate for being the ancestor of later forms such as H. habilis and, indirectly through those later forms, H. sapiens. (If some later africanuses overlapped in time with some habilis specimens, so what? There are still monkeys, fish, and protozoans, too.)

Regardless, the fossil record is subject to debate.

There are reasonable debates among real scientists and there are the relentless, discredited, back-again-dumb-as-a-stumpisms of creationism. There is no question among real scientists that humans arose from apes. The real debates among real scientists, no matter how amplified and distorted by creationists, are not about that.

Also, J, K and L show Neanderthal man. Why would they be on a chart of the family tree of man?

We may well carry Neanderthal genes. The latest genetic evidence weighs strongly against total replacement of pre-existing local by the last Out-of-Africa wave.

Also, if the chart were being made today it could just as easily have replaced one or more of the Neanderthals with early H. sapiens specimens like Homo sapiens idaltu (160 kya) and Qafzeh 9, 90-100 kya. It would be just as smooth a progression. Several closely related (probably not speciated from each other) branches were experiencing the same trend toward intelligence, tool-making, etc.

You're working too hard to not know the real evidence, to refuse to infer, to spread misinformation. This is not the path to understanding.

[VadeRetro]

The latest genetic evidence weighs strongly against total replacement of pre-existing local by the last Out-of-Africa wave.

I assume someone will challenge this. New analysis shows three human migrations out of Africa, Replacement theory 'demolished'.

[bvw]

VR, you realize, of course, that the carefully worded pharse "intermediate in morphology" does NOT imply evolutionary descent. Each artifact in the series of shapes can not be assumed to be a biological descendant of the prior. The artifacts may be totally unrelated in ancestral lineage, not cousins, not even banches of some old family tree.

However to be able to produce such fine obviously step-wise evolution of morphological classificatiuon (ordering by shape chateristics) amoung artifacts -- where those artifacts were to be man-made, say arrow-heads, or watches made by watchmakers -- is a strong indicator of design evolution, where designers share and evolve designs for some purpose. Thus by a rule of logic and science know as induction, to have such an morphologically evolving step porgression of skulls is an indicator of DESIGN.

[bvw]

These skulls, per last post's reference.

[Quark2005]

However, Global Warming and Evolution's theories never need revising based on observed events, these events simply get explained as evidence to support the theory.

Exactly what observed event or physical evidence do you believe exists that contradicts or supersedes the Theory of Evolution? If there isn't any, and the theory keeps succeeding in providing a consistent explanation of available data, it must be pretty good theory, no?

[Quark2005]

While many of us today do still have sundails as garden decorations there are no water clocks to be found. Instead we have spring wound clocks, electric clocks, electronic clocks, computer clocks, and very fancy laser and atomic clocks. Very evolved have clocks become.

And every single one -- including the ancient sundail and water clock artifacts -- designed by designers.

Clocks, however, do not reproduce imperfect copies of themselves, and are thus not equipped to evolve on their own.

The analogy fails.

[patriot_wes]

"Pretty darn low I suspect...

No....how about 10 to the 130th!

[bvw]

Computer chips are used both to design and control the the manufacturing of other chips, it is practically possible to design machines that produce themselves, and even do so with "random" changes. Such machines could include a clock part.

The analogy succeeds again!

[Quark2005]

Computer chips are used both to design and control the the manufacturing of other chips, it is practically possible to design machines that produce themselves, and even do so with "random" changes. Such machines could include a clock part.

The analogy succeeds again!

To my knowledge, no computer chip has ever been observed producing more of its own kind spontaneously. Biological organisms do so all the time, and we observe their evolution directly all the time (without the direct intervention of a "Designer"). Sorry, the analogy still doesn't work. Clocks and microchips don't have babies.

[ml1954]

Not only is the anti-creation percentage margin greater, but it has moved over the fifty percent margin which tells a campaign the undecideds can't move this one.

I noticed that too.

[Raycpa]

Exactly what observed event or physical evidence do you believe exists that contradicts or supersedes the Theory of Evolution?

The beauty of Global Warming is that regardless of a hot day or a cold, receding ice or growing, the events prove global warming. Likewise evolution. Regardless what information about fossils and the past is obtained or changed, the explanations are there to prove Evolution.

Even poor Einstein's theories are not that good.

[bvw]

You are aware that our view of reality is limited. For example some versions of string theory postulate seven more dimensions wound up so tightly they are imperceptable to us. The CPU is somewhat imperceptable to the code that runs on it, and the programmer is totally obscured to any ideation that the running program might attempt of him or her.

Just how spontnaeous is that reproduction again? And even, just how "spontaneous" is the very moment of time space and existance we are in?

Just as the running program is unable to directly sense the programmer, in our animalistic mind we are (almost totally) unable to sense our Creaor and Maintainer.

Evolve!

[ml1954]

I too have noticed how Jesuslike the rhetoric of self described Christian creationists is on these threads. /sarcasm

[Tribune7]

For those not blinded by religious horror it ought to be absolutely obvious. Not much of an inference.

OK, Vade. When an pro-evo objects that evolution does not claim that man evolved from apes, I'll cite you as the authority that it does :-)

[Quark2005]

Regardless what information about fossils and the past is obtained or changed, the explanations are there to prove Evolution.

Not true. The success of the Theory of Evolution, just as with relativity or any other well-established theory, has been its ability to make predictions about yet undiscovered data.

Some examples:

Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000).

Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000).

Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey (Yoshida et al. 2003).

Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction (Webster et al. 2003).

Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003).

Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees. This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982).

Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005).

(source)

There are many, many more examples. Evolutionary theory has predicted (successfully) that fibrinogen (a specific blood-clotting protein) would have an analogously related protein in our closest invertebrate relatives. Evolutionary theory predicted (successfully) that the same gene that produces antifreeze in the blood of certain Antarctic fish also produces digestive enzymes. Evolutionary theory predicted (successfully) that pathogens that require host-to-host contact for survival have slower and smaller mortality rates. Evolutionary theory predicted (successfully) that the line marking differences between species would be blurry in many cases (as has been confirmed by the discovery of ring species). The list goes on and on and on...

Like relativity theory, which itself continues to be refined in its application, evolutionary theories are refined, though the basic tenets have robustly withstood the test of time and have not required any fundamental alteration - the hallmark of a solid theory.

Einstein would no doubt be impressed with the successful tests of both relativity and evolutionary theory if he was alive today. Scientists eagerly await any competing theory of origins that can even begin to match the predictive success that evolution has had - there would no doubt be a lot of money and recognition to be had there.