"I will never accept evolution"

[mooeypoo]

what am i missing then?

Everything, apparently.

 

MustKnow, why are you so afraid of learning the subject? Multiple people here posted quite a large amount of VERY good resources for you to read and learn from, and you seem to ignore them all.. Evolution is a very big subject that cannot be explained in a single post. It's unfair of you to claim you want to argue this but then ignore every evidence we put forth because you don't want to deal with reading it (or whatever other reason it may be).

 

Read the sites that people posted. They're not very complicated, and most of them are not very long. After you read, we can start talking in the same level and answer any of your questions. As it stands at the moment, your questions make absolutely no sense.

 

It is as if I will go to a car mechanic and start an argument about how silly it is that the carburetor speaks latin when it has enough supply of sushi. And then, after the mechanic will give me a few books to read about what car engines and carburetors actually *do* (as opposed to what I thought they do) I will ask "so. what am I missing?" without reading the books.

 

Seriously, now. Be serious and respectful, as we try to give you the same respect. If you're not READY to deal with this subject fairly, don't participate in the debate.

 

~moo

[Mokele]

Seriously? Read the link I posted. T.O has an excellent FAQ on evolution that covers just about everything in great detail, but still very understandable.

[Brian_Pears]

I just read what i thought was an interesting article, it had to do with Quantum physics and the measurement of a particle. I dont know what they called it but it boiled down to a particle that was different at any given point until it was observed. What the person was purposing was how did anything come to exist if there was no one around to observer the particle.

 

"Observer" is an unfortunate term. The observer doesn't have to be a conscious being - anything which interacts with the particle will suffice. In technical terms, the observer is anything which collapses the wave function.

 

I never ignored natural selection. that is easily seen by observation, but that doesn't prove a fruit fly turned into a dragon fly, nor does mutations. The view on mutation and natural selection is equivalent to saying if you get a 1 trillion piece puzzle mix it up place it in a box and shake it until it is a complete puzzle is bogus. And is essentially what you are going to have to do to prove it to the rest of the world once and for all.

 

You may not have ignored natural selection, but you most certainly don't understand it. For a start, no creature ever 'turned into' a different creature.

Secondly, mutation is random, natural selection most decidedly is not - it's about as non-random as you can yet. It fine tunes organisms over many generations to better fit into the particular environment they happen to find themselves in.

 

Black-skinned humans migrate to northern Europe and many generations later the population is white (or rather pink) skinned. How? Numerous random mutations occur all the time when humans reproduce - some kill the offspring, but those that don't are passed on to the next and future generations. Most of these are neither beneficial nor detrimental and just remain as rarities in the population, but just occasionally one proves very useful and gives those carrying that mutation an advantage over the rest - and by 'advantage' I mean an advantage in the reproduction stakes. These individuals produce far more offspring than the rest and over several generations, virtually the entire population will carry that mutation.

 

The black-skinned individuals migrating north fell ill from vitamin D deficiency - the weaker European sunlight couldn't penetrate their skin pigment to reach the cells where vitamin D was made. A few individuals carried a mutation which gave them lighter skin which allowed sunlight through more readily and allowed them to make sufficient vitamin D.

 

This mutation was of no advantage in Africa so it remained rare in the population, but in Europe the individuals carrying it were fitter than the rest and lived longer, so they produced many more offspring, and after a few generations, virtually the entire population were the light-skinned mutants.

 

That's not random - it's evolution by natural selection. Over time - and we've had lots of that - early multicelled creatures evolved into a huge array every-more complex creatures, including, of course, ourselves. And the basic mechanism was the same as outlined above - pre-existing mutations were selected as and when they gave a reproductive advantage to those carrying them. Repeat this many, many times and that's how you get one creature's descendants being a different creature. It ain't random!

Edited May 4, 2009 by Brian_Pears

[MustKnow]

shouldnt had told me to do more research.

 

Just read some cool articles one of which you guys failed to tell me was the mutations are repaired.

 

here are some articles i read.

 

Also wanted to add once i get some more pond water and figure out how to increase the populate im going to hit them with some x-rays and such to see if i can get an mutations. Would be pretty cool to see even if they all die.

 

kind of big

 

http:

//www.newgeology.us/presentation32.html

 

http://www.gosai.com/science/darwin-debunked.html

 

 

 

Repairing mutations

Do evolutionists admit defeat? Never! They temporarily set aside natural selection, saying all mutations in DNA needed to build a complicated new part quietly accumulate in the population, perhaps in duplicate genes, because by themselves each of the necessary mutations is neutral, neither beneficial nor harmful. Then, millions of years later, all are in place. The new part starts working, natural selection chooses it, and the improved creature is off to the races. This scenario exists only in the mind of the evolutionist. As pointed out earlier, we do not find new parts under construction in living creatures or fossils, so it obviously does not happen. Furthermore, everyone agrees that harmful mutations appear many, many times more often than mutations needed for new construction ever could. Over those millions of years, slightly harmful mutations that are hidden, or not destructive enough for natural selection to remove, would also quietly accumulate. This would produce creatures loaded up with highly polluted genes. Survival of the barely functional? We do not find this either because cells have mechanisms that maintain the original design of a creature within it's variation boundaries, and minimize the accumulation of mutations. These include:

 

* A proofreading system that catches almost all errors

* A mismatch repair system to back up the proofreading system

* Photoreactivation (light repair)

* Removal of methyl or ethyl groups by O6 - methylguanine methyltransferase

* Base excision repair

* Nucleotide excision repair

* Double-strand DNA break repair

* Recombination repair

* Error-prone bypass25

[Sayonara]

Natural selection doesn't act on individuals, it acts across generations. At the upper end of the scale, this can involve trillions of selected mutations in billions of organisms across millions of years.

 

I think you are somewhat confused as to what role mutations play in selection events.

[Mr Skeptic]

Yes, an optimal rate of mutation is selected for. It would be very easy to design life so as to be nearly impervious to mutation (am I smarter than your god?), which would be beneficial in the short run but in the long run would be detrimental as it would reduce the ability to adapt. So the rate of mutation is reduced to a limited amount, enough to ensure most progeny don't have a detrimental mutation but not so much as to prevent adaptation.

[Pangloss]

Discussion moved from here:

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39550

[mooeypoo]

shouldnt had told me to do more research.

 

Just read some cool articles one of which you guys failed to tell me was the mutations are repaired.

 

here are some articles i read.

 

And yet, people posted articles here that summarize Natural Selection and Evolution pretty well, and you chose to ignore them and go for your own set of resources. We already established that the set of resources you use until now is flawed, because your understanding of both Evolution and Natural Selection is extremely lacking (and your latest post, as the replies show, prove it further).

 

Why not, for the sake of argument alone, entertain us and read the resources we put for you?

 

You cannot seriously expect people to conduct a one-sided argument, MustKnow. We're not children, and we are not here for a preaching session. We've had people here before that did not "believe" in evolution, and yet the discussions were fair and civil, because they went both ways. If you're here to misrepresent a 120 year old theory just so you could boast your victory, then perhaps you should reconsider posting here at all.

 

If, however, you feel brave enough to actually participate in a cooperative debate, then please try to stop nitpicking through the resources to read a partial idea about a huge theory and then conclude you know what the theory means.

 

What you posted is not representing Natural Selection at all. You either want to know and learn, or you don't. Choose.

 

~moo

[MustKnow]

i did read your articles you guys posted, before i read the debunk of evolution then again after i read the debunk because i wanted to make sure i was getting good intel.

[mooeypoo]

i did read your articles you guys posted, before i read the debunk of evolution then again after i read the debunk because i wanted to make sure i was getting good intel.

Well, you either did not understand what you read, or you ignored it.

 

Your representation of natural selection is not what the theory states.

 

I would understand if you disagree with a theory. We can argue about its validity and share evidence for it and (if there are any) against it. But we can't do that if you represent the theory wrong.

 

Did you read my example about the car mechanic? You are, right now, asking us to participate in a debate about the reason for the carburetor's need for raw sushi. It's a moot argument. The question itself makes no sense, because it's misrepresenting what a carburetor really *is*.

 

The same happens here. You're misrepresenting the theories. The argument is moot.

 

~moo

[Pantaz]

i did read your articles you guys posted, before i read the debunk of evolution then again after i read the debunk because i wanted to make sure i was getting good intel.

 

Oh, really?

 

... If you want to actually *learn* something about the subject you're criticisizing, Go Here.

 

At best, I believe you quickly skimmed the TalkOrigins FAQ. Did you bother click through even one of the more than 60 links to more detailed information?

[JohnB]

Only if the programmer was drunk, stupid, and stoned at the time. A code littered with useless scraps, dead code, duplicates, and the occasional lethal error?

God save us. DNA is a version of Windows?

[MustKnow]

Oh, really?

 

 

 

At best, I believe you quickly skimmed the TalkOrigins FAQ. Did you bother click through even one of the more than 60 links to more detailed information?

 

did you even bother to read my links? I did go through several FAQ and they were all shit i already know nothing revolutinary.

 

btw its not windows its MAC.

[Mokele]

did you even bother to read my links? I did go through several FAQ and they were all shit i already know nothing revolutinary.

 

Your links are to sites written by people with barely a high-school level understanding of biology, and none of genetics or evolution. DNA repair mostly acts a) to repair damage that physically distorts the DNA chain, such as kinks or nicks and b) focuses repairs on certain key genes which are so essential that they basically stay the same over evolutionary time.

 

None of that contradicts evolution even slightly, and in fact, faulty DNA repair frequently results in gene duplication, which can accelerate evolution.

 

 

As for sites, how about simply ignoring anything on the web. Read Ken Miller's Biology textbook (typical for college bio 101 classes), followed by Futuyma's Evolution textbook. Both are on Amazon.com, both are afforable (at least as far as textbooks go), and both are quite authoritative and up-to-date.

 

 

 

If you want to learn here, try asking questions, rather that making proclamations. There's a LOT more to this subject than you know, and we're more than willing to help you learn.

 

But you need to first realize that you cannot learn if you start out with your mind already made up.

[scrappy]

God save us. DNA is a version of Windows?

But, wait, I can get DNA on my Mac.

[Sisyphus]

But, wait, I can get DNA on my Mac.

 

Well, gross.

[ajb]

Too me it seems that anti-evolutionists* attempt to take parts of work/ideas/theory that are not completely understood (maybe just not understood by them) or things that one would call "work in progress" and then use that to destroy the whole set-up.

 

 

 

* substitute anti-relativists and/or anti-quantum theorists here as the need arises.

[Severian]

No scientist EVER says that they will 'never accept' something.

 

So you could never accept the position of a scientist who said they would never accept something?

[Mr Skeptic]

So you could never accept the position of a scientist who said they would never accept something?

 

I could accept the position of a toddler, if it checks out. But if someone says that they could never accept something that is within the field of science to know, then they are no scientist. I would be unwilling to take their word for something, especially if it is related to what they would never accept. But if what they say checks out, then I can accept what they said despite not having taken their word for it.

[GDG]

shouldnt had told me to do more research.

 

Just read some cool articles one of which you guys failed to tell me was the mutations are repaired.

 

***

* A proofreading system that catches almost all errors

 

Unfortunately, you're still not listening. The internet is full of misinformation as well as information. If you rely on sites like those you listed, you are never going to learn any real science. Both are fairly incredible concatenations of misinformation and misapplication of science.

 

For example, the suggestion that evolution is contrary to the laws of thermodynamics displays a misunderstanding (or worse, a deliberate mischaracterization) of each. The entropy of a closed system increases, but living organisms are not closed systems. Living organisms actually use quite a bit of energy (and create quite a bit of entropy in their surroundings) to keep themselves ordered. The law of entropy does not in any way prevent complicated creatures from evolving.

 

Obviously, we cannot force you to "believe" in evolution. All we can do is prove that every one of your arguments is invalid, and that there are no counterexamples to evolution. If you did have a counterexample, we would listen. So far, though (and this subject has been debated endlessly, by people just as uninformed but certain as you), nobody has come up with one.

[Mr Skeptic]

Obviously, we cannot force you to "believe" in evolution. All we can do is prove that every one of your arguments is invalid, and that there are no counterexamples to evolution.

 

An exercise in futility. There will always be another argument. Eventually, you will reach one that you cannot disprove, or alternately, that he does not understand your debunking.

 

The reason we choose a theory is not because we can't disprove it, it is because it makes accurate predictions. For example, the theory of evolution explains the presence of retroviral DNA in our DNA, and makes very detailed predictions as to how the DNA should look in various species related to us. Neither intelligent design nor creationism predict this retroviral DNA, much less the details of it. Hence, evolution is a superior theory.

[iNow]

An exercise in futility. There will always be another argument. Eventually, you will reach one that you cannot disprove, or alternately, that he does not understand your debunking.

 

Ah... but do try to remember that many more people read these posts other than just the people participating and posting. We may struggle to convince those few posters who are set in their indoctrinated ways, but in the process of debunking their arguments we may help others who are here reading as guests to better understand the process and cascade that more accurate information and descriptions to others.

[MustKnow]

why is that article full of shit?

[iNow]

...deleted...

Edited May 5, 2009 by iNow
damn... I'm out of sync tonight...

[Mokele]

why is that article full of shit?

 

That's a bit like asking "what's wrong with the science in Star Wars?"

 

Mostly it's the numerous factual errors and the baseless conclusions.