6/9 To those people who don't believe that "evolution is set in stone,"
what exactly is it that you don't "believe"? Evolution through natural
selection is a process, much like how a quicksort would work. What
arguments would you have against evolution? I find it puzzling that
people would accept that a quicksort would work without question but
question naturally selective [formatd. learn 80 columns]
\_ I personally find 'macro-evolution' if not necessarily 'wrong,'
then extremely counterintuitive. My main problem is the origin
of bacterial life, which, as people below noted, is not evolution's
department per se. -- ilyas
\_ quicksort-- seeing is believing. You can observe quicksort and
see that the algorithm works by trial and error, and by induction,
proof, etc. Evolution-- can't observe it. You can make convincing
arguments based on solid facts and theory, and you can prove
it via small examples (British butterfly evolve to match the
color of the pollution) but you can't prove the entire history
of evolution, and you certainly can't prove it by via induction
or any other method.
\_ I believe you can evolve to using 80 character columns.
genetic algorithms. -williamc
\_ Your rationale is terribly flawed. One can say the same thing
about physics. Just because we have done a lot of experiments
proving that there is a gravitational constant doesn't mean
that G is the same everywhere if we were to follow that line
of thinking. The same can be said for quicksort, you have a
certain "faith" in your inductive process that it works. If
you posit that your inductive method for mathematically proving
quicksort works is valid you have to give the same credence
to something like a genetic algorithm, which has been also
mathematically proven. If that's the case then you
will have to agree that inductively we can apply
such an algorithm to biology. If biology were to follow
a quicksort algorithm vs. that of a genetic algorithm
then you would have to come to the conclusion evolution
occurs through quicksort. There is ample evidence that
biology follows a genetic algorithm, and you can actually
observe evolution at work on a small scale on a daily basis.
In fact, we use it everyday in recombinant DNA and in dog
breeding. There is also unequivocal evidence that all
life forms of significance pass their genes to subsequent
generation. In other words, the only way you can "doubt" that
evolution occurs through the process of genetic algorithms is if
you A) Reject inheritable traits B) reject the concept that things
change over time (in other words evolution) C) Reject the cellular
you A) Reject inheritable traits B) reject the concept that things
change over time (in other words evolution) C) Reject the cellular
basis for life D) Reject genetic algorithms as a valid algorithm.
In addition if you follow the conventional wisdom of
"seeing is believing" then I suppose you believe in magic,
little green men from mars, and that hobbits really do exist on
Middle Earth. -williamc
\_ I think that science and belief are simply independent.
Most of the scientists I know (including me, probably) have
at least one kooky belief within the realm of the unproven
and non-disproven. How is believing in hobbits going to
stop me from advancing science by, say, trying to measure
k_B better?
\_ It's not, until you start demanding that we teach hobbits
to 6th graders, to the exclusion of real science.
\_ I suppose that someone could decide that evolution happens
but reject the idea that a new species can occur, i.e. lose
the ability to interbreed... but this is a stupid notion
because there is evidence and observation of this too.
\_ The arguments I've heard is that there are two things:
micro-evolution and macro-evolution. micro-evolution is
accepted by all scientists but not macro-evolution. There
is also the question of why we aren't seeing a continuous
spectrum of living things as opposed to say lion and leopard,
evolution is supposed to happen through these accumulated
tiny genetic changes, but why does it often result in these
very distinctive species? I read some answer somewhere
but it wasn't very convincing at all.
\_ It looks like you're looking for an explanation of
"speciation". I think the accepted argument is that if
you start with a homogenous population, and provide 2
different ecological niches (either habitats, food sources
or lifestyles). Members of the homogenous population will
go into one niche or the other. Animals in niche 1 will
tend to interbreed with others in niche 1 and will have
fewer chances to breed with those in niche 2. If an
adaptation favorable to those in niche 1 occurs, it will
spread throughout animals in niche 1 due to "survival of
the fittest". That adaptation will not have much chance to
spread to niche 2 because of limited interbreeding, and the
adaptation might be unfavorable to those living in niche 2.
As animals in the different niches accumulate more
different changes, they become less likely (or able) to
interbreed, and so the rate of differentiation accelerates.
\_ A similar problem appears in the fossil record.
Basically, you don't see slow changes though history,
you see large sudden changes. For example, For
millions of years you have fossils of the same kinds
of fish. Then, all of a sudden, all those fish are
gone, and it's a completely new set of fish in the
record.
\_ You can selectively breed a hairless chihuahua from a
wolf in under 10,000 years.
\_ I heard that's more because of some unique
characteristic of dogs than anything else.
all cats look more or less the same for example.
\_ Do tell...
\_ don't remember. heard from a friend.
something to do with the unique way dogs grow
such that one can arrest their growth, thus
making dogs like chihuahua, which essentially
never grew up.
\_ The fossil record has a relatively coarse time
resolution. If there was some event to cause a major
change in climate/habitat/food sources, it might cause
everything to evolve to adapt or die out within only
a few hundreds or thousands of generations, but for
most animals, that would mean completely new species
appear in only 10-100 thousand years. The fossil record
would completele miss that change unless it was fairly
recent. After all, maybe only 1 in a million animals
get fossilized.
\_ All correct, but in order to adapt, you either
need a whole lot of mutation, or the genes have
to already exist. (As in the London moth case.)
This evolution seems to be happening on a much
larger scale, and faster than predicted.
\_ In just a few decades a Soviet scientist trying to
breed less viscous minks created a breed that has
floppy ears, spotted coats and 'barks'; 3 things
never seen in wild minks. Where did these new
genes come from? It turned out they were all side
effects of having the adrenaline system become
underactive. Turning one gene off produced a wide
range of seemingly unrelated effects.
\_ The whole debate about any scientific theory being "set in stone"
or a matter of belief is a reflection of both sides' lack of
understanding of science or of what the point of science education
is. The loudest people on both sides of this issue are generally
not scientists...besides, given that only about a week of a
typical yearlong course on biology is devoted to evolution,
and that it's not really important to major political issues
or technology, it's unclear to me why people care so much.
\_ natural selection has huge consequences for technology as well
as implications for politics. http://www.nonzero.org evolution
is a powerful model.
\_ Why bother to find out? It's already set in stone. Whether you
understand it or not is predetermined. You either do, or you don't.
\_ how about asking this question to the undergrads at Texas,
Tennessee, and South Carolina? Soda is not exactly the right
place to ask this question. Also, learn to obey 80 columns!!!
\_ Learn to not be so annally retentive.
\_ I think that creationists (some anyway) accept natural
selection. They can understand how one species can acquire
traits that eventually turn it into another. The issue is
whether an amoeba can turn into an elephant. That process is
not clear at all. Worse still, how can a soup of primordial
chemicals turn into the amoeba to begin with?
\_ Creationists don't even bother to learn what they're arguing
against. Is it easier to start from fish? How about fish to
elephants? Evolution (genetic processes) isn't incompatible
with an idea of a more limited creation.
\_ I view it as not more limited, but more elegant.
\_ Evolution doesn't explain how primordial chemicals turn into
amoeba nor does it say that it's not possible for God to
have created the first amoebas from which everything else
evolved. Why can't people just accept that the Bible or
any religion for that matter are all human constructs?
--jeffwong
\_ You are both describing "scientific creationism" which
sounds reasonable but which is rejected by science simply
because science often despises religion. Evolution is a
gospel to some.
\_ Science seeks to explain phenomena through verifiable
facts. Since a true "act of God" is not a testable
hypothesis, it is almost by definition outside of science.
For a field of science to include as a premise an act of
God is essentially to hang the whole logical construct on
an unverifiable assumption. It would be like a theorem
in math saying "1+1=2, except when God changes it."
\_ It is more philosophy than science, but rather than
allowing for the possibility that evolution did not
create all life as we know it it is taken as fact.
1+1=2 for given assumptions. Evolution is just a
theory.
\_ I asked God. He proved to me scientifically that he
created both the amoeba and the elephant. Adam named
them, though. God wasn't much on naming things after
the first few days.
\_ Two kinds of scientific creationism: 1) God created all
of this through the engine of natural selection; works
because the acceptance of God as creator does not impede
accepting the most rational explanation, but simply adds
a layer of faith the to mix. 2) God created all of this
as described in the Bible, subject to a few tricks of
physics but without resorting to evolution; doesn't work
because it requires the substitiution of faith for good
old scientific reasoning. The latter tends to get scoffed
at by scientists; the former tends to be incomprehensible
to atheist scientists but doesn't elucidate the same sense
of scorn. |