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Posted on 04/04/2002 10:05:32 AM PST by Heartlander
Evolution works on existing life forms, it makes no difference if those life forms came about as a result of divine intervention.
Read the above Dimensio. Your statement in no way refutes my statement, in fact, it does not even address it. And yes evolution denies that God created man, that has been the most controversial statement of evolution since its inception so it really cannot be denied.
It's just a joke. Lighten up.
Same way you explain the mechanical similarity of Porsches and volkswagons; the one was re-engineered from the other. Porsches sure as hell didn't EVOLVE from Volkswagons via a series of random chance events....
One, you clearly have no concept of what "spamming" means and two, that thread got yanked because one of your own little clique calling himself "Saturnalia" started posting major kinds of sacreligious stuff on it.
A better question is this: Why have none of the so-called intermediate forms survived? Even if you buy off on "punc-eek" as VadeRepo and a couple of others do, you have to believe that vast numbers of intermediate forms have existed in past ages, if only for short periods of time. It seems to defy an overwhelming law of averages that not a single one of those intermediate forms would have survived to our present age.
Because of the nature of the laws of probability, the likelihood of any new kind of animal arising, with new kinds of organs, a new basic plan for existence etc. is a high-order infinitessimal, i.e. you are talking about a zero-probability event.
Now, it might be one thing to believe that one or two such events had ever occurred in the history of the world, but evolution posits an endless series of such events, i.e. it stands everything we know about probability on its head and requires a believer to pretend that such laws do not exist.
Moreover, natural selection could not plausibly select on the basis of hoped-for or future functionality; all you'd get would be a random walk around some norm for the old function. I.e. you'd have to come up with rationales for why an arm 10% of the way to becoming a wing offered an advantage, and then why an arm 20% offered an advantage over the 10% creatures, and then why an arm 30% of the way to being a wing....
Moreover, in real life, in trying to get to a new kind of a creature such as a flying bird, assuming you somehow miraculously evolved the first necessary new feature, then by the time the second evolved, the first would have de-evolved and either become vestigial or disappeared outright since it would have been useless - disfunctinal the entire while the second was evolving.
Darwininian gradualism has basically been abandoned at this point due to the lack of intermediates in the fossil record and also due to the Haldane dilemma and other problems of population genetics, basically the impossible time spans needed to spread genetic changes through sizeable populations of animals. The new semi-official replacement theory is the Gould/Eldredge notion of Punctuated Equilibria or "punc/eek". Unfortunately it turns out that punc/eek has even worse conceptual problems than the theory it is meant to replace:
It amounts to a pure pseudoscience since it involves a claim that the lack of intermediate fossils supports the theory. In other words, it amounts to a claim that a theory can be valided by a lack of evidence rather than evidence.
It amounts to a claim that inbreeding is a good thing and the source of all genetic advancement.
It ignores the familiar "gambler's problem" and in fact requires yet another kind of a reversal of overwhelming probabilistic laws in requiring tiny groups of animals to repeatedly spread out and overwhelm vastly larger groups, countless billions of times.
It ignores the fact that in real life, globally adapted animals invariably prevail over parochially adapted ones.
Gould and Eldredge do not even talk about a mechanism for the rapid change which must occur amongst the tiny groups of peripheral isolates which they try to claim are the salvation of evolutionism. They leave that up to the reader. That amounts to a claim of magic
2. As an Evolutionist, how would you characterize the next species that will evolve from man? (either gradually or after a period of "punctuation.")
...a. Do you expect that more than one species will evolve from man?
3. As an Evolutionist, what determines that an organism's species has changed?
I won on the thread you ran away from. Your claim of my lying rests upon your inability to understand that, while no DNA triplet codes for more than one amino acid, 18 of the 20 amino acids used in biological protein are coded by more than one DNA triplet. Thus, silent mutations are possible.
In short, you claimed a contradiction and thus a lie in the statements that 1) human and chimpanzees have identical cytochrome c molecules, and 2) humans and chimpanzees have a single mutational difference in the genes that code for cytochrome c. I have shown that there is no contradiction outside of your mind. There was no lie, except in your continued charges of lying.
You ran away, taking your current of abuse to a new thread, leaving old messes behind per your usual pattern. Anytime you're getting shown up you start screaming "liar."
Why do you say this is so? There are still prokaryotes. There are still eukaryotes. There are still primitive multicellulars. There are still primitive chordates that look a lot like the Burgess-Shale Pikaia. There are still fish, the first true vertebrates in the fossil record. One of the surviving fish species still looks a lot like the kind of lobe-finned fish that gave rise to amphibians. There are still amphibians. There are still reptiles. There are still primitive primates. There are still monkeys. There are still apes.
Our line comes through all of the above, albeit maybe not exactly through any still-extant species that we can be sure. So what was your point?
The now-extinct species most closely related to man might be archaic Homo sapiens, assuming it would even be a different species. I'll avoid Homo sapiens neandertalensis since it's generally not classified as a distinct species, although that may change. Anyway, Homo erectus is the ancestor of both of the preceding and is generally considered a separate species.
Some species don't show any morphological change in practically forever. Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are a case in point. They presumably have mutations, but anything that takes them far from their adaptation dies out. They're at a local fitness maximum.
gore300: Oh yes, your famous proof that because evolution says something - that dinosaurs cannot have mammary glands - therefore we must accept such proof without any evidence~ We must take your word for it. Such a brilliant proof Vade! Circular reasoning, with a pound of arrogance, and big doses of stupidity. We must all bow at your brilliance!
Again, you make a point of not understanding. Follow the link. What I showed here was that you had called me a liar for paraphrasing you correctly that for all we know, dinosaurs had mammaries.
My parents never let me watch the stooges. I have one brother a year older and another brother a year younger. Our house was already in chaos and the repairs were expensive. I can just imagine all the fun we would've had with the Stooges as source material.
Is there doubt about this? Are you refering to something like Big Foot?
LOL! Now you've done it.
Species is most easily defined in extant sexual populations, since you can observe reproductive compatibility. Two populations that cannot or will not breed are considered separate species. Just in the last few months I've noticed that most creationists have punted on claiming that this does not occur, quietly moving the goalpost for macroevolution to the genus level.
In asexual species, you have molecular and anatomical evidence, but it's not so clear as for sexuals. For fossil species, all you have to go on are anatomical clues. That's fuzzier yet. You can picture future paleontologists arguing over St. Bernard and chihuahua skeletons.
I did not assume anything. "Natural influence" does not equate to "global catastrophe."
I did not imply that every species is continually changing. I asked if YOU believe that mankind is continually evolving and likely to change into another species.
The context of my questions is mankind. Please respond in that context.
And I do thank you for a beneficial dialog.
LOL
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