Evolution (Pls read post â??1â?� b4 posting)

[harris7]

This topic has been brought up several times and I feel that it needs to be looked at in a thread of its own.

I placed it in the spirituality section because this â??debateâ?� is fueled by many religious people.

The reason I created this thread is to facilitate discussion between people like myself, a strong atheist and educated to a high degree in science, and any number of others. Ie, non-scientific, Christians, fundamentalists, atheists and anyone else who is interested.

I have a very strong grasp of evolution from an ecological and genetic background and I have read for hours on the internet trying to find valid criticism of evolution from any background. I have found some but they aren't anything like what I hear on this website or on other websites I have participated in.

One thing that is very important is that Evolution does not conflict with Christianity. As we can see with its acceptance among Christians in Europe for example. To put it simplest for a Christian, evolution was just designed and put into action by God.

I will not and encourage others not to respond to what I refer to as fundamentalist criticisms, such as "evolution could not have occurred because it says in the bible that god created adam and eve".
There is just no point in discussing or even considering these "arguments" because that is just a debate about the bible and god.

The posting of links to another website as your argument, to me, is unacceptable. All this tells me is that you do not understand the argument and you're sending me to go research it for you. But, I wish to encourage the posting of links to verify what you have said and I will try to do this as much as possible.

And similarly making a unverified statement but justifying it by saying "and science has proven it so you cannot dispute it" Is also useless and unacceptable. Because, if you expect me to believe your statement based on that reasoning, you should believe scientists about evolution

Now please post anything about evolution: things that you have been told that discredit or negate it, things you don't understand, things you want to know, things you want others to know or if you disagree with anything I have said or will say.

harris7 Reviewed by harris7 on 10-30-2006. Evolution (Pls read post â??1â?� b4 posting) This topic has been brought up several times and I feel that it needs to be looked at in a thread of its own. I placed it in the spirituality section because this â??debateâ?� is fueled by many religious people. The reason I created this thread is to facilitate discussion between people like myself, a strong atheist and educated to a high degree in science, and any number of others. Ie, non-scientific, Christians, fundamentalists, atheists and anyone else who is interested. I have a Rating: 5

[harris7]

A quick recap of evolution:

Genetics:

Humans have 23 different chromosomes and two of each, so in total 46. For any given trait, for example eye colour, we have a gene which is found on a particular chromosome and since we have two of each we actually have two different locations for this gene (and they are not necessarily the same.) One came from your mom and the other your dad or maybe the mail man.

The different types of this gene, which for eye colour would be brown, blue, green and so on, are called alleles. So gene is the trait we are talking about (ie eye colour) and alleles are the different possibilities (brown). BTW the source of new alleles is random mutation.

Given any population there is a particular frequency of alleles (ie. 30% blue alleles, 60% brown, 10% green). It has been shown that this frequency will not change unless the population is under some sort of pressure (the Hardy-Weinberg Principle 1908)). A pressure could be a lot of things like limited food, predation, space, having limited females and thus competition to mate. Evolutionary pressures are pressures that affect an organism b4 it is able to reproduce, after an organism has reproduced anything that happens to it has no effect on the evolution of its species. This is one school of thought behind all the shitty things that happen to humans now that we are living so long, like osteoporosis.

Now, the allele frequency in a population only changed due to 4 factors:

Natural selection- I’ll get to this
genetic drift- random allele frequency change
gene flow- individuals immigrate into of from a population
Mutation- produces a continuous source of new alleles by defects in transcription or translation of DNA
-All of these change the frequency but only natural selection increases the beneficial allele frequency

Although evolution was posed by many scientists (or natural philosophers as they were known as) Darwin’s contribution was the idea of Natural selection.

Natural Selection is the tendency, when a pressure is applied to a population, for the least adapted to this pressure to reproduce the least and the best adapted to reproduce the most.

Thus if the weakest allele carrying organisms have reproduced less and the strongest allele carrying organisms have reproduced more. Then the frequency of alleles in this population has changed in favor of this beneficial allele!

This is the fundamental step in evolution. (there is still a lot more that I may have to go into)

Now I’m goin to smoke my bong and hopefully someone will have responded

[ate]

Where will evolution take us in the future, and what are the patterns of evolution?

[harris7]

Well I don’t know. Many people think that humans are now “above” evolution because so few die before they reproduce. Also, usually people choose to or not to reproduce which is not natural selection it’s just personal choice. This would also make evolution very slow or stop. Sorry I cant answer your question but I think it’s better I just not answer than make something up

[afghooey]

I think most (though not all) educated religious people today have come to accept the existence of evolution to some degree. This is where the whole microevolution vs. macroevolution debate springs up.

Of course, microevolution can be observed around us every day through genetic mutations. I think macroevolution is what you'll find people debating about, though personally I've found that the 'line' that distinguishes microevolution from macroevolution to be blurry at best.

[harris7]

I have never heard these terms b4 so i assume they were not coined in science. I can assume their meaning and it seems that they are different only by the time frame. it is the same process

[afghooey]

The terms are actually pretty confusing. Yes, 'macroevolution' was coined by creationists, as you might have guessed. Their argument is that small mutations happen over time, but that it only leads to variations among species and not new species altogether (at least this is how it was explained to me). I think this definition has changed since speciation has actually been observed in recent history (source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html), but again all the definitions I've heard on this are pretty fuzzy. It's amazing how people will cling so tenaciously to debunked ideas for the sake of preserving their beliefs.

[afghooey]

Ah... sorry to double post (too late to edit). But to correct myself, the terms 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution' weren't coined by creationists.

The scientific definition of macroevolution is: "...any evolutionary change at or above the level of species."

The scientific definition of microevolution is: "...any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species. It can also apply to changes within species that are not genetic."

(source: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html)

Creationists often assert that "macroevolution" is not proven, even if "microevolution" is, and by this they seem to mean that whatever evolution is observed is microevolution, but the rest is macroevolution.

[harris7]

Yea it is interesting that algae would evolve when it is very well adapted.

It isn’t that it needs or wants to change. This implies purpose. Even though algae is very well adapted as a population, within this population there will be variation and competition. For algae it mostly competes over nutrients and this is why we get a algae boom when there is fert runoff into streams.

So if one algae has a mutation that gives it the ability to get more nutes then it will out compete the others. And it’s genetics will become more prominent in the population.

This is somewhat speculation. I will type something up about how species are created which is probably more relevant that what I just posted.

I am always speculating when we talk about specific examples.
I am also do not have a good grasp of the start of evolution.

I do know that there was an experiment in which two scientists put a bunch of regents that were present in the earth millions of years ago and mimicked the conditions then. Hear low oxygen etc and after a few days they found proteins in the mixture.
So proteins will spontaneously be created, and this is a huge step towards life.

[harris7]

yes, and Darwin's theory doesn't exactly explain what happend/happends. No theory does. His is just pretty close