Has Evolution Been Proven to be True ?

[Sole]

Originally Posted by Tuco

God invented evolution and used it to evolve man so man would create the internet and bring about an infinite supply of porn.

Never met this "God" guy but he sounds pretty fucking cool.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off. He's a tight-ass. He's a sadist. He's an absentee landlord.

[The Edge]

I don't think the act of evolution has ever truly been in question. Things change over time, for better or worse. We can see this, track it, and sometimes predict what the next stage will be.

What is usually in question are the mechanics of it. What causes it, and why?

Is it purely survival of the fittest?

Is it just random mutations?

Is there intelligence behind it?

Is it only natural selection?

As someone pointed out previously, another area where people run into trouble is when they try to apply it to origin scenarios. As in 'there has to be something there in the first place for it to evolve.' They try to make it into an explanation for creation, which is something that it wasn't meant to cover anyway.

[Vatoreus]

Originally Posted by OneofOne

Sorry but you are wrong.

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

a theory is about as close to fact as it gets.

Uh, what you just said kinda supports what I said... Where was I wrong again?

I never said it is fact or proven beyond doubt. I said it's as close as it comes. Which is what you said, just with fancier and more words. I'm confused now.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Dr. Funkenstein

Science's domain is facts. Religion's domain is truth. In science there is no truth...all facts are deemed incomplete since any current observable fact can be usurped by facts that aren't yet known or observable. In religion there are no facts...all elements are taken on faith.

Facts are truth. Just because science leaves room for change doesn't mean things shouldn't be taken as absolute. Think of theories like evolution or gravity as "Facts based on everything we currently know"

You can avoid religion all you want. Religious followers/nuts should avoid you, as well. You'd be none the wiser if they did. Unfortunately, there are idiots on both sides who insist on trying to overlap the two, starting pointless arguments in two different grammars.

I don't want the two to ever overlap. I want religon to cease to be. There is no situation where the two overlap where religion is in the right. Evolution, gay rights, stem cell research, etc. Religion is a detriment to the modern world.

PS I'm also baptised and a semi-practicing congregationalist.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by The Edge

Is it purely survival of the fittest?

pretty much

Is it just random mutations?

this goes hand in hand with survival of the fittest for evolution to work

Is there intelligence behind it?

doesn't need to be, survival of the fittest is a simple logical truth.

Is it only natural selection?

same as survival of the fittest



All evolution needs to occur is random mutations, heredity (so that the mutations can carry on to new generations) and natural selection.

In a closed system with those 3 things evolution will occur. This is not religion versus science. This is absolute truth. Drug resistant germs are a great current example of this in progress.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by brekk

All evolution needs to occur is random mutations, heredity (so that the mutations can carry on to new generations) and natural selection.

Thanks for the reply brekk.

What triggers the random mutations though?

And if they are predictable or usually beneficial, can they really be said to be 'random'?

[brekk]

Originally Posted by The Edge

Thanks for the reply brekk.

What triggers the random mutations though?

And if they are predictable or usually beneficial, can they really be said to be 'random'?

they aren't predictable and rarely beneficial. The vast majority of mutations have no effect what so ever. A mutation that has a beneficial or negative effect on the organism is extremely rare.

And when they do occur they are extremely minor. This is I think the hardest part to grasp in evolution. It is all incomprehensibly small changes that accumulate over hundreds and thousands of generations to add up to something more.

[Sythrak]

Discussions like these are why we aren't out exploring space in star cruisers yet.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by brekk

they aren't predictable and rarely beneficial. The vast majority of mutations have no effect what so ever. A mutation that has a beneficial or negative effect on the organism is extremely rare.

And when they do occur they are extremely minor. This is I think the hardest part to grasp in evolution. It is all incomprehensibly small changes that accumulate over hundreds and thousands of generations to add up to something more.

In your previous post you said "In a closed system ... evolution will occur." Is that not predictability?

Also, I'm sure a lot of the X-Men fans here will tell you that mutations are not always 'extremely minor.' Sometimes Nature takes a creative leap.

On the topic of randomness, are you sure this is the case? When I look at nature, I do not see randomness. I see cohesion and purpose.

I'd like to present some reasons that are not my own, on why this area of evolution is still up for debate:

1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no "missing link" can fill. The most glaring is the leap by which inorganic molecules turned into DNA. For billions of years after the Big Bang, no other molecule replicated itself. No other molecule was remotely as complicated. No other molecule has the capacity to string billions of pieces of information that remain self-sustaining despite countless transformations into all the life forms that DNA has produced.

2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations -- those that lead to new species -- and so few negative ones? Random chance should produce useless mutations thousands of times more often than positive ones.

3. How does evolution know where to stop? The pressure to evolve is constant; therefore it is hard to understand why evolution isn't a constant. Yet sharks and turtles and insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years without apparent evolution except to diversify among their kind. These species stopped in place while others, notably hominids, kept evolving with tremendous speed, even though our primate ancestors didn't have to. The many species of monkeys which persist in original form tell us that human evolution, like the shark's, could have ended. Why didn't it?

4. Evolutionary biology is stuck with regard to simultaneous mutations. One kind of primordial skin cell, for example, mutated into scales, fur, and feathers. These are hugely different adaptations, and each is tremendously complex. How could one kind of cell take three different routes purely at random?

5. If design doesn't imply intelligence, why are we so intelligent? The human body is composed of cells that evolved from one-celled blue-green algae, yet that algae is still around. Why did DNA pursue the path of greater and greater intelligence when it could have perfectly survived in one-celled plants and animals, as in fact it did?

6. Why do forms replicate themselves without apparent need? The helix or spiral shape found in the shell of the chambered nautilus, the center of sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and DNA itself seems to be such a replication. It is mathematically elegant and appears to be a design that was suited for hundreds of totally unrelated functions in nature.

7. What happens when simple molecules come into contact with life? Oxygen is a simple molecule in the atmosphere, but once it enters our lungs, it becomes part of the cellular machinery, and far from wandering about randomly, it precisely joins itself with other simple molecules, and together they perform cellular tasks, such as protein-building, whose precision is millions of times greater than anything else seen in nature. If the oxygen doesn't change physically -- and it doesn't -- what invisible change causes it to acquire intelligence the instant it contacts life?

8. How can whole systems appear all at once? The leap from reptile to bird is proven by the fossil record. Yet this apparent step in evolution has many simultaneous parts. It would seem that Nature, to our embarrassment, simply struck upon a good idea, not a simple mutation. If you look at how a bird is constructed, with hollow bones, toes elongated into wing bones, feet adapted to clutching branches instead of running, etc., none of the mutations by themselves give an advantage to survival, but taken altogether, they are a brilliant creative leap. Nature takes such leaps all the time, and our attempt to reduce them to bits of a jigsaw puzzle that just happened to fall into place to form a beautifully designed picture seems faulty on the face of it. Why do we insist that we are allowed to have brilliant ideas while Nature isn't?

9. Darwin's iron law was that evolution is linked to survival, but it was long ago pointed out that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology. Some mutations survive, and therefore we call them fittest. Yet there is no obvious reason why the dodo, kiwi, and other flightless birds are more fit; they just survived for a while. DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen, DNA will blow away into dust if left outside on a sunny day or if attacked by pathogens, x-rays, solar radiation, and mutations like cancer. The key to survival is more than fighting to see which organism is fittest.

10. Competition itself is suspect, for we see just as many examples in Nature of cooperation. Bees cooperate, obviously, to the point that when a honey bee stings an enemy, it acts to save the whole hive. At the moment of stinging, a honeybee dies. In what way is this a survival mechanism, given that the bee doesn't survive at all? For that matter, since a mutation can only survive by breeding -- "survival" is basically a simplified term for passing along gene mutations from one generation to the next -- how did bees develop drones in the hive, that is, bees who cannot and never do have sex?

11. How did symbiotic cooperation develop? Certain flowers, for example, require exactly one kind of insect to pollinate them. A flower might have a very deep calyx, or throat, for example than only an insect with a tremendously long tongue can reach. Both these adaptations are very complex, and they serve no outside use. Nature was getting along very well without this symbiosis, as evident in the thousands of flowers and insects that persist without it. So how did numerous generations pass this symbiosis along if it is so specialized?

12. Finally, why are life forms beautiful? Beauty is everywhere in Nature, yet it serves no obvious purpose. Once a bird of paradise has evolved its incredibly gorgeous plumage, we can say that it is useful to attract mates. But doesn't it also attract predators, for we simultaneously say that camouflaged creatures like the chameleon survive by not being conspicuous. In other words, exact opposites are rationalized by the same logic. This is no logic at all. Non-beautiful creatures have survived for millions of years, so have gorgeous ones. The notion that this is random seems weak on the face of it.

[Falmer]

Originally Posted by The Edge

I'd like to present some reasons that are not my own

You had me worried there, because that's some of the most retarded stuff I've read in a while.

[Kaio]

Uh, dude just read up on evolution. Every living organism on the planet experiences genetic mutations that change them in random ways. Different organisms will change at different speeds to due the time of their life cycle and the structure and size of their DNA. DNA isn't perfect and dna degrades over time as well. Mutation is just dna being altered and the structure of dna as it is right now forces this to occur. Every reproductive cycle there are alterations because nature isn't capable of making a 100% exact copy of the dna from one cell to the next.

I agree survival of the fittest isn't the best description though. It's survival of the sufficiently fit, but that doesn't sound as catchy. Evolution does not imply improvement, just change over time. Even if certain species develop harmful traits they wont' die out as long as they can survive in their environment. Usually the ones that mutate in a positive way have a higher chance of reproducing.

Also please don't bring up x-men.

Originally Posted by The Edge

On the topic of randomness, are you sure this is the case? When I look at nature, I do not see randomness. I see cohesion and purpose.

Randomness is the mutations, not natural selection. EX: When infectious bacteria evolves against a certain drug it's not because it instinctively knows or has a system for evolving against drugs but rather it's because their life-cycle is very short and random mutations occur constantly and inevitably strains that are resistant to the chemical occur out of randomness however due to their advantage in the new environment they have a higher likelihood of getting to the point of reproduction.

[The Edge]

Originally Posted by Kaio

Uh, dude just read up on evolution. Every living organism on the planet experiences genetic mutations that change them in random ways. Different organisms will change at different speeds to due the time of their life cycle and the structure and size of their DNA. DNA isn't perfect and dna degrades over time as well. Mutation is just dna being altered and the structure of dna as it is right now forces this to occur. Every reproductive cycle there are alterations because nature isn't capable of making a 100% exact copy of the dna from one cell to the next.

I think this might be too microscopic of a viewpoint, and it requires taking a view at the whole, along the lines of missing the forest for the trees. To see similarities across all species and the "coincidences" that have occurred.

I agree survival of the fittest isn't the best description though. It's survival of the sufficiently fit, but that doesn't sound as catchy.

Agreed.

Randomness is the mutations, not natural selection. EX: When infectious bacteria evolves against a certain drug it's not because it instinctively knows or has a system for evolving against drugs but rather it's because their life-cycle is very short and random mutations occur constantly and inevitably strains that are resistant to the chemical occur out of randomness however due to their advantage in the new environment they have a higher likelihood of getting to the point of reproduction.

So, you are saying some things in nature occur randomly while others do not? What decides which is random and which is designed?

[Tea on tuesday]

LET'S DO THIS!!!!

Originally Posted by The Edge

Also, I'm sure a lot of the X-Men fans here will tell you that mutations are not always 'extremely minor.' Sometimes Nature takes a creative leap.

Oh, God.

Originally Posted by The Edge

I'd like to present some reasons that are not my own, on why this area of evolution is still up for debate:

Ok.

Originally Posted by The Edge

1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no "missing link" can fill. The most glaring is the leap by which inorganic molecules turned into DNA. For billions of years after the Big Bang, no other molecule replicated itself. No other molecule was remotely as complicated. No other molecule has the capacity to string billions of pieces of information that remain self-sustaining despite countless transformations into all the life forms that DNA has produced.

1. Nature doesn't take creative leaps. You're thinking of punctuated equilibrium, in which new niches open up and a flood of diversity rushes in to fill in those empty niches. This happens very quickly on a geologic time scale, but we're talking hundreds and thousands of generations still.

2. Abiogenisis=/=evolution

3. A couple star cycles were needed after the big bang to create heavier elements and clear some space. But, we know nothing of extraterrestial life and saying "for billion years there was no life." is a baseless claim. Pretty much as soon as the Earth cooled life sprang up. On a 4.6 billion year old Earth, life has been around for 4 billion of it.

4. There are other self replicating molecules such as AATE and RNA.

Originally Posted by The Edge

2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations -- those that lead to new species -- and so few negative ones? Random chance should produce useless mutations thousands of times more often than positive ones.

Negative mutations generally have very bad outcomes. Neutral mutations add to the diversity of the genome and may prove useful later. There are indeed many more neutral mutations than positive ones. But, geologic times compresses things. Sometimes tens of thousands of generations pass between even a relatively complete fossil record.

Originally Posted by The Edge

3. How does evolution know where to stop? The pressure to evolve is constant; therefore it is hard to understand why evolution isn't a constant. Yet sharks and turtles and insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years without apparent evolution except to diversify among their kind. These species stopped in place while others, notably hominids, kept evolving with tremendous speed, even though our primate ancestors didn't have to. The many species of monkeys which persist in original form tell us that human evolution, like the shark's, could have ended. Why didn't it?

Natural selection. The pressure to evolve is not constant. Mutations necessarily happen constantly, but evolution must not necessarily exert pressure. Sharks and turtles are well adapted to their niche. A trait is unlikely to significantly better their chance of passing on their genes to their offspring nor make their offspring more likely to better cope with their environment. Hominids split off from apes to fill a new niche, namely an bipedal organism well adapted to a savanna like region. Evolution isn't trying to reach some final super saiyan form. It's trying to be best adapted to a particular environment.

Originally Posted by The Edge

4. Evolutionary biology is stuck with regard to simultaneous mutations. One kind of primordial skin cell, for example, mutated into scales, fur, and feathers. These are hugely different adaptations, and each is tremendously complex. How could one kind of cell take three different routes purely at random?

It wasn't at random. Evolution is not random. The engine, mutations, are random, but it is guided through natural selection.

Originally Posted by The Edge

5. If design doesn't imply intelligence, why are we so intelligent? The human body is composed of cells that evolved from one-celled blue-green algae, yet that algae is still around. Why did DNA pursue the path of greater and greater intelligence when it could have perfectly survived in one-celled plants and animals, as in fact it did?

The first line is a non-sequitor. It's erroneous to think of humans as more evolved than algae. Both are well suited to the environments to which they apply. Brain power was a major advantage for our ancestors and thus it was selected for positively. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, but I won't address them here.

Originally Posted by The Edge

6. Why do forms replicate themselves without apparent need? The helix or spiral shape found in the shell of the chambered nautilus, the center of sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and DNA itself seems to be such a replication. It is mathematically elegant and appears to be a design that was suited for hundreds of totally unrelated functions in nature.

Because they are functional. A nautilus shell is an approximate golden spiral because the shell grows logarithmically. DNA is a double helix because when you stack monomers into a polymer chemisty and physics dictates that it will turn into a helix. The spiral of DNA, a nautilus shell, and galaxies are all different spirals mathematically though. They occur often because the underlying descriptive mathematics we apply to them are simple. To impart meaning to that is a fundamental failure of parsimony.

Originally Posted by The Edge

7. What happens when simple molecules come into contact with life? Oxygen is a simple molecule in the atmosphere, but once it enters our lungs, it becomes part of the cellular machinery, and far from wandering about randomly, it precisely joins itself with other simple molecules, and together they perform cellular tasks, such as protein-building, whose precision is millions of times greater than anything else seen in nature. If the oxygen doesn't change physically -- and it doesn't -- what invisible change causes it to acquire intelligence the instant it contacts life?

That is mostly gibberish, but we'll pretend like it's correct. There is no magic here. Chemistry demands that it behave that way. It isn't doing anything unusual or anything that we wouldn't expect it do. It's behaving as it must behave. These metabolic pathways are products of evolution, and are in fact very early. I believe there is a lot of work on how exactly these pathways formed if you are inclined to look.

Originally Posted by The Edge

8. How can whole systems appear all at once? The leap from reptile to bird is proven by the fossil record. Yet this apparent step in evolution has many simultaneous parts. It would seem that Nature, to our embarrassment, simply struck upon a good idea, not a simple mutation. If you look at how a bird is constructed, with hollow bones, toes elongated into wing bones, feet adapted to clutching branches instead of running, etc., none of the mutations by themselves give an advantage to survival, but taken altogether, they are a brilliant creative leap. Nature takes such leaps all the time, and our attempt to reduce them to bits of a jigsaw puzzle that just happened to fall into place to form a beautifully designed picture seems faulty on the face of it. Why do we insist that we are allowed to have brilliant ideas while Nature isn't?

The transition from reptiles to birds took tens of millions of years and hundreds of thousands of generations, and the fossil record is actually pretty clear. It was a gradual transition and those features you cite evolved over a very long time span. All those parts did in fact give an evolutionary advantage. The question is often presented as "what good is half a wing," but as it turns out half a wing is pretty great. It can help you ascend steep inclines. It can provide novel forms of movement, such as skulling or rowing. There is nothing here that evolution fails to account for.

Originally Posted by The Edge

9. Darwin's iron law was that evolution is linked to survival, but it was long ago pointed out that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology. Some mutations survive, and therefore we call them fittest. Yet there is no obvious reason why the dodo, kiwi, and other flightless birds are more fit; they just survived for a while. DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen, DNA will blow away into dust if left outside on a sunny day or if attacked by pathogens, x-rays, solar radiation, and mutations like cancer. The key to survival is more than fighting to see which organism is fittest.

Almost as bad as citing x-men.

Originally Posted by The Edge

. Competition itself is suspect, for we see just as many examples in Nature of cooperation. Bees cooperate, obviously, to the point that when a honey bee stings an enemy, it acts to save the whole hive. At the moment of stinging, a honeybee dies. In what way is this a survival mechanism, given that the bee doesn't survive at all? For that matter, since a mutation can only survive by breeding -- "survival" is basically a simplified term for passing along gene mutations from one generation to the next -- how did bees develop drones in the hive, that is, bees who cannot and never do have sex?

Your asking why mechanisms that help to ensure the survival of a species aren't beneficial to survival of a species?

Originally Posted by The Edge

11. How did symbiotic cooperation develop? Certain flowers, for example, require exactly one kind of insect to pollinate them. A flower might have a very deep calyx, or throat, for example than only an insect with a tremendously long tongue can reach. Both these adaptations are very complex, and they serve no outside use. Nature was getting along very well without this symbiosis, as evident in the thousands of flowers and insects that persist without it. So how did numerous generations pass this symbiosis along if it is so specialized?

How about I ask my own question here instead of answering you. Why are you asking questions that a fundamental level of knowledge would supply the answers to. Buy a used intro to biology college textbook. Read it. Learn.

Originally Posted by The Edge

12. Finally, why are life forms beautiful? Beauty is everywhere in Nature, yet it serves no obvious purpose. Once a bird of paradise has evolved its incredibly gorgeous plumage, we can say that it is useful to attract mates. But doesn't it also attract predators, for we simultaneously say that camouflaged creatures like the chameleon survive by not being conspicuous. In other words, exact opposites are rationalized by the same logic. This is no logic at all. Non-beautiful creatures have survived for millions of years, so have gorgeous ones. The notion that this is random seems weak on the face of it.

This is perhaps your only interesting question, and as such I'd have to think a bit to answer it properly, which I will do when I have formulated a sufficiently elegant philosophical reply. Suffice to say you are beyond the realm of science much less evolution here.

[Kaio]

Originally Posted by The Edge

So, you are saying some things in nature occur randomly while others do not? What decides which is random and which is designed?

No, not at all... if you did not understand that line then you don't even have a high school biology level grasp of the subject.

Natural selection is basically how nature decides what organisms survive based on the traits an organism has. Random mutations occur during reproduction of all organisms. Just put 2 and 2 together and try to figure out how this works.

Multiply extremely slight genetic mutations times a very large number of reproductive cycles with natural selection along the entire way. Run mathematical models on all the possibilities of changes and it all makes sense.