Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Time For Class Proving Evolution

He's expressing a tiny minority opinion.

That's the point. We're apes too, zoologically speaking. If an alien zoologist came to earth, he'd instantly classify us as a genus of ape, right along with [bleep], gorillas, and orangutans.

Scientifically, 1925 was a very long time ago.

We didn't evolve from neanderthals, but both homo sapiens and neanderthals shared the common ancestor homo erectus.

I think the bacteria example was pretty good. A lot of the snark that followed goes against the rules. You have to have certain conditions for evolution to take place... or it isn't evolution.

The lions of the Ngorongoro Crater have shorter manes than their counterparts outside the Crater. Is this evolution?

They have a population of animals.
You have small variations among it's members.
They have geographic isolation.
They have a dominant trait that is different from the surrounding lions.


No, it isn't because it is not advantageous for the lions to have short manes. It's from inbreeding!


How about this one...

Gypsy moths live in birch forests. They are brown and white. There are many, many white moths and just a few brown ones. In this area, over a few short years, many factories open up and they burn lots of coal. The soot stains the birch forests brown. Over a few short years, virtually all the gypsy moths in the area are now brown. Is this evolution?

You have a population of animals.
You have variation among the individuals.
You have geographic isolation of the population.
You have a dominant trait that was recessive earlier in the population.


Yes it is, because you have an advantage to being brown in a brown forest. Birds won't see you and eat you. You pass on the favorable trait to your offspring and so on. Since generation time in insects is short, the trait emerges in the population.

Not ordinarily. Both humans and australopithecus had/have their spines join their skulls from directly underneath, thus facilitating bipedal locomotion, while modern apes have their spines join their skulls from the back, thus facilitating quadrupedal locomotion.Yep. Makes sense since it became geographically isolated during the period when flightless birds were having their heyday across the globe as apex land predators, filling the gap left by the extinction of the carnivorous dinosaurs. Same with Australia, which is also chock full of marsupial mammals for the same reason, i.e., that was the "state of the art" mammal when that land mass became isolated from the rest of the world.

[quote=The_Real_HawkeyeHe's expressing a tiny minority opinion. [/quote]

Opinions? I thought all of this was science to the extent that it proves all things.

Besides, it wasn't totally his own, I don't think, judging from the references.

You didn't really answer the other 2, but I think you attempted in another post. I doubt you read my original post on regarding Neand. and Austr....

Another misconception on your part. Science deals in prevailing theories, not so much proofs. The prevailing unifying theory of biology is evolution. It's considered on par among scientists with, for example, the theories of gravitation and heliocentrism.

Actually, he (the author) is another creation-science nutjob that is looking to make a buck in niche market books

Not sure that's true. But regardless, I don't think it was his opinion alone. There are 2 evolutionary schools. Here's a description of both and why theropod ancestry has it's opponents.

http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=16&id=161

Steve
See http://www.csm.org.uk/news.php?viewmessage=165

But as to the 2 schools, there is a large school that think birds evolved from dinos, and there is a much smaller school that think they evolved from a crocadilian lineage. The latter is championed by Larry Martin at U. Kansas, but be that as it may, no evolutionary biologist believes birds are divine creations created by a supernatural spirit in the present form. None.

Sounds about right.

Not really sure I've ever seen or known any evolutionary biologist that believes in divine creations, but ok.

Not what I expected in the way of your link either...lol.

Martin was one of them, but who are the other 3 guys, Ruben, Hinchliffe and Feduccia? I think all of them are evolutionary biologists as well, are they not? I tried the links to the Feduccia's name, but it didn't connect to anything. Their contention is on bone structure, if I'm reading that correctly.

There was another difference with respect to lung development by Ruben highlighting the incongruities between the modern bird and theropods.



But you know evolution. Nothing evolves faster than it's theories.

Don't know the other guys, but I know Larry.

They are in a very small minority. They are not creationists period. They are debating a relative detail of how evolution happened in this particular instance NOT whether evolution happened.

I was pretty sure they aren't creationists. Being in the minority doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong. Most scientists don't specialize in the same field as they do and so for the majority to adopt the status quo is understandable until such time something better comes along.

You might be able to help me on the question regarding the primordial soup and how life first came into existence though according to evolutionary theory. So far the answers I've rec'd are either dead silence, or God did it, which BTW, not to be a name dropper, came from TRH.

I know that single cells have been produced in the lab, but they started with DNA strands from bacteria. Here, we don't have that since the nucleic acids have to form to develop the first cell.

Questions are: 1. Where did organic matter (a.k.a. primordial soup) come from out of a mass of igneous rock and water? And 2. How did the first cell form out of that mess?

Internet searches have been nauseating on this subject.

Steven,
I can't help much on the origin of the first cells - and before there were cells, there must have been self-replicating molecules. But I don't follow that stuff at all. I could look in a few texts. I would suggest Doug Futyuma's Evolution, but I really don't know what it says about such early stuff. Few folks work on that very specialized problem, and I don't know them.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Douglas-J-Futuyma/dp/0878931872

Thanks Brent.

Somewhere in the 60's they thought they could replicate life in the lab within 10 yrs. Turned out to be somewhat more complex than they thought.

I'll see if I can check out that reference.

Steven, back in the 60s and 70s, as I recall (maybe poorly) they were close but using conditions that, upon further review, seemed unlikely to occur on Primordial Earth. So, correcting for that (or even figuring out what that is) has been at least a significant part of the challenge - but like I said, I'm not at all close to that stuff and I don't know anyone that is.

The reason no one works on that "specialized problem", is it's a good way to produce nothing meaningful research-wise, sort of like trying to spin straw into gold. Those with the cell-science background to actually try it know that is Alchemy 2.0. Were talkin' INSTANT Nobel for anyone who can pull it off.

Self-replicating molecules? You mean viruses? But wait, viruses have to have cells to invade and hijack their cellular machinery to reproduce. Who'da thunk it? That "irreducibly complex" argument keeps sticking it's big azz right in your face, don't it?

No, not really. Some stuff is just tough to work out. Big deal. It will happen one day and I'm sure a Nobel will result from it too. Just a matter of when, not if.

Meanwhile, the process of evolution marches on and on and you still haven't figured it out.

By the way, you haven't answered my questions yet have you?

Well, let's spell them out.
1. Do you BELIEVE in genes that are inherited?
2. Do you BELIEVE that genes vary among individuals?

If yes to both of the above, then
3. How do you propose that evolution is PREVENTED from happening? Please detail this explicitly.

First off, you never asked me anything Dude.

1 & 2, yes of course. #3 That's TFE, once the genetic code in most any critter deviates from it's norm the critter becomes unable to reproduce. Ever been to a [bleep] mule farm? Don't post some bullschit answer demanding proof. If I'm FOS, YOU post exactly why.