The Evolutionist's Dilemma

[pengee]

What do you do when you've invested so much in a theory, even proselytized others on its scientific validity, and then see every new archaeological discovery prove it wrong?

 

You go into cognitive dissonant mode.

 

The massive collection of fossils discovered to date show that survival of the fittest (as attributed to evolution) never happened -- the vast majority of fossils seem to represent the "fit." The "unfit," the ones that allegedly didn't survive, are practically non-existent.

 

Yes, we all know how genetic code pass down mostly the beneficial mutations to perpetuate the hardiest of the species. But this nonsense misses the point. In scenarios of "survival of the fittest" or "natural selection," there would be those that were "not fit" or "not selected." Where are they? The absence of the unfit in the fossil record indicates that all life forms came into existence already "fit" and "selected." How do you account for such a practically flawless success rate?

 

Of course, there is the misguided notion of how the misfit generally don't spawn successive generations and therefore leave few telltale traces. The problem with this notion is that accidental chaos happens in far greater numbers than accidental benefits. Fossils of the misfit, even if they never survived to spawn successive generations, should have far outnumbered our current collection of fossils. But they hardly exist.

 

Natural selection on the genetic level cannot account for this inexplicable lack of "misfit" fossils. Before the first drastically different family of life forms (the first dog, the first bird, the first snake, etc.) came into existence, the genetic code could not possibly have held the genetic design for their precise characteristics. At some point, drastic genetic mutations must have occurred to produce these new life forms. And for every "first" of a new life form, there would have to have been the spawning of literally millions of misfit predecessor variations that were weeded out by natural selection. Then you'd have survival of the fittest. As it stands, we have only the fit.

 

It's one thing to claim that natural selection on the genetic level can weed out bad genes. But that the genetic process can weed out, prior to birth, the first birds without wings, fish without fins, lions without teeth, etc., is preposterous. These aberrations would have to exist before they could be eliminated by natural selection.

 

The possible variations of "misfit" creatures are almost limitless. There is simply no explanation for how nature produced virtually every new life form in a state already fit to survive, as the fossil record shows over and over.

 

There's no question that life forms can mutate in relatively minor ways to adapt to an environment. But for completely new families of creatures to suddenly appear without any telltale signs of trial-and-error that clearly show how the myriad of misfits fell by the wayside till nature finally got it right, is impossible to explain.

 

Evolution is a modern invention of a God-less religion. It's interesting how a common response you get when confronting evolutionists with legitimate disproofs of evolution is: "You don't understand evolution." Really? The only ones who seem to "understand" evolution are those who believe in it.

 

Evolution is little more than lunacy cloaked in scientific jargon. Sorcery and witchcraft were also "scientific" and "well understood" in their time. None of it was ever based on evidence, yet had strong followings. Evolution fulfills 21st Century man's need to believe in a great mystical power beyond himself. Welcome to the supernatural.

[StringJunky]

So what was the path organisms followed to manifest as they are now?

Edited December 29, 2014 by StringJunky

[Phi for All]

!

Moderator Note

Since evolution is one of the most heavily evidenced theories in all of science, your claims are unsupported. This section is for mainstream evolution questions, the kind students like to be accurate about, so I'm moving this thread to Speculations.

 

I'm going to also suggest that most of your misinformation can be cleared up by visiting http://www.talkorigins.org/. It will clear up misconceptions like suddenly having birds with wings.

 

You're going to be asked to provide evidence to support your position, and everyone else will be required to do the same. Please take some time to read the Speculation rules.

[Strange]

Yes, we all know how genetic code pass down mostly the beneficial mutations to perpetuate the hardiest of the species.

 

Er, no.

 

But this nonsense misses the point. In scenarios of "survival of the fittest" or "natural selection," there would be those that were "not fit" or "not selected." Where are they?

 

There are many of species in the fossil record that don't exist any more. And there are many more that have changed over the millennia.

 

It's interesting how a common response you get when confronting evolutionists with legitimate disproofs of evolution is: "You don't understand evolution." Really?

 

Really.

 

That is quite an impressive strawman you have created and decided to attack. Did you come up with it all by yourself? Or did your church spoon-feed it to you?

[Phi for All]

Evolution fulfills 21st Century man's need to believe in a great mystical power beyond himself. Welcome to the supernatural.

 

I've never had a creationist make this claim before. Are you seriously pointing at science as mysticism, while you believe in an inerrant bible and an infallible, omnipotent deity?

 

There is simply no explanation for how nature produced virtually every new life form in a state already fit to survive, as the fossil record shows over and over.

 

What you're doing here is setting up some misinformation to automagically be true. You make an incorrect assumption about the fossil record, then claim there's no explanation for how this came to be. It's like you're saying that Ford never made any cars that fell apart, so there is simply no explanation for how I could have a Mustang that's now falling apart.

[MonDie]

spontaneous abortion

 

That's why trisomies 21 and 18 are the only kinds. All other trisomies have a 100% spontaneous abortion rate.

Edited December 29, 2014 by MonDie

[pengee]

You're responses so far fall so short of actually explaining anything, it proves a remark I once heard: "The average evolutionist has no idea how evolution is "supposed" to work."

 

 

You're all following down the path of typical evolutionist responses:

 

 

1 - Label the evolutionist-dissenter a "creationist." Never mind that he said nothing about creation, your religion evolution says such an "infidel" must be a creationist. This takes the burden off you from giving any sensible response. Well, Hallelujah, Lord Darwin!

 

 

2 - Always refer the infidel to some other website or give him a bunch of links, and make sure to tell him that it's "already been explain" somewhere else. This keeps you from having to explain it yourself, which you couldn't do if you wanted to. If you knew what those other links or websites said, and evolution is so part of "factual" science you should've been able to explain something. Nothing, zilch. Lordy, Lordy, Charley must be turning over in his grave.

 

 

3 - A response like "most of your misinformation can be cleared" in some other websites shows an acute lack of understanding of the topic being discussed. There is no misunderstanding here. There is a simple biological scenario that should have happened in the past, that hasn't happened, and no one seems to be able to explain it except by just repeating the evolutionist mantra that says, effectively, "this is how it happened, period." We all know how and what happened. The fossil record says it very clearly. But you guys obviously haven't the faintest idea is why.

 

 

 

The response "Since evolution is one of the most heavily evidenced theories in all of science, your claims are unsupported." This is such a disingenuous circular reasoning response. This is like saying Jesus Christ (whom I don't believe in, by the way) walking on water (which I believe is total nonsense) must have happened because it was witnessed by so many. Therefore it must be true. Right. Show me the witnesses, and show me the "heavy evidence" of evolution. Just making such statements doesn't make it so. And if evolution is so "heavily evidenced" one would think you could provide at least some of that evidence. Nothing! Just words.

 

 

With the responses so far, no one has addressed a damn thing. In this short thread we've already had all the typical evolutionist responses: name calling, ridicule, go to "another website," and the foolishness goes on.

 

 

 

Then we have that line you always find in every such thread that shows such a complete lack of comprehension of what's going on: "There are many of species in the fossil record that don't exist any more. And there are many more that have changed over the millennia." What on earth is this guy talking about? No concept of what the issue is here, just a response to give his finger exercise.

 

 

This thread so far is like talking to an empty room. Not a shred of a substantive response.

 

 

 

To all you who have yet to come upon this thread, who don't necessarily believe in evolution:

 

 

Are you getting some idea of what you're up against? Evolution is not at all about science. It's about bulldozing people into "believing." No different than the most fanatical religions. Have you seen one logical, scientifically valid response here? Have you seen any response that actually answers anything? Nothing. It's like questioning someone's religion and being told it's already been explained in that other church. But no one can explain it, nor does anyone have any idea what or why they believe what they do. Maybe we'll get the answers at the resurrection Lord Darwin.

 

 

[MonDie]

Come to think of it, some of the fossils probably are mutants? How do you know you're not looking at a conodont with trisomy?

[Arete]

What do you do when you've invested so much in a theory, even proselytized others on its scientific validity, and then see every new archaeological discovery prove it wrong?

 

Archaeology, the study of human activity in the past, doesn't generally doesn't have much to say about fossils. Perhaps you meant paleontology? That's a pretty egregious error, I fear characteristic of a profound lack of understanding regarding the fundamental principles of evolutionary theory, and if I was to make a wild assumption, telling of a rather disingenuous approach to the topic at hand.

 

The massive collection of fossils discovered to date show that survival of the fittest (as attributed to evolution) never happened -- the vast majority of fossils seem to represent the "fit." The "unfit," the ones that allegedly didn't survive, are practically non-existent.

 

You really need to support this statement as it's rather trivially contradicted by a large volume of empirical observation of selection in the fossil record. I would go so far as to say it patently wrong.

 

For a very small example:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2006.tb00514.x/abstract

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2410098?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

http://www.psjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1666/05026.1

http://www.psjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1666/05026.1

http://www.pnas.org/content/83/18/6897.short

 

etc ad infinitum.

 

 

Yes, we all know how genetic code pass down mostly the beneficial mutations to perpetuate the hardiest of the species. But this nonsense misses the point. In scenarios of "survival of the fittest" or "natural selection," there would be those that were "not fit" or "not selected." Where are they? The absence of the unfit in the fossil record indicates that all life forms came into existence already "fit" and "selected." How do you account for such a practically flawless success rate?

 

Again, this rather blatantly false. Many of the organisms represented in the fossil record are extinct members of lineages which have no extant members - so what you're saying is never observed, is routinely observed. Additionally deformed individuals have been observed in the fossil record on a regular basis for over a century. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3220690?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

This argument may stem from a common misconception made by those with no fundamental understanding of evolutionary theory. In the context of evolution, individual fitness is defined by the quotient of an individual's genetic material which is passed to the next generation - and nothing else.

 

Of course, there is the misguided notion of how the misfit generally don't spawn successive generations and therefore leave few telltale traces. The problem with this notion is that accidental chaos happens in far greater numbers than accidental benefits. Fossils of the misfit, even if they never survived to spawn successive generations, should have far outnumbered our current collection of fossils. But they hardly exist.

 

A) You'll need to explain how the idea phenotypes which fail to reproduce are not highly abundant is "misguided" as that assertion appears to defy the very basics of logic.

B) Deleterious mutations are observed in virtually every population we've ever looked at http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIE6bBadgenes.shtmlso to say they aren't routinely observed would be, again, blatantly false.

C) The vast majority of mutations are not deleterious, but neutral http://www.genetics.org/content/156/1/297.full

 

So basically the claim made here is based on "facts" which are comprehensively wrong.

 

It's one thing to claim that natural selection on the genetic level can weed out bad genes. But that the genetic process can weed out, prior to birth, the first birds without wings, fish without fins, lions without teeth, etc., is preposterous. These aberrations would have to exist before they could be eliminated by natural selection.

 

A) A vast swathe of deleterious mutations are "weeded out" prior to birth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_allele. Lethal mutations in the embryo are the primary cause of miscarriage. This is yet another is a growing list of increasingly absurd, blatantly untrue statements. To call the following argument a castle made of sand would be an insult to the structural integrity of sand.

B) Birds without wings... you mean these guys?

C) Again, the argument that a deleterious mutation has to propagate within a population in order for natural selection to remove it from said population defies the very basics of logic.

D) Also - trying to state that gross deformities are not observed is the fossil record is, you guessed it, blatantly false observation of deformed fossils have been observed for over a century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teratology#Other_animals

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3220690?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

 

There's no question that life forms can mutate in relatively minor ways to adapt to an environment. But for completely new families of creatures to suddenly appear without any telltale signs of trial-and-error that clearly show how the myriad of misfits fell by the wayside till nature finally got it right, is impossible to explain.

 

A) The tired old macro- micro- evolution argument. This is like saying you accept days, but not years.

B) New families don't suddenly appear. It takes millions of years.

C) Selection, as cited previously, is evident from the fossil record.

 

"You don't understand evolution." Really? The only ones who seem to "understand" evolution are those who believe in it.

 

Funny that...

 

 

Evolution is little more than lunacy cloaked in scientific jargon. Sorcery and witchcraft were also "scientific" and "well understood" in their time. None of it was ever based on evidence, yet had strong followings. Evolution fulfills 21st Century man's need to believe in a great mystical power beyond himself. Welcome to the supernatural.

 

Well when you blatantly make stuff up, you can delude yourself that it is.

1 - Label the evolutionist-dissenter a "creationist." Never mind that he said nothing about creation, your religion evolution says such an "infidel" must be a creationist. This takes the burden off you from giving any sensible response. Well, Hallelujah, Lord Darwin!

 

No one labelled you a creationist. I'm guessing this is copypasta, but regardless, nice strawman.

 

2 - Always refer the infidel to some other website or give him a bunch of links, and make sure to tell him that it's "already been explain" somewhere else. This keeps you from having to explain it yourself, which you couldn't do if you wanted to. If you knew what those other links or websites said, and evolution is so part of "factual" science you should've been able to explain something. Nothing, zilch. Lordy, Lordy, Charley must be turning over in his grave.

 

OMG not source material - how inconvenient.... most of the links provided by me are to scientific articles to provide a reference for a statement. This is using peer reviewed empirical evidence to prove I didn't just make shit up - as it appears is modus operandi for you. The idea of referencing should come up in freshman year.

 

 

3 - A response like "most of your misinformation can be cleared" in some other websites shows an acute lack of understanding of the topic being discussed. There is no misunderstanding here. There is a simple biological scenario that should have happened in the past, that hasn't happened, and no one seems to be able to explain it except by just repeating the evolutionist mantra that says, effectively, "this is how it happened, period." We all know how and what happened. The fossil record says it very clearly. But you guys obviously haven't the faintest idea is why.

 

It's evident in the first line of the opening post - where you confuse archaeology for paleontology you're the party with an acute lack of understanding.

 

As characterized the fossil record doesn't support anything you're saying. This statement is an equivalent to "you haven't explained why the earth is flat, so you're wrong!"

Edited December 30, 2014 by Arete

[zapatos]

The massive collection of fossils discovered to date show that survival of the fittest (as attributed to evolution) never happened -- the vast majority of fossils seem to represent the "fit." The "unfit," the ones that allegedly didn't survive, are practically non-existent.

 

Seriously? Would you be so kind as to name some of the 'vast majority of fossils' that did survive? If you could start with the dinosaurs that survived that would be great.

[Strange]

With the responses so far, no one has addressed a damn thing. In this short thread we've already had all the typical evolutionist responses: name calling, ridicule, go to "another website," and the foolishness goes on.

 

The trouble is, nothing you have said bears any relationship to the theory of evolution.

 

For example, how do you know if a particular fossil is "fit" or "unfit"? It is a meaningless judgement based, apparently, on a gross misunderstanding of what the phrase "fitness" means.

 

For example:

- Did those fossils exist for an extended period? Yes, then they must have fit their environment.

- Did those fossils change over time? Yes, then they changed in order to better fit (perhaps because their environment changed).

- Did those fossils die out over time? Then maybe they did not fit their (perhaps changing) environemnt.

 

 

Your argument is about as sensible as saying, "evolution must be wrong because I am wearing red trousers".

 

And your childish attempts to imply that people only "believe" in evolution "because Darwin" is just silly. Darwin and Wallace came up with the initial theory (based on large amounts of evidence). It has been extensively modified since then - again based on the evidence. There was much Darwin and Wallace did not know (the existence of genes, for example) and some things they got wrong.

 

It is only religious nuts who think the whole thing hangs on Darwin's word.

 

 

You're responses so far fall so short of actually explaining anything, it proves a remark I once heard: "The average evolutionist has no idea how evolution is "supposed" to work."

 

Ironic from someone who apparently doesn't know anything about evolution. And isn't interested in learning.

 

 

2 - Always refer the infidel to some other website or give him a bunch of links, and make sure to tell him that it's "already been explain" somewhere else.

 

So it is a "bad thing" when people support their arguments with references to the evidence? Extraordinary.

 

If you were interested in overcoming the shortcomings in your knowledge, you could take advantage of the knowledge available from the experts here, and the references provided. But you prefer to throw out insults and unsupported, irrelevant and incorrect claims.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Strange

[ajb]

What is an 'evolutionist' anyway?

 

And I have no idea if anyone here would define themselves as an expert in evolutionary biology. As such most people here will state the basics and then draw your attention to experts. That is why people tend to point 'questioners' towards books, review articles and websites. That is the correct thing to do. Moreover, do not expect anyone to write a massive review of evolutionary biology and post in on here.

 

(I have seen similar requests for general relativity, no way am I going to try to write a book in one post!)

[cladking]

"Survival of the fittest" simply doesn't explain the facts and the evidence. Of course "evolution" is real because all things change and they change in response to internal and external stimuli. But this doesn't mean giraffes got long necks gradually as food near the ground got increasingly scarce. There are four or five primary drivers of change in species dependent on whether or not you even count "survival of the fittest".

 

Nature fills niches. if there's need for an animal that hops or runs faster then one will arise. The primary way that one arises is through near extinction events. When a species or local population of a species comes under threat because of habitat change or some other factor populations drop. The nature of the pressure (flood, lack of food, drought, disease, etc) causes individuals within the species to have a greater or lesser chance of survival so the individuals who survive are fundamentally different than those who perish. These survivors breed true and the species has changed.

 

This also accounts for the vast individual differences within species because these survivors will mate with other populations that were not subjected to the specific stress. This is simply nature's way of assuring that there is lots of individual difference within species to improive their odds of surviving any change at all. Some mixture of genes will probably be suited to the new conditions; the new biological niche.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

pengee,

This site is not a place to soap box, it is a place for discussion. If you have come here with intentions to simply shout as loud as you can with your fingers in your ears, I'm afraid this is not the place for you. Please take the time to actually read what people have written and respond to their critiques in kind (with evidence to back up your claims where necessary). If you can't do this, we will close the thread.

Do not respond to this note in-thread. If you have an issue with anything said, please PM staff or report this post.