[Shade]

Well, trying to apply that to evolution is ridiculous anyway. Earth is not an isolated system, as has been pointed out about a hundred million times on this and similar threads already. But I can see how a lack of reading conprehension might lead to the snowflake comment. Actually understanding that line though (in which case it makes perfect sense) would make it obvious how incorrect that use of it is.

[Ace]

...and as I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread when you look at the caloric intakes of organisms, heat generated, et al. it makes perfect sense why 'life' is a logical 'solution' in creating even more entropy. (taking on a universal scale of a closed system reaching entropy in trillions of years after the big bang) Life as a whole might only take a few picoseconds off, but it adds to entropy despite its apparent 'order'.

Similarly large brains and tool use wind up also being functionally an inevitability out of that ever so simple law. Just break down the amount of energy consumed, and the inefficientcy of it, in simply typing this message. Take into account all of the infrastructure involved.

[karajorma]

And speaking of shooting yourselves in the foot (BTW someone should combine "hopping" and "snipe" to make ""footshot"  ) more than once snowflakes have been mentioned as proof of evolution in nature.

This is so wrong as to be laughable. If you're going to go on about people shooting themselves in the foot I suggest you first try to read the comments people post and then secondly try to understand them. No one said that snowflakes are proof of evolution in nature. You've completely failed to understand the subject matter and then arrogantly insisted you've discovered a logical flaw. You've discovered nothing of the sort.

I was the one who brought up snowflakes as an example of the fact that complexity can occur naturally. The shape of a snowflake has absolutely nothing to do with evolution and has everything to do with the manner in which crystals form. The point I was making is that someone who knows nothing about crystal formation could look at a snowflake under a microscope and say "Look how beautiful that is. Someone must have designed it" That person would be wrong though. There is nothing mystical about why a snowflake forms into that pattern. The process of crystal formation is pretty well understood.

So why mention snowflakes in a thread about evolution? Well basically the same argument about complexity is also made against evolution. People like you will say "This organ is so complex it must have been designed"

But the argument is as specious as when it is made for snowflakes. Snowflakes look complex but the reason behind that can soon be proved to be down to natural processes involved in crystal formation. It's the same thing with complexity in organs. The complexity can be explained scientifically there too. In this case by evolution.

So as you can (hopefully) see now the snowflake comment was to disprove the whole complexity must equal design argument that you yourself are using. Nowhere did anyone say that evolution had anything to do with the shape of a snowflake. You simply failed to understand what was being said and tripped over yourself in your hurry to make a point. Next time make damn certain what someone is saying before you claim that they have shot themselves in the foot.

[Bobboau]

ok, were going to go through this nice and easy.

The problem is that the second method would be useless until at least mostly fully formed...  If fishy tried going full speed with a little blob of cells that were only part of the "lung", then fishy would get eaten.  Therefore the partially formed lung would be discarded because it was in no way beneficial.
o k ...
first off, let uss understand that the water near the surface is typicaly higher in oxygen than the water lower, let us also understand that gills, while designed to work under water, are capable of extracting oxygen from air so long as they remain wet though they are hardly specalised for it. a behavior of gulping air when the water's oxygen level is insufichent, will likely develop, some fish's gills will work better at this than others and the ones who's gills are better at this will be more likely to surevive as they have a competitive advantage in the ability to exploit a resource more efectively. other behaviors such as swalowing air, might develop, wich would allow the fish to release the air slowly while totaly submerged, or there might be a secondary set of gills that form more specalised at getting oxygen from air. the fosil evedence I belive shows that the first lung like organs developed as an extention of the  digestive system so the gulping hypothosis seems more likely, so we'll stick with that one. haveing air in one's gut can prove to make digestion more dificult, so probly this gulping action would only happen when the fish's stomach was empty (or nearly) this would mean that exploitation of this resource in this maner would be limeted, unless the air could be kept seperate from the food, even the slightest dimple in the stomach would help in this endevor, though it would be slow at first the stomach might divide into  two chambers, the first one being mostly used to stor air long term, this is because the greater the shrinkage in the midle of a stomach the less the effect air will have on the digestion process, and the better to utalise air the fish would be. now the more the fish is storeing air internaly the more it will be able to absorb it internaly, you may be suprised to hear this but all exposed tisue absorbs oxygen, it's no were near enough to fuel our metabolisms, but a fraction of the oxygen you get comes from your skin, the same will be true of the fish's ever divergeing gut, eventualy the two cambers would be completly seporated and have a valve like opening derived from modified muscles that line the stomach, unfortunately this design while an improvement still has problems, though the fish can have both food and air at the same time, it cannot as easily swalow, haveing the opening tapered a bit might help, as would a chanel for moveing food, if nothing else it would allow for the fish to hold a bit more air when it swallows. these morphological changes would continue untill the second chamber is divided off quite well, it now is effectively a swim blader.
at this point the fish is still useing air simply as a suplement, (and boyancy aid, most likely) most fish probly wouldn't need more than that, but other fish, that live in particularly low oxygen environments, like tropical swamps were heat and decomposition of plant matter would cause the water's oxygen levels to totaly deplete at times would find the ability to relyably utalise air essental. there ansestors who totaly shuned air would have never been able to survive in this environment, the early air gulpers might have been able to at most survive enough to flee, the swim bladered fish could posably desperately cling to life here. the preasure to develop a more efective air beathing mechanism would be enormus. the first thing likely to happen would be the air blader's oxygen absobtion capabilities would become far more important, mutations that led to more blood flow to the lineing would universaly be extreemly benifical, as would mutations leading to greater surface area. IMO it would be likely less than two million years before the inhabitants of these waters had air bladers with, at first an aray of folds and groves wich eventualy would become an intracate system of pasageways leading to small cavities, the would effectavely be primitive lungs, and you would have the lung fish.

this is simply one posable whay things could have gon down, a posibility I could come up with a dozen diferent senarios that could lead to this


Another problem: Where would it get the instincts to perform this act?  Unless I'm mistaken, fish do get their mating/reproduction habits from instinct.  So what would happen is fishy would continue to lay eggs in the water and getting those nutritious objects eaten until it miraculously (oops) accidently mutated the complex programming required for the new instincts.
how's this, fish that prefer laying in shallower water tend to have more surviveing offsping. you would eventualy haveing fish that lay eggs on the shore line, not exactly the best environment for developing eggs, but at least you don't have as bad of a preditor issue. so fish that prefered the wettest spot on the bank, out of the water would now have the advantage out of the shish who have already a prference for swiming onto the bank to lay eggs. this could easaly lead to fish that seek out shallow pools of water just past the bank of the river/pond/whatever

simple, no forthought requiered

And about the Archaeopteryx:
I notice none of the things you mentioned were not fully formed (except for the "hands" which are nothing more or less than fully formed claws.  Indeed, you simply listed a bunch of body parts which you say are proof of its being a transitional form because other animals have them too. the thing obviusly had a use for these features in there 'not fully formed' state The platypus has a tail like a beaver, a bill like a duck, lays eggs like a lizard, and has fur like an otter.  So what is it?  A sort of transition between mammals, birds, and reptiles all at once? 
actualy it sort of is, the fosil and genetic evidence indicate that the platypus is one of the most primitive mamals, very similar to the earliest mamals in many ways. these early mamals diverged from reptiles. the 'bill' is actualy nothing like that of a duck if you realy look at it, it's much more fleshy and is covered in very sensitive nerves that it uses to track it's prey in merky water

Speaking of instinct, how the heck did any of the thousand-mile plus migrators get their instincts programmed in time to keep from freezing their butts off?those animals that had a preference to move south when the days start getting shorter were more likely to survive  You could say that they gradually moved south as winter gradually set in over millions of years, except the trees from that "era" don't show any signs of unusually long fall seasons.no idea what the **** your on about here 

And speaking of shooting yourselves in the foot more than once snowflakes have been mentioned as proof of evolution in nature. no they haven't, not by our side anyway May I ask a question: If this is evolution, then why do all snowflakes have such obvious design? first of this isn't evolutions, second off math Why are there NO snowflakes that are just flakes of ice with no particular beauty?there are (Don't you DARE mention hail; they're two separate things and you know it.) yeah, still, not talking about hail, thought one could say that is an artifical distinction

[Mefustae]

Ach, could you have written those 20,000 words in a colour that won't give me eye cancer!

[Kamikaze]

So why mention snowflakes in a thread about evolution? Well basically the same argument about complexity is also made against evolution. People like you will say "This organ is so complex it must have been designed"

The whole idea of irreducible complexity is mathematically bogus anyway.

[Black Wolf]

The problem is that the second method would be useless until at least mostly fully formed...  If fishy tried going full speed with a little blob of cells that were only part of the "lung", then fishy would get eaten.  Therefore the partially formed lung would be discarded because it was in no way beneficial.

You're absolutely right. A little blob of cells would be useless. Fortunately for the theory of evolution, nobody has ever claimed primitive lungs would form as a blob of cells. Evolution doesn't ask for a brand new organ to grow the same way as it would in an embryo. Hell, for that matter, lungs don't sponaneously grow as a blob of cells in an embryo - they split off the digestive system.

Keep in mind that prior to the development of lungs in lobe fins, all devonian fish were gill breaters, extracting oxygen from the water, and, just like in modern oceans, the vast majority stayed near the surface (both because it's more highly oxygenated and (mostly) because they need to remain in the photic zone so that you can have a primary producer kicking off food webs). Thus, all fish are at the same disadvantage - they can't go at full speed for a long period of time without suffocating, but they're also all (more or less) living in the same relatively high oxygen environment with an even higher Oxygen environment just above them. That's where you get lungs. Now for how.

It's important, whether you're an evolutionary scientist or a creationist pretender, to understand both the function and the method of the organs you're interested in. So lets take a look at the lungs.

Your lungs are a pair of sacs,with a series of bronchioles which are covered in alveoli, which are extremely small balls of very thin walled cells connected to capillaries. The purpose of all this confusing detail and i-ending words is to provide an immense surface area relative to volume through which gas diffusion (both O2 coming in and CO2 going out) takes place. Now, if you're clever enough to go to the top of the class, youd be able to understand where I'm going with this. But you're not.

The evolution of lungs has practically nothing to do with the evolution of a separate sac for which gas diffusion takes place. It has to do with evolution redirecting capilaries down to the surface of the gas transfer membrane. The reason it takes place in a separated sac is because:
a) that makes it possible for all these specialized adaptations to take place without impeding digestion and
b) it increases the total available surface area.

So, now that you've got a bit of an idea where I'm going, I'd normally let you take over from this point but you're yet to get yourself out of my annoying idiot book, so I'm just going to assume that you can't, in fact, fionish this story. The fact here is that any increase in capillary-cover over the surface of a potential gas-transfer membrane would be beneficial to an organism which gulps air even accidentally and occasionally. Moreover, a clever energey saving technique use by a very small number of modern fish is to swim right at the surface of the water and utlize the decreased drag of air relative to water to allow itself to move faster. Most fish don't do this today because it tends to get them eaten by birds, but it would have been a perfectly viable technique in the Devonian. So, we have a fish which lives near an alternate air source, has a clear need for one, and can gain evolutionary benefit from a relatively simple anatomical change (rerouting capillaries). That's means, motive and opportunity, the textbook recipe for TV-show murders and Darwinian evolution.

Another problem: Where would it get the instincts to perform this act?  Unless I'm mistaken, fish do get their mating/reproduction habits from instinct.  So what would happen is fishy would continue to lay eggs in the water and getting those nutritious objects eaten until it miraculously (oops) accidently mutated the complex programming required for the new instincts.

Name me one egg laying vertebrate that has no concern where its eggs are placed whatsoever. There are very few, if any (I can't think of any). Many build nests, dens, whatever to incubate their eggs or just to let them grow. Even fish cement their eggs to some sort of substrate, a rock, a piece of coral, whatever. Evolutionary advantage comes to the animal which has the strongest or most innovative instinct as to where to place their eggs, and if the eggs of a fish which instinctually lays its eggs out of the water have a vastly greater survival rate, that instinct is going to spread fast.

Moreover, instinct doesn't have to be complex. These lobe fins were already inevitably using their primitive limbs to move around in their habitats, and the existing instinct to find food might eventually have driven it over thin sandbanks into the isolated pools. Its not much of a leap from a food finding instinct to a reproductive instinct if a new method is already established and working for one or the other.

And about the Archaeopteryx:
I notice none of the things you mentioned were not fully formed (except for the "hands" which are nothing more or less than fully formed claws.  Indeed, you simply listed a bunch of body parts which you say are proof of its being a transitional form because other animals have them too.

Yes. Other animals directly above or below the archaeopteryx on the evolutionary ladder, exactly as you'd expect from a transitional form. Honestly, I know I'm talking to an idiot, but I expect my idiots to at least pretend to comprehend what's going on. Moreover, there are "not-fully-formed" features on the archaeopteryx, if you choose to twist anatomy and view it with the benefit of hindsight.
 - A feathered, reptilian tail is a "not-fully-formed" pygostyle because it is feathered like a bird but the vertebrae have not fused into a pygostyle like a dinosaur.
 - The wings are "not-fully-formed" because the claws and hands of the dinosaurian anscestors of Archaeopteryx still exist instead of having been fused into a nice neat modern wing.
 - The feathers on Sinornithosaurus are "not-fully-formed" because they aren't fully formed feathers.

The fact is though, arguing about "not-fully-formed" body parts with creationists is a fools errand because you people specialize in arbitrarily categorizing things because their existence as transitional forms defies your fundamental argument. The only thing you people would be happy with is an elephant which turns into a lizard somewhere around the hips, which any real scientist/evolutionist/trained monkey can tell you is not what evolution predicts, nor what occurs in nature.

Moreover, I've given you a list of features that makes Archaeopteryx a transitional form, so you say you want the organs to be transitional as well. Remember that whatever Archaeopteryx was, it was a fully formed Archaeopteryx, perfectly adapted to its own particular way of life, whatever that may have been. Transitional organs, a spleen half mutated into a pancrease, for example, would be no use to a fully formed Archaeopteryx and as such they never existed. What you have instead are organs which exist as perfectly functional organs at their given state of development.

The platypus has a tail like a beaver, a bill like a duck, lays eggs like a lizard, and has fur like an otter.  So what is it?  A sort of transition between mammals, birds, and reptiles all at once? 

Sorry, you lose again. The platypus's bill is nothing like a ducks, except in shape. A ducks beak is, like any other birds, made of bone and keratin, whereas a platypus' bill is a bone-free, rubbery fleshy organ. Their skulls make the differences patently obvious:

Duck:



Platypus:



As you should be able to see, there's similarity only when you're using only the most immediately apparent view - dig just a little deeper and the differences become obvious.

The platypus is a fantastic example of convergent evolution - when two demonstratably different structures become physically similar due to similarity of habitat or use. I'd like to point out that you brought up not one but two swimming mammals (a beaver and an otter) to use as your mammal comparison, and an aquatic bird for your bird comparison. Convergent evolution predicts that even unrelated animals occupying similar niches will develop similar structures. A duck is an aquatic bird, so a structurally similar bill evolves in both. Otters and Beavers are aquatic mamals, so similar insulatory fur evolves in all three, and a similar locomotor module evolves in two. As for laying eggs like a lizrd, you're absolutely right. It also holds its legs likre a lizard and has a consequently lizrd-like gait when its out of the water, because it is related to reptiles. It's the result of the survival of a much earlier branch of mammals which has survived here in Australia. It's not transitional, but it has features from both groups.

[karajorma]

The whole idea of irreducible complexity is mathematically bogus anyway.

I think I made th point that Specified Complexity was mathmatical nonsense at the time. Nice to see that Irreducible Complexity is a load of mathmatical crap too.

That said we've let m have his fun for long enough. We're right, science backs up our point of view. Time for m to explain not why evolution is wrong but why whatever he believes is right.

[Edward Bradshaw]

The problem is that the second method would be useless until at least mostly fully formed...  If fishy tried going full speed with a little blob of cells that were only part of the "lung", then fishy would get eaten.  Therefore the partially formed lung would be discarded because it was in no way beneficial.

Why do you still imagine this as half formed useless features? There is no such thing as "part of a lung" or "part of an eye" or "part of a heart". How many times do I have to tell you this? Why do you keep ignoring me?

Creationists ask where these things exist and how impossible it all is, well, evolution never suggested these things should exist like that anyway. You could kind of refer to the simple versions of hearts and simple lungs and simple eyes as "half an eye" or "half a heart" when compared to our organs, but only if you incorrectly think of our eyes as being at the top of some kind of evolutionary ladder of complexity with our organs being the "full" organ at the top, but these simple hearts, lungs and eyes were and are all fully functioning organs that is a usefull adaptation for that organism.

Simply put if the adaptation is usefull it will be passed on, if it is deleterious it wont.  If a fish had a deleterious genetic mutation then it couldnt pass its genes on.

Another problem: Where would it get the instincts to perform this act?  Unless I'm mistaken, fish do get their mating/reproduction habits from instinct.  So what would happen is fishy would continue to lay eggs in the water and getting those nutritious objects eaten until it miraculously (oops) accidently mutated the complex programming required for the new instincts.

Your problem is that you still see evolution as one big step, when its small incremental steps. You scoffed at the ideas of a fish with legs. How could this cope? Ridiculous notion you said, thereby denyng this little fella exists.

Pic 1. http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/MBCNg/Images/mudskipper.jpg

Many pics: http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=mudskipper&sa=N&tab=wi

So you'll say so what? Its still a fish, its not hard to imagine a fish evolving this ability its just micro evolution, right? Well, this is how evolution works, "micro evolution" IS evolution.

And about the Archaeopteryx:
I notice none of the things you mentioned were not fully formed (except for the "hands" which are nothing more or less than fully formed claws.  Indeed, you simply listed a bunch of body parts which you say are proof of its being a transitional form because other animals have them too.

What did you expect them to have? See above, we dont expect organisms to evolve useless half forms.

  The platypus has a tail like a beaver, a bill like a duck, lays eggs like a lizard, and has fur like an otter.  So what is it?  A sort of transition between mammals, birds, and reptiles all at once? 

 The platypus is a mammal. Yes, it lays eggs, but does that make it not a mammal? No, of course not. Every other characteristic in a platypus such as its fur, mammary glands and that its warm-blooded points to its being a mammal.

Im going to quote someone on another forum that explains this better than I could.

The platypus MAY be a cross between two animals, but all its structures – bill, flappers, etc. (as far as I know) are all plainly one thing or another.

"See? This is what I mean about the creationist perspective being so far removed from the way things really are. You see mammals and reptiles as originally separate categories, and the only way you can imagine a new species emerging is if it were a hybrid of two already-distinct species cross-breeding. I see an analogy here where the creationist sees all his fingers appearing out of nothing and then merging into one combined hand and arm. But of course life develops the other way; one arm splits off, or flowers into fingers who all share a common source. Just as you would agree that all of the different cultures of man diverged from one common one, as have every breed of dogs been bred from one source species, so too do languages evolve, and religions, political systems, and even ideas - all share common bases which diverge and specialize into increasingly distinct forms.

The platypus is not one category or the other. It is a therapsid mammal just as we still are. As I told you before, evolution never suggests that one thing ever turned into something else. Every new species or genus, (etc.) that ever evolved was just a modified version of whatever its ancestors were. Marsupials and Placental mammals all stem from a basal form of egg-laying mammals. The mammal line begins with the separation of synapsids and diapsids way back in the late Paleozoic era. Modern reptiles are still diapsids. Modern mammals (including you) are still synapsids. And both are still amniote tetrapods, as yet another indicator of their common ancestry.

The last monotremes on Earth, the platypus (and the echidna) represent the sole survivors of the original form of therapsid mammals. In the Mesozoic era, all "reptile-like mammals", the quasi-mammals and would-be mammals -were monotremes of a sort, in that they all laid soft eggs that hatched immediately, and the young were forced lap milky sweat from their mother's skin because they still hadn't evolved nipples. Once, the ruling mammals were cynodonts, triconodonts, multituberculates, and palaeoryctoids. Now those are all extinct, having been replaced by only two groups, marsupials and placental mammals. "

- Aron Ra

Speaking of instinct, how the heck did any of the thousand-mile plus migrators get their instincts programmed in time to keep from freezing their butts off?  You could say that they gradually moved south as winter gradually set in over millions of years, except the trees from that "era" don't show any signs of unusually long fall seasons.

Once again you argue from your own ignorence and pretend thats an argument.
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/migratio/evolut.htm

Evolution of instinct is a harder thing to study, but just because we dont know "absolutely everything" doesnt mean we know absolutely nothing. Its something Creationists dont seem to understand. Holy Crap, there are things about gravity we dont understand? This means gravity is all wrong! I know its really angels pushing objects around!

And speaking of shooting yourselves in the foot (BTW someone should combine "hopping" and "snipe" to make ""footshot"  ) more than once snowflakes have been mentioned as proof of evolution in nature. 

May I ask a question: If this is evolution, then why do all snowflakes have such obvious design?

I can make ice and salt crystals myself, in fact I used to make long ones that grew and hung from a piece of string in primary school. Why do they do that? Why is it gravity can be reduced to mathematical equations? Its just because thats how the universe works.

The point of the snowflake argument is to show Creationists that apparent "design" can appear naturally without any need for supernatural hand to come in and poof it into existence full formed, and so their logic of being able to look at a living organism and say "this is too complex to have occured naturally" is simply bad logic. No one uses snowflakes to "prove" evolution, thats just you not reading what people say properly.

  Why are there NO snowflakes that are just flakes of ice with no particular beauty?

Unless you are analysing what humans find beautiful, "beauty" of this nature is meaningless in science.

I have to go now, but I will be back with (among other things) an explanation of my Freespace analogy

Cant you talk about the actual topic instead of ridiculous irrelevant and obscure references to science fiction?

[Kamikaze]

I think I made th point that Specified Complexity was mathmatical nonsense at the time. Nice to see that Irreducible Complexity is a load of mathmatical crap too.

Bah. I can never keep track of the silly ID lingo.

[jr2]

I have to go now, but I will be back with (among other things) an explanation of my Freespace analogy

Cant you talk about the actual topic instead of ridiculous irrelevant and obscure references to science fiction?

D'uh, he already made the obscure reference, and since nobody understood him (except me?), he now has to explain what he meant.

Apparently, nobody is good at understanding illustrations?  (No offence, but some of that wasn't that hard to understand.)  Try to see things from the other person's point of view, while taking into account that your own sort of bias, by which I'm trying to mean that you see everything differently from another person with a fundamentally differing viewpoint than your own.  You have to understand that when you try to get someone to come over to your side, which may or may not be the correct side.  In order to do that, you have to consider and respond to the other person's arguments just as you'd expect them to consider and respond to yours.  Otherwise, things can descend quickly into a name-calling session.  Ask yourself this question: "If what I believe about ________ could be proven wrong, would I want to know about it?"  And, of course, with something as big as the Creation/Evolution debate, you have to consider the amount of evidence on either side.  Because, while it's the same evidence, the different sides make radically different assumptions in interpreting that evidence.  I guess it comes down to who interprets the evidence correctly.  To do that, they have to use the scientific method.
(Remember in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when the "evidence" was being re-assembled into Earth Mark Two. 

That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half completed I'm afraid — we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and ..."

In that case, both camps would be wrong, although you could hardly blame them considering the circumstances.  BTW, full quote for the Babel Fish argument, I believe, is this:

"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

The monkey typed "1" and then got bored and left the typewriter.
Unfortunately "1" was only part of the necessary "1234567" for the first living cell to survive.
"1" was discarded by nature, which didn't realize that it was necessary for "1234567"

-Since natural selection is so slow, that would work against the process, as unless you defeated insurmountable odds, only one mutation that could be beneficial in the future, only when combined with other impossible mutations, would occur.  Natural Selection says, " ?" and discards this (in the current configuration) useless mutaton.

You see, my friend, typing "1" would be like making an ML-16 laser with no ship to fire it.  The Terrans discard the ML-16,  then the Vasudans build a canopy for a cockpit (monkey types "2").  Since it is a Vasudan canopy it does not benefit the mindless Terrans.  The Terrans discard the Vasudan canopy.

Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument, another mutation that would form a beneficial system when combined w/ other changes arrives.  Oops, let's not stretch it and say that it occured in the same organism.  Since the mutation has no immediate benefit, it is eventually discarded by this organism as well.  Even if you had this mutation in the same organism, it's still not beneficial unless combined with 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  So even the organism that "1" occured in would not keep the mutation, assuming "1" was miraculously preserved.

OK, and before anyone jumps in with "mutations don't have to be beneficial to be kept" I am not[/i] saying that the organism says "Is this new mutation beneficial to me now?  If not, I'm chucking it."  What I'm saying is, mutations are 99+% harmful, what's the chances of a soon (sort of) to be beneficial mutation surviving this vicious harful mutation onslaught?  That's not to mention whatever's formed of the poor organism itself.  The chances are almost, actually, probably even are 100% that the poor thing is fried from the get - go.  See, you'd have to have the reproduction system evolved before the first organism ever to have evolved succesfully can pass away and RIP.  Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board.  So forget new "future" beneficial mutations.  This thing can't even reproduce!

I do believe m was giving you the benefit of the doubt, and saying that self-reproducing organisms had somehow miraculously (if you're uncomfortable with that word, find one for me that's not as long as "against all odds") evolved, and is now ready to receive some new beneficial mutations, while hopefully avoiding harmful ones.  Now, if anyone missed it, I do believe the harmful mutations are embodied in the Shivans from m's analogy.

Unfortunately the Shivans (UV light) come along and wipe out the hapless Apollo with its useless cannon.

If I'm not mistaken, m is trying to point out the (in my most humble opinion) ridiculous odds that each individual step of an organism evolving would have to overcome, and then, just for the sake of the argument, m is giving evolution the benefit of the doubt, and wondering how even an organism that managed to evolve to a certain level of complexity could manage to survive in such a hospitable place.  (Think of how friendly the conditions on Terra were supposedly ~a few billion years ago when the first proteins/cells had to have emerged.)  I do believe that back then, the ionosphere hadn't been popped into place, or at least wasn't funcioning fully, correct?  The radiation was immense.  While this might make some interesting combinations in the soup, it would even more quickly destroy whatever emerged.

The octopus eye was destroyed by the Shivans before the Terrans came into existence.  It did, however, leave a message regarding the Shivan weakness and referring to them as "The Destroyers".

That was a bit confusing.      m?  Any enlightenment on my humble explainations of your machinations?  FYI next time it'd be easier to explain your analogy either as you give it or right afterwards, in the same post.  Otherwise, people that can't make the connection or don't want to will not be happy.  And the people that can won't be happy either, because they have to explain your analogy whilst you're not around.  And then, you'll come back and probably tell the people that could understand it, that they mixed it all up.  So just explain yourself up front from now on, it would be much easier.

Cant you talk about the actual topic instead of ridiculous irrelevant and obscure references to science fiction?

There's nothing wrong with making a point using an analogy; just as long as you make sure everyone understands it.  Because everyone understanding it is why you're using the analogy in the first place.

[Charismatic]

This is still going on? I sure as hell am not re reading all the pages i missed.

I frankly dont have the time to continue this any time soon. I do want to tho. Dam.

(Posts like the one above are the reason this was so ****ing hard to keep up on.. INSANELY long replys.)

[jr2]

This is still going on? I sure as hell am not re reading all the pages i missed.

I frankly dont have the time to continue this any time soon. I do want to tho. Dam.

(Posts like the one above are the reason this was so ****ing hard to keep up on.. INSANELY long replys.)

@Charismatic:
Just do what I did.  Hit "Print" and print all 200 pages.  It makes for an interesting and sometimes humorous read on a rainy day.

[Kamikaze]

If I'm not mistaken, m is trying to point out the (in my most humble opinion) ridiculous odds that each individual step of an organism evolving would have to overcome

Anyone who tries to talk about "what are the odds that x would have happened?" after the fact need to take a course in probability and statistics. The perceived odds obtained from hindsight are irrelevant because there is plenty of evidence that the distribution of species is due to universal common descent and evolution (I'm lazy so you can read the evidence yourself).

[aldo_14]

D'uh, he already made the obscure reference, and since nobody understood him (except me?), he now has to explain what he meant.

Apparently, nobody is good at understanding illustrations?  (No offence, but some of that wasn't that hard to understand.)  Try to see things from the other person's point of view, while taking into account that your own sort of bias, by which I'm trying to mean that you see everything differently from another person with a fundamentally differing viewpoint than your own.  You have to understand that when you try to get someone to come over to your side, which may or may not be the correct side.  In order to do that, you have to consider and respond to the other person's arguments just as you'd expect them to consider and respond to yours.  Otherwise, things can descend quickly into a name-calling session.  Ask yourself this question: "If what I believe about ________ could be proven wrong, would I want to know about it?"  And, of course, with something as big as the Creation/Evolution debate, you have to consider the amount of evidence on either side.  Because, while it's the same evidence, the different sides make radically different assumptions in interpreting that evidence.  I guess it comes down to who interprets the evidence correctly.  To do that, they have to use the scientific method.

Frankly, i'm sick of the (frequently religion driven) bull**** that often gets spouted in these type of threads (plus, I doubt God or A God or Some Gods would want humanity to be blind and dumb), and which literally threatens the very progression of human knowledge by trying to destroy rational investigation in favour of dogma and assumption. 

It's very clear what the scientific method supports - and the scientists qualified to use it - and where the evidence falls.  That's why every single arguement put against evolution in this thread is either a) a misunderstanding of evolution or b) already researched and countered.  The idea that creationism / ID is in any way 'equal' or a 'competitor' to evolutionary theory (and other science related to the origins of existence) in terms of logic, evidence, etc, is frankly laughable.

Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument, another mutation that would form a beneficial system when combined w/ other changes arrives.  Oops, let's not stretch it and say that it occured in the same organism.  Since the mutation has no immediate benefit, it is eventually discarded by this organism as well.  Even if you had this mutation in the same organism, it's still not beneficial unless combined with 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  So even the organism that "1" occured in would not keep the mutation, assuming "1" was miraculously preserved.

OK, and before anyone jumps in with "mutations don't have to be beneficial to be kept" I am not[/i] saying that the organism says "Is this new mutation beneficial to me now?  If not, I'm chucking it."  What I'm saying is, mutations are 99+% harmful, what's the chances of a soon (sort of) to be beneficial mutation surviving this vicious harful mutation onslaught?  That's not to mention whatever's formed of the poor organism itself.  The chances are almost, actually, probably even are 100% that the poor thing is fried from the get - go.  See, you'd have to have the reproduction system evolved before the first organism ever to have evolved succesfully can pass away and RIP.  Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board.  So forget new "future" beneficial mutations.  This thing can't even reproduce!

I do believe m was giving you the benefit of the doubt, and saying that self-reproducing organisms had somehow miraculously (if you're uncomfortable with that word, find one for me that's not as long as "against all odds") evolved, and is now ready to receive some new beneficial mutations, while hopefully avoiding harmful ones.  Now, if anyone missed it, I do believe the harmful mutations are embodied in the Shivans from m's analogy.

This seems to be falling more than a wee bit back into the same (false) 'part formed lung' type analogy.  Firstly, it's worth mentioning the majority of mutations are neutral, with no expressed affect upon survival chances.  IIRc the average human has about 7 mutations within their DNA.  Also, it's worth noting out the falsehood of the 1234..etc sequence in this analogy.  The classic ID/creationist mistake is assuming that because something works, it can only work in that one way.  Essentially, it's like saying an IKEA table is the only kind of table possible, because you've never seen any other tables (say, one from B&Q).  So when our theoretical number evolution selects '1', it's not because it wants that sequence, it's because 1 is advantageous.  Likewise, 2, 3, 4, etc is advantageous.  And the consequence of that cumulative selection is 1234567689. 

In fact, the analogy gets worse (as you put it), because if 1 alone was not advantageous, it wouldn't be selected. But the value of our 123456789 chain only arises, in reality (i.e. if this was some evolved thing), because it's a cumulation - a product of - these mutant selections.  Numerically, 3678952 or so is just as likely, after all, provided the cumulative selections are beneficial.  It's only a human assignment - attempting to create a false concept of 'chance' - that means we've picked 123456789.

Now, i'll admit we've been sidetracked by looking at how 123456789 could be formed by evolution, because the one thing evolution does not do, is work to a set target or singular 'design'.  So in reality the whole 123456789 analogy is just a demonstration of how progressive selection steps can make something very unlikely looking, a lot less unlikely in actuality.  8923545 could be just as - or more - advantageous, it just depends on what mutations arise for selections.

With regards to reproduction; reproduction does not need to be sexual (i.e. mitosis).  It evolved that way - for large complex lifeforms - because of the obvious advantages through genetic diversity.

One theory, for example, is that sex - on an early life basis - evolved as a consequence of cannibalistic eating; cells do not always consume what they 'engulf', and this is a likely reason for - for example - cells acquiring organelles like mitochondria.  There a myriad of 'quasi-sex' type activities seen by bacteria, such as sharing plastids to partial genetic crossover.  Simple penecillin resistance is a very good example, of course, of evolution through non-sexual reproduction.

Anyways, to briefly step back & recap; as said earlier, most mutations are neutral.  Negative ones are 'rejected' by selection, positive ones selected.  The cumulation of selected mutations create evolution.  The progressive selection of beneficial mutations results in continuous 'improvement' and refinement of an organism, to the extent that they become well adapted to their environment and, to those unaware of the theory, 'designed'.  This end organism - not strictly an end, because evolution and selection pressure/change are constantly convergently evolved Platypus beak design.

Simple enough, surely?

If I'm not mistaken, m is trying to point out the (in my most humble opinion) ridiculous odds that each individual step of an organism evolving would have to overcome, and then, just for the sake of the argument, m is giving evolution the benefit of the doubt, and wondering how even an organism that managed to evolve to a certain level of complexity could manage to survive in such a hospitable place.  (Think of how friendly the conditions on Terra were supposedly ~a few billion years ago when the first proteins/cells had to have emerged.)  I do believe that back then, the ionosphere hadn't been popped into place, or at least wasn't funcioning fully, correct?  The radiation was immense.  While this might make some interesting combinations in the soup, it would even more quickly destroy whatever emerged.

Ah, so we've moved off the topic of evolution and onto abiogenesis now, have we?

They're not ridiculous odds, though, when you think about it.  Even ignoring the infinite universe type theories, all you need it a 1 in, ooh, 1000 billion or so chance to justify it (I think I should've posted earlier a link to an article of probabilities of abiogenesis, no doubt which was left unread).

Anyways, back to life/atmosphere. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9745762&dopt=Abstract
(if anyone has access and can get the full report, please do )

The surface of early Earth was exposed to both UVC radiation (< 280 nm) and higher doses of UVB (280-315 nm) compared with the surface of present day Earth. The degree to which this radiation environment acted as a selection pressure on organisms and biological systems has rarely been theoretically examined with respect to the biologically effective irradiances that ancient organisms would receive. Here action spectra for DNA inactivation and isolated chloroplast inhibition are used to estimate biologically effective irradiances on archean Earth. Comparisons are made with present day Earth. The theoretical estimations on the UV radiation screening required to protect DNA on archean Earth compare well with field and laboratory observations on protection strategies found in present day microbial communities. They suggest that many physical and biological methods may have been effective and would have allowed for the radiation of life even under the high UV radiation regimes of archean Earth. Such strategies would also have provided effective reduction of photoinhibition by UV radiation. The data also suggest that the UV regime on the surface of Mars is not a life limiting factor per se, although other environmental factors such as desiccation and low temperatures may contribute towards the apparent lack of a surface biota.

(of course, define 'emerged'.  Why would a single cellular / proto-life type organism emerge from the primordial soup anyways?  Some would surely stay in....and probably start converting gases.  In fact, I think that's one of the theories for the oxygen increase that took place in the earths atmosphere, I believe hydrogen-oxygen conversion from a 'mat' of primitive early life in the primordial soup)

It strikes me, of course, that a) all these attacks on evolutionary theory so far are pretty much invalid and answered by existing research and b) there has been no attempt to provide an equally plausible, evidenced or simply better explanation for the current complexity of life on earth.  In fact, I'd like to follow Kara in asking for people to actually explain why they are right, rather than launch rather erroneous attacks upon a tried and tested scientific theory.

[Mefustae]

In fact, I'd like to follow Kara in asking for people to actually explain why they are right, rather than launch rather erroneous attacks upon a tried and tested scientific theory.

Indeed. I'll never understand why the hell these people suddenly think they've found a hole in one of the best-supported modern scientific theories, and that they've proven thousands upon thousands of scientists wrong and their own twisted beliefs right.

[Col. Fishguts]

Game. Set. Match. BlackWolf

[Wobble73]

God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, "Lord, we don't
need you anymore.   Science has finally figured out a way  to create life
out of nothing.  In other words, we can now do  what you  did in the
'beginning.'"



"Oh, is that so?  Tell me..." replies God.



"Well, " says the scientist, "we can  take dirt and form it
into the likeness of You and breathe life into  it, thus
creating man."



"Well, that's interesting.  Show  Me."



So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to  mold the soil.



"Oh no, no, no..." interrupts God,


"Get your own  dirt."

All relevant I think?

[aldo_14]

Why?

[Mefustae]

Praytell, why bring up abiogenesis in a thread on evolution?