Posted on 09/13/2006 3:52:47 PM PDT by DannyTN
All well and good. But why does that happen in modern birds when it didn't happen in ancient birds?
>>Bacteria have not 'evolved' drug resistance; the resistant bacteria have always been there; all the drugs have done is tilt the population demographics in favor of the resistant strains by killing off the non-resistant ones. If this is evolution, then the genocide in Africa is evolution too.<<
Excellent point.
I was shocked when I made the same point to some Rabid True Believer evolutionists thinking they would change the subject. I thought they just didn't understand what was going on. Instead they vehemently defended that very scenario as EVOLUTION IN ACTION. They DID understand it and still considered it proof of evolution. I was dumbfounded. I suddenly realized just how much we are dealing with "educated children" here. They only know what they have been told, and believe it because they trust their professors. That is a good thing because as most of them age and replay in their minds what was being taught and by whom, they will start thinking for themselves and alter their world view. In fact, I just coined a new phrase based on an old favorite:
"Show me a young man who is not an evolutionist, and I will show you a man who was not paying attention in school. Show me an old man who IS an evolutionist, and I'll show you a man who never learned to think for himself."
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Remember, birds are very, very ancient. They used to come in two varieties ~ those with breastbones, and those without breastbones. At the time of the great destruction of the dinosaurs, the birds without breastbrones appear to have all been destroyed.
Recent findings suggest that all modern birds are descended from one small branch of birds with breastbones ~ the waders.
We, on the other hand, find our origins among mammals with attitudes.
In philosophy, there is a technical word for this sort of operation: MYTH. I've got nothing against myth, mind you. But myth has nothing to do with science or the scientific method.
Thanks for the ping, Editor-Surveyor! I was really tickled by your analogy of African genocide to bacterial evolution! :^)
No doubt they themselves will someday become parents who tell the other one that "the baby's diaper needs evolved".
Darwin himself seemed to like to reserve the word "evolution" as an explanation for the origin of species. I am sure if he meant "change" he'd have used "change" exclusively.
Well, we did! We observed Latin language changing into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.
Have you ever considered that the inquisition might just have been an enlightened policy? I'll bet not. but it enabled Ferdinand and Isabella to create Spain out of a disunited and culturally mixed Iberian peninsula. If you are like a lot of people here you support sending illegal Mexicans home. Same policy.
You're stuck in the same box as the other guy. Enjoy.
Evolution is evolution, whether due to natural selection or not.
Natural selection has been and still is believed to be the primary shaper of populations, but natural selection is one of a number of processes involved in evolution.
Evolution is a change in allele frequency in populations over time.
<gasp> That's evolutionist talk!
The point is still that the ancestors of modern birds had teeth. If the waders didn't have them, their ancestors did. Why the change?
(Again, the specifics are beside the point. Something changed, the change was inherited, that's evolution.)
But as pointed out, completely untrue. Just flaming ignorance of science facts.
>>Its not about science. It is about overriding science with a particular narrow religious belief.<<
That is kind of funny because that is exactly how I look at evolution as taught to our young people.
>>But as pointed out, completely untrue. Just flaming ignorance of science facts.<<
Nope. It is rejection of exposed science dogma.
You're asking for the wrong thing. An animal does not evolve because individual organisisms do not evolve. Populations of organisisms evolve. Evolution is the genetic change that occurs in a population of organisms over time.
Soyo are going on record with editor-surveyor and muawiyah asserting that evolution never includes beneficial mutations? And that a bacterial culture starting with a single organism cannot acquire new and useful traits through mutation?
"applying evolution to humans"
You argued at length that what the Nazis did was not "evolution" at all, because it was not natural selection. Now that it's convenient, you're arguing the opposite. And, you didn't even thank me for handing you the phrase "applied evolution," that you're now sprinkling so liberally in your replies. It'll come back to haunt you, lol.
Soyo=So you
No, evolution is inherited change. That's precisely what Darwin meant, and precisely what we mean.
Darwin clearly and explicitly pointed to minor variations in finch beak size as constituting evolution. His crucial insight is that there is no qualitative difference between such minor variations and the gross differences between any two arbitrarily chosen organisms, only a quantitative difference.
Practical benefits of the theory of evolution: It makes its adherents feel good about themselves and their knowledge, sells a lot of books, and offers an intellectual cudgel with which to bash the "unenlightened."
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