[Closed] Evolution - I`m not buying it.

You were the candidate that first sprang to mind as it happens.

*waves big banana at TSY* ook xx

My capitalisation is entirely appropriate and correct. Stop trolling

But in relation to understanding what God wants you to do, so that you can be in a relationship with him it is relevant.

Read your bible, go to church, repent and accept Christ as your savior. Start today.

You've already said we're "unable to define the true will of god" yet are now asserting that doing this will tell us what he wants. These things are mutually exclusive, which is it?

Why is sin a prerequisite to acquiring knowledge?

It isn't.

Then how is it relevant?

I asked why god allowed sin, you said "omnipotence" (which explains nothing, incidentally) and when I queried that you said it was because we needed knowledge.

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"trailwagger - Member
OK, first of all this is not a trolling post.

Secondly i understand the theory of evolution (at a basic gcse level)

So let me put some maths to my post.

In terms of mammals, the earliest mammal dates to 200M years ago.

If the average lifespan of a mammal is 10 years then there are

20m generations.

If a genetic mutation/variation occurs every fifth generation thats

4m genetic variations.

Only a certain percentage of those variations would be successful or advantageous, lets say 50%

2m variations.

Is that really enough to allow such a vast array of mammals to exist?"

Every individual who was born in each generation will be genetically different to its parents and to its siblings (unless twins). Your estimated frequency of genetic variation occuring once every 5th generation is woefully underestimating things by orders of magnitude.

Only theory that makes sense to me so far is Intelligent Design. The complexity of life is just so... well, complex that I think there has to be an intelligence behind it.

That is a pretty silly argument. You don't understand how complexity can arise from simplicity, but you choose an answer that raises far more insoluble questions.

Quite! When faced with something which you don't understand, it doesn't mean the answer is 'magic'.

There are many things I don't currently understand, some of them I could understand if I put enough effort into learning/investigating/testing how they worked, others will probably remain a mystery to me. But just because I don't understand it doesn't mean they are inexplicable, or that other people don't understand, nor does it mean that I can put forward an untestable alternative as the explanation and expect it to receive any credibility.

In fact I'd go so far as to say if I do not understand* the explanation put forward by others then I really shouldn't be the one claiming to have the answers...

* for clarity 'do not understand' is different to 'understand but can find fault with the the explanation'

To my knowledge there is no evidence of macro evolution, only tiny interspecies changes.

There's much less evidence of intelligent design.

To my knowledge there is no evidence of macro evolution, only tiny interspecies changes.

Despite all those bones lying around that start looking more and more like human beings physiologically, the more modern they get.

Still waiting for someone to show me how its possible

okay

the moment you have something that can make copies of itself with minor variation (let's call it a replicator) in an environment that varies, you will get more of those replicators whose variations suit them to particular aspects of that environment. Over time different types of replicator will emerge.

My capitalisation is entirely appropriate and correct. Stop trolling

Why, does it annoy you if I write god and/or christ? I think that my non-capitalisation is entirely appropriate and correct too.

You may 'believe' in a god, but there is no evidence to prove its existence. So your belief is not founded on anything substantial.

I don't 'believe' in evolution, but there is a lot of evidence that supports it. So my acceptance of it is based on a whole branch of science with research by many scientists, fossil evidence, etc.

tiny interspecies changes.

Was this meant to read "intraspecies changes"?

Whatever. Pedant points count, and I'm not going to beat the suggestion that reading "the Origin of Species" might help with this one.

I think this thread is pretty good argument for a 21st century program of eugenics - time to design the stupidity out of humans with genetic engineering.

OP :

still waiting for someone to show me how it's possible?

Well, why not show yr hand? (if not trolling)? So tell us how 'it's not possible' according to you, then people can tailor their responses to your existing level of understanding/education. I assume that you wouldn't have the time or inclination to invest a few hrs or more typing out a lengthy comprehensive answer to me if I (for example) asked 'someone convince me of the 'tennis-racket theorum' ? I mean it's just unlikely? Totally spins me out so why can't someone just spend 5 hours educating me?' - when I don't even first exhibit the care or time to specify/detail exactly what about the theorum doesn't make sense to me? See? 😕

time to design the stupidity out of humans with genetic engineering.

oh god, dont get started with the nature/nurture argument as "stupidity/education/reasoned thought process" is very much in that domain.

to be fair though, some of the ramblings and "lalalalala cant hear you" discussions of the creationsit/IDT folks are equivalent to a bonobo finger painting with its own shite

Why didn't everything just evolve into a super-creature that is just 'the best'?

Why haven't we as "intelligent designers", invented a super-bike that is 'the best' for doing cross-country, trials, commuting, leisure cycling, touring the world, towing kids, equally capable of winning the Tour de France and the World Cup Downhill?

Same reason. Niches.

Specialising in a niche is far more successful than trying to be 'the best' at absolutely everything.

That's also why you don't see many sumo wrestlers winning the 100 meters at the Olympics.

Tazzy

Now, geneticist Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health thinks he has the first proof that some part of religious behavior is innate. He spells out his ideas in The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes, a book that was featured on the cover of Time magazine and turned quite a few heads in bookstores.

Hamer claims to have confirmed what James suspected: Although the forms and practices of religion are memetic, a tendency toward religious faith is in our genes.

https://magazine.nd.edu/news/the-genetics-of-belief/

I think I know what I am going to tell my scientists to do when I set up a Technocratic world order. 😛

also niches are temporary, the world we live in is constantly changing, eg climate is dynamic

which is why evolution never ends or reaches a perfect organism

That's also why you don't see many sumo wrestlers winning the 100 meters at the Olympics.

Thank you Graham! I've been wondering about the under-represention of sumo wrestlers in sprint events for YEARS, I thought it was some kind of institutionalised discrimination problem...

[b]To my knowledge[/b] there is no evidence of macro evolution, only tiny interspecies changes.

What evidence is 'missing'? In your knowledge? Like a frogfish? Mudskipper thingummy? Alligatorfish? Unicornape? Worm becoming horse during lunch?

Tom_W1987

its obviously a recessive gene, hence the reason why more evolved folks dont have the need for mystic sky pixies, spiritualism or a particularly friendly oak tree 😀

I sincerely miss Hitchens Tazzy, everything in this thread has already been put to bed by him in a far funnier, more eloquent and amusing way than Dawkins.

I'll leave my favourite here

Well, why not show yr hand? (if not trolling)? So tell us how 'it's not possible' according to you, then people can tailor their responses to your existing level of understanding/education. I assume that you wouldn't have the time or inclination to invest a few hrs or more typing out a lengthy comprehensive answer to me if I (for example) asked 'someone convince me of the 'tennis-racket theorum' ? I mean it's just unlikely? Totally spins me out so why can't someone just spend 5 hours educating me?' - when I don't even first exhibit the care or time to specify/detail exactly what about the theorum doesn't make sense to me? See?

Look, Im at work. I have nothing to do and im bored. I thought i would start a little disscussion on the internet with people ive never met to pass the time. I picked a subject that interests me, but in all honesty i have little oe no time to learn/research/investigate on my own.
I`m not asking for a 5 hour lecture or "free" knowledge without paying tuition fees.
Show me numbers? There must be a probability equation for it... how many times can a species x reproduce and mutate in a given timeframe sort of thing.

I get it at a basic life (single cell etc) level, but once things get more complicated it all seems to slow down to a crawl. Posters are saying about how a single celled organism can change in a lab in a matter of weeks, but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

going back to this...

If the average lifespan of a mammal is 10 years then there are

20m generations.

If a genetic mutation/variation occurs every fifth generation thats

4m genetic variations.

Only a certain percentage of those variations would be successful or advantageous, lets say 50%

2m variations.

Is that really enough to allow such a vast array of mammals to exist?

average mammal generation time of all know 5000+ mammals is 4.3 years, BUT for the majority of life on earth mammals have mostly been much smaller eg mnouse sized so pronbably half that at most likely https://natureconservation.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1343

also mutation rate is much higher eg humans 64 mutations per generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate

so you are actually looking at 128 billion mutations, not 4m million, though actual beneficial fraction of that much smaller, but as our genomes are 3billion bases long.....

either way the observed mammalian mutation rate compares very favourably with the genetic differences we see between species and when we estimate them to have diverged over time, by fossil record
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/2/803.full

but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

Except that they've actually changed quite a lot in that time period. and a million years is a VERY LONG TIME, but simultaneously that time period is a VERY SHORT TIME in geological terms.

You need to 'think bigger'.

EDIT - humans are terrible at perceiving time, [url= https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html ]have a look here[/url] for an amusing and accessible take on things.

Posters are saying about how a single celled organism can change in a lab in a matter of weeks, but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

You are still getting your timescales wrong despite being corrected on this thread. It's almost like you don't want to learn.

And yeah, humans haven't changed at all in the last million years. 🙄

Posters are saying about how a single celled organism can change in a lab in a matter of weeks, but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years

we absolutely are constantly evolving, a single base pair mutation can have a huge effect on fitness & has been shown to completely change our society, lifespan, infant mortality, environment eg dairy farming,

https://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471

8000 years ago no adult on earth could drink milk in adulthood.....
then 1 man had a 1 base pair mutation, and it spread
today....

[img] [/img]

fascinatingly it looks like the guy may have also taken his cow with him as cow genomes point to a common ancestor around that time!

average mammal generation time of all know 5000+ mammals is 4.3 years, BUT for the majority of life on earth mammals have mostly been much smaller eg mnouse sized so pronbably half that at most likel https://natureconservation.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1343
also mutation rate is much higher eg humans 64 mutations per generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate

so you are actually looking at 128 billion mutations, not 4m million, though actual beneficial fraction of that much smaller, but as our genomes are 3billion bases long.....

either way the observed mammalian mutation rate compares very favourably with the genetic differences we see between species and when we estimate them to have diverged over time, by fossil record
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/2/803.full

Thank you, a sensible answer to a simple question, at last.

but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

Well we developed different races. But evolution needs a driver. Otherwise, random mutations just get lost. Homo Sapiens evolved into a form that was pretty good at surviving and reproducing. There are loads of genetic variations - tall people and short people for example. But because we developed a social system there's no advantage for tall people so they remain outliers.

Unless you live on a small island, for example, and you might evolve a different kind of human such as Homo Florensis. Or if you lived in some cold climate without so much clothing tech, you might evolve into a tougher shape such as Homo Neantherthalensis.

It's all there - you just don't know about it.

I get it at a basic life (single cell etc) level, but once things get more complicated it all seems to slow down to a crawl. Posters are saying about how a single celled organism can change in a lab in a matter of weeks, but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

Your cells can evolve in a matter of years.

You go out in the sun, you mutate one too many genes and you get cancer. Those cancer cells are hyper competitive and essentially trying to out compete the rest of the cells in your body.

Secondly, mutations can randomly appear in new borns - they do not have to be passed on. It stands to reason that sometimes those mutations have beneficial effects.

And humans have changed quite a lot in a few hundreds of thousands of years - we just haven't got to the point where we have speciated. That big **** off nose on westerners, designed to cool cold air before it hits the lungs and triggers pneumonia. Africans....get sickle cell anaemia at a rate vastly greater than the rest of the world - but they also have an innate resistance to Malaria because of it. Due to migration and air travel we will probably never speciate - unless we become a space fairing species.

You've already said we're "unable to define the true will of god" yet are now asserting that doing this will tell us what he wants. These things are mutually exclusive, which is it?

Please don't be deliberately obtuse. You asked how you can comprehend what God desires of you and I answered you. That doesn't translate into being able to completely define the true will of God.

Then how is it relevant?

It was relevant to the original question I answered, you're the one who asked me why God allowed it to enter the world

I asked why god allowed sin, you said "omnipotence" (which explains nothing, incidentally) and when I queried that you said it was because we needed knowledge.

Omnipotence means among other things, divine right. Making it a perfectly reasonable explanation. You are expecting a logical answer on your own terms, of the divine.

I get it at a basic life (single cell etc) level, but once things get more complicated it all seems to slow down to a crawl. Posters are saying about how a single celled organism can change in a lab in a matter of weeks, but humans have change very little in thousands if not millions of years.

Human generation time ~20yrs. Bog-basic yeast ~2hrs. [i]E.coli[/i] ~20mins.
That's why there's such a huge difference in how long things take for humans to change in comparison.
Beyond that the mechanism is largely the same. As above, think bigger. 20 years is still sod all once you get beyond an understandably human comprehension of time being based on a human lifespan.

As above, think bigger. 20 years is still sod all once you get beyond an understandably human comprehension of time being based on a human lifespan.

After all it's only 40 human lifetimes since a carpenter got nailed to a cross for telling people to be nice to each other.

the real trouble is OP is not alone 🙁

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Human generation time ~20yrs. Bog-basic yeast ~2hrs. E.coli ~20mins.
That's why there's such a huge difference in how long things take for humans to change in comparison.
Beyond that the mechanism is largely the same. As above, think bigger. 20 years is still sod all once you get beyond an understandably human comprehension of time being based on a human lifespan.

But thats my point, it takes such a long time for significant change once you get to a certain level.
Homo has been around for 2.8million years according to wikipedia. In that time it has changed shape/height/proportions etc but essentially looks very similar to modern man. They all have two eyes, two legs, two arms, a heart, a capillary system etc etc. In 2.8 million years!

But thats my point, it takes such a long time for significant change once you get to a certain level.
Homo has been around for 2.8million years according to wikipedia. In that time it has changed shape/height/proportions etc but essentially looks very similar to modern man. They all have two eyes, two legs, two arms, a heart, a capillary system etc etc. [b]In 2.8 million years![/b]

Have you had a look at the link I posted earlier about putting time in perspective? Please I urge you to have read, not only is it enlightening it's quite good fun as articles of that nature go 🙂

([url= https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html ]link here again in case you did miss it[/url])

The issue here is not evolution and how long it takes, the issue is your conceptualisation of time.

going from H. habilis to H. sapiens in less than 3 million years seems amazingly fast to me...

So this god could make us all but was [u]not able [/u]to tick that last little simple box of 'make my people able to understand the concept of me without question and to know why they exist' and instead makes us all have to scrabble around to try to understand why we exist and grasp at having a belief in the existence of a god despite not having a single shred of tangible proof when there is so much scientific proof of an alternative theory as to how we came to be in existence.

Not, not able. Faith is the evidence of things unseen. If God turned up right in front of you with a big beard and a commanding voice and demanded you wouldn't really have much choice in whether you belived in him or not.

This way you have free will, free will is critical here. But I assume you get that based on your tone.

[b] looks[/b] very similar to modern man. They all have two eyes, two legs, two arms, a heart, a capillary system etc etc. In 2.8 million years!

thats why things like skin colour are such a poor indicator of race

in that time 60 million base pairs could have changed between them & us

only a fraction of that results in functional changes, just because we appear similar does not mean that we are genetically,
not to mention that we have been breeding with Neanderthal, Dinisovans, Hobbits? & other unknown but measurable contributors to our genomes in that time!

then thanks for free will I did as you asked not leave me alone please great designer

That's also why you don't see many sumo wrestlers winning the 100 meters at the Olympics.

I bet this is not even the simplest thing you have ever had to explain on the internet 😉

there are only two reasons to not accept evolution on current known facts

1. you are religious and you dont need facts

2. you are incredibly stupid

Neither option makes me wish to try to persuade anyone of this [ it wont work anyway] anymore than I wish to persuade someone the sun will rise tomorrow

Evolution has been proved. It's been observed in many animals and organisms with much shorter lifespans than us. It's the mechanism by how superbugs have EVOLVED to be resistant to anti-biotics. Why we need a flu jab every year because the flu EVOLVES every year, same with Malaria which is estimated to have killed half of the people who have ever lived.
Not sure humans are 'evolving' any more. Not is the same sence as we think of it. Evolution is all about survival of the fittest that drives/filters out very specific traits that increase the likelihood of the animals survival long enough to mate and pass on its genes. But in humans traits no longer improve our chances of mating. Ugly people can mate now, disabled people also pass their genes on etc. So we might be changing, but the changes are no longer improving the ability of our species to survive the environment we live in.

The problem with the maths at the top of this page (or the previous one if I've rolled over onto another page) is that is looks at one genetic strain. In reality there are billions of individuals all over the world, so billions of genetic strains all evolving simultaniously to survive different threats from their very different and diverse environments hence the reason for diversity. The maths is simply several thousands of orders of magnitude out.

This way you have free will, free will is critical here. But I assume you get that based on your tone.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/

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Sweet! We've already reached the posting of graphs phase.

But thats my point, it takes such a long time for significant change once you get to a certain level.
Homo has been around for 2.8million years according to wikipedia. In that time it has changed shape/height/proportions etc but essentially looks very similar to modern man. They all have two eyes, two legs, two arms, a heart, a capillary system etc etc. In 2.8 million years!

So what's your point exactly?
2.8 million years is nothing in terms of the Earth's evolutionary history. How much change would you have expected to see in that timespan? It's barely 5 years in [i]E.coli[/i] terms and I wouldn't expect to be able to complete a separate speciation under lab conditions in that period, but I could give you some very interesting biochemical adaptations to varying conditions, much like ^ described up there.

The example of dogs mentioned very early is a good one to try and bridge the gap between single-cells and multicellular organisms. Intensive selective breeding has produced hundreds of vastly different breeds (not species, note) in 10,000 or so years, not overnight. And also note that they have two eyes, four legs (so two arms and two legs), a heart, capillary system etc. pretty much identical to ours...
The building blocks are all there, it's only fine details which need to change.

Like I asked earlier, what do you actually want to know in terms of how it's possible? More likely, how much do you want to go out and learn about it, we can give you as in-depth an answer as you like, so long as you're willing to try and understand it. No offence meant but I'm keeping it at 8-year old level here.

Tom_W1987 - Member

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/ <

You only think you decided to post that, but it's just your brain playing a trick on you