Evolution ("by non-random natural selection")

First off, everyone remember that this is not the Evolution vs. Creationism thread, so we don't need to argue against creationism here. By the same token, Starship:

is nowhere to be found in the theory of evolution at any stage in development. Charles Darwin didn't posit it as necessary to the theory of evolution and I don't recall any respectable biologist saying that it was. If we don't believe in God it's for other reasons.

Now, it's as simple as Carcio put it: we have to assume that there is a truth that we can arrive at by inference. There is some reasonable explanation out there. It doesn't have to be the perfect, objective truth, it just has to have predictive power and be consistent with everything else you've seen.

Were you here when we said that we don't want the "absolute truth"? Science is pragmatic. We want to be the least wrong, not the absolutely true, in part because we can't prove that the absolutely true is possible. So we work with what we've got. To call that guesswork and inference, or decide that some parts of the theory with which you have issues are "add-ons", is to add meaningless subjective labels where they're not applicable. That's like saying you believe that Rome existed but that they never fought with Carthage.

No, there's no line between "add-ons" and "the solid stuff". There is what is supported by evidence and testing, and there is the stuff that isn't. That's all.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Erm. whether we were created by god or not has nothhing to do with evolutionary theory. Its perfectly feasible God kickstarted evolution. Whether he did or not is however, irrelevant to the science.. However, it is not feasible we just happened to spawn out of nowhere unlike all other animals.

A lot of it relies on inference in the same way that the hypothesis that there ever was a Roman Empire relies on inference made from the evidence.

If you don't accept inference, that's fine; then don't accept it for anything. Or define the standards of what sort of inference you'll accept and what you won't. That's the ideal solution. When you study science you'll come across specific rules about what sort of inference you're allowed to accept and what you're not allowed to accept. (This has been explained to you before in discussions about what a scientific model is.)

When you have set your standards you're free to use them. You have the right to that. To be intellectually honest, though, you must use those same standards for anything.

As for evolution disproving God, that is not part of what the theory of evolution is, nor is it something that it was ever designed to do. Evolution is an explanation of how life diversified; nothing more, nothing less.

You're not "boiling" the theory of evolution by natural selection "to the base" when you suggest that it's evidence against God. Instead, you're adding on things that weren't there before.

If you want to suggest that God made the diversity of life without using evolution, then your hypothesis goes against evolution. But evolution doesn't negate a God hypothesis where God uses evolution or at least allows it to happen.

So if you want to include an inference about God it should be something like "clearly all life has changed and even split off into different forms in adapting to the environment hence we weren't created by God in our current form without evolving from ancestors that we share with other species."

But even that is unnecessary. If you want to "boil it down to the base" you should remove the word "hence" and everything after it.

edited 14th Mar '13 12:42:32 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Okay.

It was an honor

Is that a 'point taken' okay, or a 'whatever' okay?

Here is an interesting article on the predictability of evolution. The best summary of their results is given in the graph at the beginning of the article. They quantify 'predictability', to be the measure of the repeatability of the path or outcome of evolution, in replicated lineages (in this case of a type of fungus).

"...The researchers combined genetic information from a fungus with computer models which simulate the course of evolution. They concluded that, while evolution in small populations is known to be unpredictable, this is also the case for very large populations. There is an optimal population size for predicting evolutionary outcomes in every situation."

Point taken okay.

It was an honor

Bumping because this is old news but it's really neat.

Single-celled organisms can evolve into multicellular ones. (New Scientist is a very good site for this stuff.) Specifically, yeast cells were involved in an experiment in which larger or clumped cells were selected for. Within two months, multicellular yeast organisms had evolved, which had division of labour between the cells and which had programmed cell death. The cell death shows that it really was a single organism because a cell dying can be beneficial to the whole but not to the cell.

I'm always happy when we fill another little hole like this. "Cells can't become larger organisms" is an objection to evolution that I've seen some people raise.

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.

And they did it simply by selecting for weight? That's awesome, thanks for the link!

Oldest primate skeleton found:

"...The near-complete fossil of a tiny creature unearthed in China in 2002 has bolstered the idea that the anthropoid group of primates — whose modern-day members include monkeys, apes and humans — had appeared by at least 55 million years ago. The fossil primate does not belong to that lineage, however: it is thought to be the earliest-discovered ancestor of small tree-dwelling primates called tarsiers, showing that even at this early time, the tarsier and anthropoid groups had split apart."

Another piece in the puzzle...

Diurnal early tarsiers have been found often enough before, so the orbits don't interest me that much. But, that foot is fascinating: the long phalanges in particular in relation to that awesome ankle — who'd've thunk? I need to dig more up on the knee and hip when I feel able to, as, if the ankle is configured like that, it should have interesting knock-on effects for the articulation of the whole leg, surely... even if the rest is mainly tarsier-like. <hums> Pity the upper limbs seem to be missing: it'd've been nice to see what the hand, wrist and elbow were doing... Oh, well: beggars can't be choosers.

Look at that lovely tibia length, though. And that tarsier trademark spectacular tail and impish face. Achilles is a little cutie, and no mistake. ^_^

edited 5th Jun '13 10:06:43 PM by Euodiachloris

x4 Interesting....*waits excitedly for the Chlamydomonas results*

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