cladking

I should never have introduced another argument into this but it seemed right at the time. While I don't doubt what you're saying I very seriously doubt that we can possibly know that all atoms are perfectly identical on all parameters while we don't really understand basic things about them. Perhaps they are much better understood than when I was in school. "In other individual animals and life forms divergence of behavior from genetic causations will break down with experience and learning. ... In the "adult" most behavior is primarily the result of experience and knowledge ... Individual structure and genetics still play a primary and pivotal role in aging and preferences but moment to moment behavior approaches being strictly based on visceral knowledge ...But the key point here is that genetics are central to even behavior and genetics are expressed as higher probabilities of specific behavior ...This won't change throughout their lifetimes ... The genes which express as a preference to daisies are highly complex and affect much more of the animal than simply which food it prefers." It is simply observation and logic that animals behave based on experience. Cats that have never been trained to mouse by their mothers rarely have much of any hunting ability. Cats instinctly hunt but without experience they don't do much of it. Animals are sent away from the nest and many are required to find a zone to live or be killed. It's impossible for every eventuality to be predicted by their genes so every experience they survive adds to their knowledge and ability to adapt to their enviroment. An animal doesn't choose a course of study or ponder the means to acquire wisdom so its growth is largely the result of the endocrine system and other physical changes driven by genetics and by experience. Animals lack the ability to consider most abstractions or to extrapolate great deals of knowledge but mostly they lack complex language to acquire vast amounts of information from previous generations. This means that by definition most of their knowledge is visceral; they know what they know in their bones. Their knowledge of the world after adolescence is based almost solely on experience and memory. "Instinct" can only be overridden by knowledge. Since much of their behavior is still based on instinct, genetics still comes to the fore since genetics are the basis of instinct. This all adds up to mean that animal behavior is mostly determined by genetics. It's very very different in humans because humans acquire language and its perspective. They then acquire through language huge amounts of information which is organized as "beliefs". Experience plays a minor role in most human behavior except as habit drives much of it. Beliefs born(e) of language drives almost all behavior. But humans are no different when it comes to change in species because this is driven primarily by behavior and it doesn't matter whether that behavior is caused by belief or experience. "Wrong" behavior is eliminated and "right" behavior is rewarded. Everyone will want to jump to the belief that this is meant religiously or something. Far from it. The behavior being selected is normally trivial and has nothing really to do with "morals" directly. Indeed, some aspect of being "moral" could be the catalyst that results in death and something that is considered "sinful" could be what protects survivors. But it has little or nothing to do in most cases with "fitness". "Fitness" might protect a few of those with the wrong behavior and "unfitness" might cause a few with the right behavior to die but generally the survivors are in most ways no more fit than those who die. Generally humans should be omitted when concerning evolution because we are the odd man out due to our ability to not even notice our instincts and to act along various parameters that have a relationship with survival characteristics. All the same considerations apply but our behavior is more complex due to more complexity in our beliefs. The odds of some behavior being intimately linked to our genes is much lower in humans along with the far more diverse behavior. The same rules apply but it's far more difficult to see. The interplay between various genes and their expression is, I believe, the direction that the current science is already headed. I'm merely proposing that the interplay between these genes is determinative of nature of the animal as well and is closely related to behavior.

I don't agree with the links. A few are over my head but this isn't the problem. The problem is I disagree with their terms and perspectives. I'm surprised what I'm posting isn't being challenged more. You're talking about disease in populations and I'm talking about healthy individuals. A wheezing rabbit is more likely to be chased down! But the shape of the alveoli of its lungs probably has no direct bearing on whether it's wheezing or not. It might have some bearing on the likelyhood of acquiring disease but this is exactly the sort of "unfitness" that tends to be bred out of a species leaving all the rest equally "fit" but not equally likely to be killed in a near extinction. The shape of the alveoli are as individual as fingerprints. To date I doubt humans have ever been selected on the basis of their fingerprints.

Is this really the state of the art in biology?! How can enviroment shape the alveoli in utero? Certainly if some abnormality or disease exists it's possible that such structure can be affected but these things are simply defined genetically and enviroment has virtually no role whatsoever. Indeed, thios same should apply very much to all human structure though more subtle structure like the map of the eye might be more dependent on enviroment. Even after birth the growth of the organism and the order and resultant patterns are defined primarily genetically. In humans this will break down after the acquisition of language but providing the individual has proper nutrition most of the development is set at conception. In other individual animals and life forms divergence of behavior from genetic causations will break down with experience and learning. The rabbit predisposed to eat daisies might skip those growing in direct sunlight because of previous experience. In the "adult" most behavior is primarily the result of experience and knowledge. Individual structure and genetics still play a primary and pivotal role in aging and preferences but moment to moment behavior approaches being strictly based on visceral knowledge. But the key point here is that genetics are central to even behavior and genetics are expressed as higher probabilities of specific behavior. A rabbit predisposed to eat daisies at conception is far more likely to be found in a field of daisies than its brother predisposed to daffodils. This won't change throughout their lifetimes. When something comes along to selectively kill rabbiyts that eat daffodils one rabbit has a high probility of dying and the other a high probility of surviving. There simply is nothing to do with being "fit" or more suited to the enviroment. Daisy eaters survive prefentially to others. The genes which express as a preference to daisies are highly complex and affect much more of the animal than simply which food it prefers. They might affect anything from shape of the nose to the chemistry which digests food. It might affect the size of the tail or the speed the animal hops. "Fit" simply means nothing to nature. It means nothing to God. And it means nothing to the probilities of survival. It is simply a concept that people observe when they see a "rabbit" get eaten. Obviously to all observers if the rabbit had been faster it wouldn't have been caught so we imagine it's less fit than the one that got away. But the reality is simply the cheetah was hunting in the daffodils rather than the daisies. It might have survived if it had been faster or more alert but rabbits are rabbits. All individual rabbits are genetically rabbits and they each are vigilant and fast. Daisy eaters are probably no faster than their brothers but if only the daisy eaters survive a near extinction than their off spring might be much faster or much slower than "rabbits". Species change and they change because they are selected for behavior just as man tames the animals. Genes define behavior and behavior defines survival. Nature defines nurture and nurture defines nature. I'm a little surprised you would dismiss the contention that no two atoms are identical while we know so little about the individual atoms. Of course the math works out in chemical reactiuons since with such an enormous sample of atoms there will be an "average" and the differences bewtween atoms is necesaarily small from our perspective. We can't really separate atoms by any parameter at the current time but then we don't understand the electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational forces and their interactions and natures. Under these conditions and considering the small size of atoms and their potential differences how are we to separate or study individiual atoms? Whose to say that if you have ten too many atoms of an element in aa chemical reaction that every single atom has the exact same probability of being combined as every other atom to an infinity of decimal points. Logically this is impossible because no two things in nature which we can observe are identical. Why would atoms and quarks all be identical? "Guesses" are part of scientific metaphysics. They go by many names from logic to hypothesis, and from intuition to studied experimental results. More than anything it is guesses that lifted man from the caves and is preventing his return. Guesses in the absense of logic, observation, and/ or experiment mean nothing. Here's a little tidbit that I find interesting. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/junk-dna-from-million-year-old-viruses-actually-have-vital-role-in-human-intelligence-study/ This is exactly the kind of thing that shows how supremely complicated nature really is. Chemistry and physics are mere child's play compared to genetics and its interplay with behavior. Math is a quantified logic that works well to understand experiment and theory but it has no bearing on nature. Things derived from math appear to be true and theory is true but nature is not responsible to make math work. It is the way of nature only because it follows logic and uses numbers as a self check for logic. You can not simply count rabbits or hydrogen atoms and learn their natures.

Back when I believed the cause of an individual and his behavior could be broken down into "nature vs nurture" I came down heavily on the side of nature. Now I believe it is a false dichotomy that doesn't even apply to humans but is irrelevant with non-human individuals. It only seems to apply to humans because we act on our beliefs so what we are taught is a primary component of our behavior. Animals act on their knowledge which is largely dependent on the means they acquire it which are usually related most closely to experience and genetics.

Most of this is guesswork and is merely a coherent framework which fits visceral knowledge derived from observation and logic as well as scientific experimentation done by others. It is highly synopsized for brevity. Life will arise anywhere the conditions exist that can support it but in almost every case it never has the chance to evolve from scratch because it is seeded extraterrestrially by life which has been spread throughout the galaxies in novas. This is the case on Earth as well. Every organism is an individual and every species occupies a niche. These niches tend to be stable in the short term for larger organisms but are not stable even in the short term for small organisms. Since species depend on their niche to survive even small changes can have very large effects. Small organisms tend to drive systems toward stability by having highly elastic populations. The "over" complexity of genes caused by how ancient they are fascilitates their ability to manifest in nearly any way so that when a niche opens up a new species will arise (from an old one) to occupy it. Most change in species is the result of population bottlenecks which tend to select for behavior. Behavior is the complex interwokings of an individual and its enviroment and is never really understood. The individual is his genes and his enviroment is, for the main part, his experience and visceral knowledge (or beliefs in the case of humans). Since behavior is intimately entwined with genes when large percentages of a population dies due to some triviality of behavior the survivors have genes that are distinct in some way from the pre-bottleneck population. These genes then cause a difference in the offspring who are all far more likely to exhibit the behavior. They result in a change in the nature of the species that is encoded in the genes. When populations rebound the species will be distinct from the old one and not necessarily more "fit" on any parameter. However the old behavior is less common and if these individuals then breed back into a larger population the genes for that specific behavior will be more widespread and more likely to save the entire species from extinction. This is the source of both "diversity" and "evolution"; bottlenecks. Of course "bottlenecks" have attributes and characteristics that make them ongoing even in stable populations. Each death is as individual as each life and "unfitness" and "improper behavior" are always being excluded from reproduction. In stable populations these cause change in species on glacially. Modern science misses the big picture because it looks at tiny parts of the whole. It extrapolates the general from the specific and in this case the general is far too complicated for the tools of science. How can I possibly determine why a specific rabbit that hangs around my door prefers one plant to another? Why will it hop right past one daisy to eat the next? Why does it come at a specific time rather than a few minutes later or earlier? I can't ask iut and if I could it wouldn't know either. It might tell you the rest of the family likes daffodils but this is hardly a means to start to identify the genes that cause the behavior. Behavior is infinitely complex and genes are at its root. Behavior exists not only in the realm of individual activity but storms are caused by butterflies in China. When someone can predict the exact moment a cardinal lands on my feeder I'll believe we understand genes and behavior. In the meantime we are merely trying to explain the grossest aspects of nature and we can rarely predict these.

I'm actually surprised you don't see the problem with this definition. Words are invented to differentiate between objects and ideas. You're saying survivors survive. "Look at the domestication of dogs and other animals. These were all apparently very sudden transformations caused by intentionally selecting for characteristics. Nature does the same thing in essentially the same way in population bottlenecks. Rather than selecting specific characteristics, nature merely kills off all individuals without those characteristics. Nature seems to act randomly but actually is just using very subtle selection processes. All individuals of a species occupy the same niche and all are equally well adapted but when the niche changes then new characteristics are favored." What I'm trying to say is that natural population bottlenecks operate similarly to the way dogs were domesticated. The tamest wolves were interbred and the new species originated very suddenly. Nature does this exact same thing by selecting traits that are generally considered trivial to the ability to survive. Monkeys might be selected on their ability to identify the source of sounds or humans on their ability to hold water in their hands. Diversification isn't so much affected because every individual is diverse and most genes will survive population bottlenecks anyway. Even when lots of genes are eliminated most populations are local and the off spring of the survivors (bred by mother nature) will blend back in and increase diversification in the entire species. If populations are sufficiently large and sufficiently widespread diversificartion is nearly automatic (except for humans). The biggest difference in our view here is probably that you think that surviving bottlenecks is the result of positive attributes of individuals while I believe they are trivialities like being tame or preferring a specific food. Even the tamest wolf wouldn't have come down to eat human garbage if it preferred some other type of food. Suvivors don't share single traits or single genes but clusters of genes. And none of it has to do with being predisposed to survival, they are merely the genes being favored by the stressor. It appears random but is very highly complex. Many of my experiments are very long running. I also have anecdotal reports of other such experiments and observations over time. They don't carry a lot of scientific weight perhaps but the observations are framed in science. It seems very instructive to me that species can "adapt" to virtually anything. It appears this adaptatiuon is caused by presense of genes that can come to the fore because other individuals are killed. While the population drops the amount of habitat and food per individual soars increasing their odds of survival. Even though the trait being selected fore can't be predicted in advance usually. Even in retrospect it can be difficult to ascertain just what killed populations. Our 17 year locusts (cicadas) in this area just failed a few years back. I'd guess about a 99.999% population reduction. I had expected a failure but not of this magnitude. This is just the nature of nature; nothing is static. Perhaps evolution would be slightly better phrased as "failure of the unfit" but this still misses the mark because those that fail are merely more typical and they are usually typical in ways that can not be readily identified. This is another point on which we probably aren't going to agree. There are a multitude of reasons for this lack of agreement. An individual is what it is. It comes into existence as an individual and its entire existence is dependent on its genes. But individuals learn and grow and they are affected by their perspective and experience. To a very great extent this learning is determined by its genes but some individuals are in unique circumstances or greatly affected by something they've experienced or learned. While most behavior of the moment is related to learning, the patterns of behavior and the way the animals learns are driven much more by genetics. All life is individual and individuals are the product of their genes but every individual has its own knowledge and experience. Stressors that cause population bottlenecks tend to select based on behavior but behavior is largely an expression of genetics. It's variability in behavior (mostly nurture) that allows some individuals to survive bottlenecks. Some flies sometimes land on the underside of tables and this diversity of behavior leads to survival. But the genes of these oddballs is different enough that the offspring will be different. I've never observed any really strange structural or appearance difference but the new flies have been observed to be more lethargic than normal flies.

OK. Now define it without using a reference to ebvoilution or some concept derived from evolution. Define it without reference to an "average" rabbit or be prepared to prove such a creature exists. You can't because "fittest" is a word with no referent in nature. As such it has no meaning. It is akin to saying "God" changes species or that God selects which individuals live and die. There's no evidence for "God" or "fitness". You are invoking the conclusion when the term is used.

It's not the idea conveyed by the concept of the word "fitness" with which I have a problem. It is the utter lack of a hard definition for the term in any instance. We can define a situation in which every individual has an equal chance of survival execept based on a specific attribute such as strenght, speed, or intelligence. But in the real world mother nature doesn't hold races for rabbits nor administer IQ tests. The real world simply isn't like this. There is NEVER a fair test of fitness administered by nature. Some individuals have the cards stacked in their favor despite theire "fitness" and some are doomed to failure because of things beyond theior control and knowledge. By defining "fitness" as the ability to survive you are assuming the conclusion; that the fit pass on their genes but others don't. This definition is the product of the perspective of the observer and has no basis in reality. From the definition change of species springs rather than from the means by which species actually change. The concept of species change being from fitness comes from the inside of the observer and is an artefact of language and has nothing to do with nature. We don't have the level of knowledge required to determine the reality though it's quite possible an experiment can be designed to show "survival of the fittest" doesn't (or does) work. But the experiment will require two things not normally done in this type of experiment. Each individual life and death as well as the predicted odds of survival must be computed and the stress placed on the population must be something real world rather than the type that destroys randomly. Nature is never truly random and this is why the computations and perspective fail. Events and situations that stress "populations" will be inconsequential to some highly unfit individuals and fatal to the fittest. This is the way of nature. If you just identify the survivors as the fit ones in practice or theory then you are assuming the conclusion. If you introduce random stessors then, yes, the "fittest" will survive because each individual has been affected exactly the same. To prove evolution you must show that natural stresses actually selectively kill the unfit and spare the fit. You must be able to predict in advance which will die aand all this must happen under controlled condiitions where none of the cobnclusions have first been assumed. Breeding a poison resistant fruit fly and showing that these are "fitter" in a toxic enviroment than their normal cousins simply won't do it. Observation alone might not cast any light on this because observation takes place from a perspective and it's the perspective that is problematical. Until it is really understood what makes two individuals different "survival of the fittest" might not even be falsifiable. I believe that logic and observation weigh against it for the many reasons I've already ennumerated. Nature simply doesn't play by any rules in an infinitely complex world. We percieve rules that don't exist because we extrapolate what we know and what we've learned. Only rules that can be isolated in the lab are real and they are only real on the large scale and briefest time. Then we see only the harmonic half of reality. The real world is chaotic and rules are mere suggestions and life exists only as individuals. Probably all of nature's rules are probably exceedingly simple but they combine to make an impossibly complex reality. You can't simplify life to study it. You can breed it or change it but there's no more such a thing as an "average" bacterium than there is an "average" hydrogen atom. Just as no hydrogen atom is more "fit" than another, no rabbit is more "fit" than another. It's mere hubris that says we can legitimately call survivors "fit". When hydogen burns every atom doesn't have an equal probability of combining with oxygen. It depends on the oxygen atom and the precise orientations and trajectories and God knows what else. Any hydrogen atoms left over are not more fit than those which were consumed (combined). Reality is infinitely complex. Our knowledge is derived from simple experiment.

I'll try to address your argument later if I can (if my knowledge base is sufficient) but I know in advance this is going to be the sticking point. So long as you define "fitness" as the ability to survive then by definition the fit survive. It simply doesn't matter that the individual lives and deaths have never been studied in depth because it is assumed from the begiining that those most "fit" survive without ever defining "fit" in the real world except as the cause of evolution. Like most arguments this is assuming the conclusion.

We appear no closer to a unified field theory than nearly 100 years ago. Meanwhile cosmology has gotten so far away fromn experiment it now suggests an infinite number of worlds that are identical to ours except in one infinity Jesus existed and in another set exactly like ours he didn't exist. This is ludicrous on more parameters than I can count. Everything arises from a cause so how could two worlds be exactly alike except one had a cause and one didn't. "Jesus" wasn't selected for any religious reason but simply because soime of the scientific paradigms now are no less ludicrous. Where does the space and matter arise to create an infinity of universes? This goes beyond mere infinity and a new concept needs to be coined "infinity to the infinite power infinitely to express to express the number of worlds needed for everything to exist. I disagree with the thread title and the idea that it's all a scam but it's quite obvious science has gotten off the beam. It seems to affect nearly every field to a greater or lesser extent.

Any such impact sufficient to move the pole significantly would trash the planet. If massive earthquakes have almost no discernable effect you can see that collisions would have to be stupendous to do so. They would be unsurvivable except for a few plants and simple animals on the far side of the planet. The distortion in the shape of the planet would persist for billions of years. It's not impossible that the entire surface might slip on the core but this has not been established and should show up in the physical record. It seems highly improbable such a change has occured recently.

We usually can't even see the paradigms that hide reality because we see only what we believe to be true. I do disagree that the problem is from being to close but rather that we aren't close enough. We see things in terms of the constructs we build rather than looking at the parts up close. You have my every sympathy.

Certainly much of nature is random. One rabbit survives while healing a broken leg because it just happens to keep its odor away from a fox while it's healthy brother inadvertantly stumbles into a badger's den. Almost everything has many characteristics of being random. A pendulum swings back and forth and its state at any time can be predicted. Most thing however are not so easily predicted so we tend to see them as being random. But they simply are not. Even the mass extinctions to which ytou refer are not really randome because they affect primarily individuals which are in places that are ideal to be transformed into human habitat. If they become extinct in these areas it's irrelevant to that species as a factor in species change dependent on that specific local population. However the reality will tend to be very different and when looking at the survivors and the fatalities on an individual basis then differences in their behavior and genes will become apparent. Humans tend to open new habitat by first improving water systems and then buildiong roads. Individuals dependent on prey or habitat along good routes for roads will be preferentially selected to be killed. If the odds of survival increase after these initial deaths then any surviving population will be relatively devoid of the genes that express by living in flatter and lower terraine. We see randomness because we see "rabbits" rather than an animal with the genes of rabbits named "Fluffy". Rather than analyzing the cause of the various deaths and trying to determine how some survive, we see randomness. If we look at any event where an animal dies we see randomness because just as all life is individual all death is individual as well. We see the cheetah catch the rabbit but we don't see that the rabbit wouldn't have been caught if it llived closer to the savannah or if it preferred daisies to daffodils. What we see as "random" is everything but random. Nature can simply select for rabbits that like some specific foiod and these individuals will breed true and are different than their grandparents. Species change thus is very sudden. The subtlety died with the last number of indivuals who were sufficient to constitute a viable "population". While these last thirty or forty individuals were all dodo birds they most probably shared genetic traits that had kept them alive. If they had actually survived and the populations began to recover the new species would be different along these parameters. They might not have even looked a lot like their great great grandparents. I'm not certain I take your meaning so hesitate to comment.

Yes, we never disagreed on this. I'm still of the belief that the differences that improve chances of survival are exceedingly subtle because the cause of evolution, extinction events, have very subtle mechanisms. I'm aware that evolutionary theory is not merely that the fast, strong, healthy, and smart survive but I'm of the opinion that these traits while of benefit to the individual and to the gene pool play very little role in change of species which is really change in indiduals from a generational perspective. If two pairs of identical twins produce off spring then these will be nearly as dissimilar to one another as any two random individuals. If one twin is killed in an event and the other isn't then his off spring will tend to be very different because his new mate will share the genetic subtlety that saved them. Of course this is all very dependent on the nature of the cause and the degree to which this nature differentiates between the genetics and the physical expression of the genetics as it manifests in individuals. Random events will cause no change in species but there is never really truly random causes of death because all life is individual and all individuials are their genetic material.

I suppose that if you define "fit" as the natural characteristics that allow an individual increased probability of having more off-spring then even "evolution" is a virtual tautology. The problem is the reality is hiding behind the terms. Even identical twins are essentially different in all possible ways. If they both have green flecks in their eyes then maps of these flecks will not coincide. One will have a stray brown fleck and the other blue flecks. I'm simply saying that the "fitness" of these two individuals will vary greatly in many extinction events due to the very subtle nature of these events.

You're on the right track here. "Fittest" is exactly the best suited to the enviroment but when the enviroment is stable, the total number of individuals will be stable as well. Being fit means a somewhat increased chance of passing on genes in a somewhat stable number of individuals. But by defintion most individuals will die during population declines (all else being equal and assuming some volatility in populations). Population declines are by definition caused by changes in the enviroment so the definition of the most "fit" changes to suit the new conditions. Certainly species lower on the food chain can have more variable numbers of individuals caused by any number of factors and these can be rather gross like increased predation or decreased food supplies. But among the life forms that are higher up and even the lowest species many of the factors that cause suddden and severe population changes are really very subtle. If a species of wasp lays eggs late in the season but there is an early freeze the egg laying adults can be almost all be killed resulting in a virtual extinction of the species (at least locally). But if there are a few survivors these individuals can and will often share some insignificant characteristic. Perhaps the freeze didn't affect patches of ground that was in the sunlight all day or patches under willow trees. Any wasps that happened to overnight in one of these areas survived where the others did not. My contention is that these individuals that camped out in distinct places did so because of their genes in some, many, or all cases. The degree to which their genes led to their survival defines how much different their off spring are when they mate. What defines an individual is neither nature nor nurture because all individuals are wholly at the mercy of their genes and wholly at the mercy of their knowledge. Some indiviuduals might be prone to stay under the willow or the sunny spot but won't because they have an overriding reason to stay in a place that proves fatal. Nature doesn't "care" why an individual is destroyed merely that tissue freezes below a certain temperature. Nature doesn't "care" if the entire species is destroyed. But when large numbers are, the survivors will be fundamentally different in terms of the genes which were selected by the change of conditions. Of course changes can be entirely "random" such as with massive predation by a species that never misses but such events might not exist at all and certainly they wouldn't be common. Most species have large enough territories that losing even 100% of the population in an area due to freezing is no problem and it can simply be recolonized over time. But if there is a change among the off spring of survivors then the local population will rebound and introduce the new characteristic among others of the species along the periphery of the territory. I suppose part of what I'm suggesting here is that the genetic composition of the individual is far more complex than generally believed. All behavior and all structure of an individual is dependent on genetic information. Each individual is wholly and utterly unique and "fitness" is in no real sense beneficial to survival except in relatively stable biological niches and "populations". Stable niches do not spawn much change in species so "fitness" isn't relevant to evolution. Rather what changes species are events that merely seem to be "random" from our perspective but are actually highly selective of specific genes and the expression of those genes. I'm sure you have me at a decided disadvantage here since my knowledge on such subjects is not extensive. The fossil record shows some species undergoing minor changes over very long periods and others that show rather large changes over shorter periods. But in all cases, even where there is significant sample sizes, there appear to be rather sudden changes. ie- there are "missing links' in all species. Horses show a relatively smooth development but certainly not man or giraffes. "Natural selection" or whatever name one chooses to call it can't seem to account for such changes except by suggesting mutation. Logically this doesn't seem to make sense. Why would a long necked giraffe just happen to be born at a time when the trait was required for the species to eat higher leaves? This sounds like the hand of God rather than logic. Some of the things I've observed concerning change in short lived species are not easily explained so I hesitate to use them as evidence but one thing seems pretty consistent; they revert back to "normal" if left alone for a few generations. This is because landing on the tops of things is the best way nature has found for houseflies to be. The "fittest" housefly is a housefly. When the new species came to be it intermingled with the old and was mostly lost. The genes are still there but the descendents behave normally. I'm suggesting that there was an event that caused giraffes with genes that support shorter necks to die. I don't believe this has to be anything like what we imagine it to be or what would "make sense" to us. Perhaps something occurred that greatly favored individuals with the greatest difference in the size of front and back legs. Perhaps the same genes that express this large difference also creates the structure of the neck. The individuals that survived this event all looked like the normal "proto-giraffe" but their off spring were giraffes. There was no missing link so no missing links can ever be found. Perhaps it was merely some sort of hoof fungus that created the giraffe. The number of possibilities is endless. Look at the domestication of dogs and other animals. These were all apparently very sudden transformations caused by intentionally selecting for characteristics. Nature does the same thing in essentially the same way in population bottlenecks. Rather than selecting specific characteristics, nature merely kills off all individuals without those characteristics. Nature seems to act randomly but actually is just using very subtle selection processes. All individuals of a species occupy the same niche and all are equally well adapted but when the niche changes then new characteristics are favored. These changes can be short term or long. Most are probably very short term events.

I just can't seem to make this point. It seems highly presumptuous to describe the "average rabbit" that comprises a population when we don't fully understand even one rabbit. "Rabbit" is a construct and a tool (a word) for communication rather than an actual physical reality. "Population" is a construct as well. It is comprised of a number of average rabbits. We then assume that these fall on a bell curve that reflects their ability to survive "natural selection" that occurs in various ways that favor the healthy. This seems to fit our observations because we sometimes see a rabbit and her "bunny" escape a bobcat or many rabbits in a population not sicken and die in a plague. But it simply can't be shown in any of these cases that the survivors were IN ANY WAY more "fit" than those that died. "Evolutionary theory" is simply based omn a long series of assumptions that can't be shown experimentally. Rather it just stands to reason that some individuals are more adept at the things required to survive and that anything that kills most of a population must be "robust". The facts simply appear to say these "obvious" assumptions are wrong. That they are wrong is why there are missing links and why cheetahs can still outrun all rabbits even after millions of years of evolution. "The Hardy–Weinberg principle (also known as the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, model, theorem, or law) states that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences. These influences include mate choice, mutation, selection, genetic drift, gene flow and meiotic drive." I'm arguing against the very terms upon which this model is based. You're presenting an answer replete with the current assumptions and I'm postulating the cause of change in species. The model simply predicts based on "mate choice, mutation, selection, genetic drift, gene flow and meiotic drive." (etc). I'm not suggesting all these things aren't involved so much as that all of these things are largely dependent on very subtle and currently unquantifiable and unknowable causations. If we don't understand why even one rabbit chooses the mate iut does then how do we define the mate selection in a "population" of "average rabbits" that doesn't even exist? Are biologists now going to have a dating service for rabbits? (They don't seem to need one by the by) The point of this thread (as I understand it) is to identify the origin of life and the cause of species change. Again it appears that the answer here is related to the way genes are expressed in individuals. If your genes allow you do do something fatal or improve the odds that an action will be fatal then all your diverse genes are lost to the future of the gene pool. It doesn't matter if the cause is as complex as being too slow or as simple as starting off on the right foot. If it's wrong only those who are fast or only those who start on their left foot will survive. These inviduals are much more complex than a single gene and will breed a changed species. The causes of population reduction tend to be subtle. In a tidal wave individuals by the waterside have a far worse chance than those in the hills and they tend to have genes that will make them more likely to by the water. Survivors are simply different and not more fit or better at being "naturally selected". It has nothing to do with mate selection and the like because these factors too are a result of very sibtle and unidentified causes. This appears to be an ever ongoing process but it moves fastest when large percentages of the population are lost. It has suddenly occurred to me that my beliefs are causing me to try to wrest back some words that have been co-opted by religion so some people might think I'm trying to insert religious concepts into the discussion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the subtle forces that drive evolution really are the hand of God but this is far from my contention. I'm merely saying that we have it wrong. There's a lot of irony here about how this has come to pass but the reality is that logic, observation, and experiment are the sole means of learning reproducible facts about nature. It is only science that will produce understanding. It is not my fault if paradigms are wrong and that my arguments apparenrtly sound like religion to many people based on how negatively they are reacting. There's a reason for this as well. Everything has a reason but the reason is usually remarkably simple in a world that is infinitely complex. We can't see the complexity because we build paradigms to take its place. We can't see the simplicity because it's hidden within the complexity or it's hidden behind the paradigm. The evidence and logic against evolution as being "natural selection" seems fairly strong. Nature (evolution) is brutal when she selects but rarely brutish. It's not the result of a million rabbits being run down by a million cheetahs; it's a million rabbits being wiped out by a subtle force. It's not a loving or vengeful God but rather the forces of nature "conspiring" to affect large numbers of individuals.

Yes. I do not know what causes change in species but unlike most people I believe I know a framework that an understanding could be acquired with great effort and time, and I know I don't know much of anything. Did you read the link you supplied? Did you try reading it in light of my contentions so you could see nothing in it contradicted what I'm averring? It's a titanic coincidence but I just found Judges 7 which might describe (in confused language) an ancient extinction event. Despite the nature of the thread an explanation might be considered off-topic. Things that destroy "populations" are no more survivable for the fit than the unfit. They select for trivial characteristics that are expressions of genes different than the rest. In the real world there is simply no such thing as "populations" or "rabbits". There are simply groups of individuals who are of the same species with many ways to express their genes. Those who express them "wrong" according to mother nature's whim will die. The off spring of those who survive are different in many ways than the group that existed before.

I've already mentioned several in passing and presented the logic that I believe better explains them than "survival of the fittest". For example, if you kill every single housefly that you see in a room, within a very few generations you'll find that any population that still exists will land on the underside of objects where they can't be seen. This flies in the face of "survival of the fittest" which suggests only the most active and fastest flies would escape mechanical means of killing them. This trait will simply blend into the general population of all flies giving them (groups of individuals) a better chance of surviving the next time "nature" tries to eradicate them by the same means. Indeed, the fact that the trait isn't widespread among flies suggests relatively few people (or nature) tries to eradicate them through killing all that are visible from the perspective of normal human. Even if don't kill every single one (the hunter must be smarter than his prey) the fact is you don't necessarily get faster or smarter prey; you get what you're really selecting for as species more tolerant of dehydration or more sensitive to light. That the specific individauals that survive are fitter or smarter tends to be irrelevant unless the factor killing them is actually related to speed or intelligence. Survival of the fittest simply doesn't normally apply as a cause of change in species because every animal can birthe fit or unfit offspring. Almosrt every animal is fit to the standards of its genes and habitat. All life is individual and almost all death caused by disease and predation is primarily "random" as to fitness of the individiual or related to specific factors that cause the animal to be sick, wounded, or otherwise unfit. Sick, wounded, and unfit animals can still reproduce and have normal off spring in most cases. Some of these off spring might have a rare trait (like landing under tables) that saves a local colony or the entire species. Indeed, sick wounded or unfit animal might survive largely on the basis of its condition. The processes that give rise to reproduction (birth) and death of inviduals are exceedingly complex in each instance and far more complex when looked at as a species. Individuals which have the highest probability of survival vary dependent on ALL the factors which might kill them. Since extinction events select on any of numerous parameters and normally don't involve "fitness" these are the primary drivers of change. Nature is far more subtle than merely killing the hindmost. Lions look for the old and sick but even the sick might get well and the old might have many offspring. A one year old wildebeast has little chance against a lion whetther it's fit or not. Nature selects for specific traits and genes and these arise when other traits and genes have been destroyed.

"The bulk of the "falsifiable evidence" for evolution is actually extrapolation of the specific to the general..." There is no falsifiable evidence for the concept of survival of the fittest as the chiief component of species change. Rather all the "evidence" is extrapolated from experiment that apply only to specific facts and then is applied to nature through extrapolation. This extrapolation can not be shown experimentally to be legitimate application of real scientific knowledge. The extrapolations are outside of the definitions, axioms, and methodology of science. The extrapolations are language and "logic" dependent. The extrapolations are not consistent with observation.

Your review is poor. There's no way to know if he wants me to defend my stance on evolution or why I believe the theory is incorrect. He called my statement "word salad". To me this means he got no meaning at all or very limited meaning from it. There are two statements and the second is composed of at least four parts. The concept of defending "word salad" is absurd. I am doomed before I start.

It's impossible to defend what you don't understand. Tell me what you do understand and I'll defend it. Tell me what you don't understand and I'll rephrase it.

Exactly. It is my contention that reality can be simply invisible from the "wrong" perspective. Seeing reality is dependent on one's beliefs being consistent with the parameters of that reality. Facts are always facts from every perspective but their interpretation is a result of knowledge, extrapolation, and beliefs that are inate to the way we think. The bulk of the "falsifiable evidence" for evolution is actually extrapolation of the specific to the general. It's impossible to falsify the legitimacy of these extrapolations at this time and they exist outside of metaphysics and are supported primarily by logic dependent on language but most importantly, are at odds with observation.

Sorry. I did not mean to imply that mother nature/ God/ reality/ the gods were conscious and actually mad chemists who toyed with their playthings. I merely meant that from our perspective and for practical purposes that what appears to be random in terms of reality rarely is. "Randomness" largely occurs only on the tiniest scale or longest periods. What happens in the here and now tends to be "ordained" by the "laws" of phyics. We tend to understand most events in the here and now even when we don't really understand the laws that seem to drive them. We exrtrapolate the specific to the general and call it theory. This works better with things that can be quantified than with things that can not becauyse we can more closdely approximate nature in the lab with things that can be quantified and taken apart. You can't take evolution apart in the lab nor can it be truly quantified. This seems to be where I get into trouble because people can't see anything without our beliefs. Everything we know is inconsistent with ID because everything we know is extrapolated from experiment. ID makes a poor hypothesis only because it is untestable. This doesn't mean it's false, merely that arguments to support or deny it aren't really valid at this point in time. Obviously one doesn't need ID to make a case for scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge does not support ID.

Nothing is known to be fact that denies ID. This hardly means it's a valid "hypothesis" merely that it is an untestable one at this time using the rules of modern science. Current metaphysics precludes our ability to address the question and I'm not going to say why I believe this is. Suffiice to say we are extrapolating the general from the specific and this is fraught with poor methodologies and methodologies outside of metaphysics.