Darwin's ideas do explain?

anonymous

2009-07-27 22:40:59 UTC

Darwin had made the theory so that he can try to find out how he got here and how life works over a period of time, but i dont believe evolution or any of that stuff, i believe creation. its too impossibel for nothing to create everything perfectly. thats like a f5 tornado going into a junk yard and making a brand new invented jet. thats too stupid. and there is a better chance of christ being true then evolution and the big bang theory. it was calculated that christs chances are higher what higher and that the bible has too much proof in history. no one can disprove it they tried but failed and become christians. Darwin simply believes the big bandg theory which means everything was made from nothing but a big explosion. how dumb is that. something had to make the explosion if anytrhing. and that still doesnt explain how perfectly we where made/ and we where made to reproduce think about this stuff, theres no way in hell darwin is correct. i read on something like he become christian when he was dying so he must have known he was wrong.

♥

2009-07-27 22:59:39 UTC

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Well actually..it hasn't been demonstrated yet and i don't think it ever could be.. thats just silly.. organs don't come out of nowhere.. little changes over time add up to big morphological differences.. its cumulative change. thats how complex structures like the brain, heart, lungs evolved in increments from much simpler versions that performed the same basic function.

"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."

This comment is taken totally out of context.. Darwin was just saying that the complex human eye didn't just appear. it happened in gradual increments. the simplest and first eyes were light-sensitive photoreceptor cells. which enabled an organism to tell the difference between light and dark. then other more complex eye types evolved from this, like a pinhole camera type eye without a lens, then eyes with primitive lenses, and then complex eyes with a cornea, lens and retina.

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."

Darwin wrote the origin of species in the 1800s, since then palaeontologists have found fossils of lots of transitional forms that link ancient organsims to modern species..the fossil record is incomplete because fossililzation is a complex process.. it takes a lot of luck to make a fossil.. many fossils are destroyed by geologic processes.. only species with hard shells or skeletons can be fossilized.. even with all these limitations the fossil record is evidence for evolution, not against.

?

2009-07-27 22:39:34 UTC

On the origin of species was first published 150 years ago. Many if not all of the problems Darwin couldn't explain are now very well understood.

EDIT: I see you are not getting answers you agree with, and are still strugiling with the concept of evolution. Here's a metaphore which may help. Suppose all people at first spoke only one language and lived in only one country. Then someone said " let's go see what's past those mountains". And another said "let's go see what's accross the water'. And another said "let's go see what's accross the desert?" So they all go their seperate ways. The one's who went past the mountains found more mountains but also plenty of wild game. So they decided to stay. They had to invent many new words for the new things they found. Their bodys adapted to the cold and the thin air by growing robust the length of the femer shortend to make climing more efficient etc. etc. You see they all changed in different ways and began speaking in languages seemingly completly different. But along comes a linguist and studies these different languages for many years and studies each of their ancient texts and he starts to see some patterns... more study...more paterns until one day after many years he can prove without a doubt that these three different people once spoke the same language and all came from the same country. Get it? I hope this was helpful.

EDIT: I read your best answer pick and your coments and I can tell you are very passionate on this issue. But I must tell you before you go making arguments with people on this issue you should seriously study it a bit more. I'm not trying to be mean but truly their is no argument. Real scientists won't waste their time on this. The understanding of evolution and genetics has advanced so quickly in the past decade that not only do they know precisely (in some cases) what genes are responsible for which evolutionary steps but the are actually reverse engenering birds into dinasours. They are acctually doing this right now. One coment on one of your questions said, something like " It's easier for them to believe that we all came from primordial ooze than to believe that God created the world". Sorry i'm looking for a quote from Darwin but I can't find it right now I'll edit if I do.

Yes they are still human the metaphore was to show how they could appear and sound different. Just like birds or insects or any other type of creature who separate and adapt to different environments. Depending on you beliefs you might agree that some spieces have had a much, much longer time than humans to do this. If NASA has it's way, humans will begin to collonize and become permanant residents mars in the not so distant future. The radically different environment will either whipe out this colony or humans will adapt and will change very rapidly (Who knows exctly how long) Into something not quite human or at least makedly different from earthlings.

Weise Ente

2009-07-27 23:31:41 UTC

You never read the book you are quoting. If you did, you are a liar.

Your first two quotes are from Darwin setting up a rhetorical argument. He knows what objection people are going to use, so he defuses it immediately, but only if you actually READ the next paragraph, he outlines a very plausible way the eye could evolve:

"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power always intently watching each slight accidental alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully selecting each alteration which, under varied circumstances, may in any way, or in any degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; and each to be preserved till a better be produced, and then the old ones to be destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions on millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"

Just looking at living animals, it is quite clear the path a photosensitive patch could become an eye. Genetics happens to support this.

And for your third quote, you are just ignoring the 150 years of fossils found later. When that book was published, paleontology was new, but Darwin was vindicated within his lifetime.

Archeopteryx. It's a feathered, flying dinosaur, originally mistaken for a Compsognathus. Clearly a primitive bird. A perfect transitional fossil. There are of course thousands other found since.

Your flagella argument was destroyed in open court. I suggest you not use it.

Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. The mechanisms that can enact this change are Darwinian natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, and artificial selection. These forces act upon random mutations.

The consequence of this is that overtime a divided population can diverge and become distinct species.

This explains the diversity of life on this planet. All living organisms happen to share a common ancestor.

The funny part is the only thing people have problems with is common descent. Everything else they can live with. Of course common descent is far older than Darwin. Not only that natural selection was essentially ditched for a few decades before genetics was discovered. Common descent on the other hand was unanimously supported, and still is.

Given the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution and common descent, the only recourse creationists have is lying..

Edit: No, I can support my claim with evidence. They really are lying scum. For example, you quote mined Darwin. Either you or whoever you got it from lied. At some point willful deception was required. All creationist claims can be traced to some form of dishonesty. It is not libel when it is true.

The flagella is no different. The man who first used the bacterial flagella was named Michael Behe. He would be an 'evolutionist' by you standards as he accepts common descent. He also was embarrassed in open court during the Dover trial when he was presented with a stack of papers about the evolution of his irreducibly complex systems.

He was wrong.

x3floridagurl3x

2009-07-27 22:57:39 UTC

Darwin was a naturalist on the Beagle and he traveled around the world and noticed that how species different in different areas and how closer places has more similar looking species. For example, species in south america were more similar to other species in south america than they were to Europe and now fossils of South America resembled the species that were currently present in South America...From that he started researching more and more...then finally published his theory

His general conclusions were that populations can change and adapt over time and that populations become so distinct that they become different species

Evolution is based on natural selection, those that are more fit in an environment survive longer and can pass on their genes

Evolution usually occurs over long periods of time but in some cases it has happen over short period of time...most well known being the beak sizes in Galapagos finches

Other evidence for evolution includes

Taxonomy, Comparative anatomy & anatomy, and molecular biology (such as similar DNA)

gribbling

2009-07-28 01:38:02 UTC

> "Darwin breaks down his own theory in the same book. Flagellum is another logical answer of something that is irreducibly complex."

Actually, the examples you city don't hold-up, because examples of eyes in reducing levels of complexity *do* exist in nature, showing how the vertebrate eye could have evolved.

The eye, and the bacterial flagellum, are examples of what is suggested to be "Irreducible Complexity".

But IC doesn't work for several reasons:

IC is an "argument from personal incredulity"; essentially, it says "I don't understand how [feature X] evolved, therefore no-one will ever understand how [feature X] evolved; therefore it didn't evolve."

When phrased like that, you can see how all it does is demonstrate a colossal intellectual arrogance (as it assumes that just because *you* don't understand something, no-one ever will), and a lack of imagination (because every feature so far proposed as IC has been shown to not be).

The bacterial flagellum evolved from the Type III secretion system, the eye evolved in a stepwise manner from a photosensitive eyespot, to a cup-eye, to a pinhole camera eye, to a simple lens/retina system, to the vertebrate eye (examples of all of which still exist today).

Furthermore, the idea of "evolutionary scaffolding" totally refutes the IC argument: there could have been other features once neccessary to the operation of the system, which have now been removed because they are no longer neccessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

> "So please if somebody could tell me what Darwin believes and what evolution states today, after its numerous changes, enlighten me."

FWIW Darwin is dead, so he doesn't believe anything any more. Evolutionary biology today states the points I have given above, and it has actually undergone very little change since Darwin originally proposed his theory, 150 years ago (the conflation of the science of genetics to form the "modern synthesis", and the recognition of the importance of non-selective change, or "genetic drift" being the two exceptions).

> "Do not tell me you are a Ph.D Bio Chem Bachelor of Science Major or that I am scientifically illiterate."

OK. I won't list my scientific credentials; but I'm afraid that your answer does indeed demonstrate a degree of scientific (and philosophical) illiteracy. Arguments from Personal Incredulity are a logical fallacy, and do not hold under any circumstances; this is not an ad hominem attack on you, it is a simple statement of fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_personal_incredulity

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Edit:

> "There is a biologist who has studied the flagellum for 20 years, who was once an evolutionist."

[1] The flagellum IC issue has been addressed.

[2] and without a direct citation, how are we supposed to counter this point in more detail: who was this biologist? Where are the papers on the impossibility of evolution he has published?

> "Also how does evolution account for emotions."

As a more rapid (if less rational) method of decision-making than rational thought. Evolutionarily advantageous.

> "And tastebuds."

??? Chemoperception is found in all organisms, including bacteria. What makes you think evolution can't explain it?

> "A lot of people tell me evolution is a lot of random mutations."

Perhaps so - but no *scientist* would ever tell you this. Evolution is *selection* due to differential reproductive success, and reproduction with heredity. *not* "random mutations".

> "And how we don't have humans born with blue, pink, purple, green, or red skin."

Firstly, humans do have pink skin (if they are caucasian). And none of the other colours are evolutionarily advantageous to humans.

> "Or with wings, because you know if we all came from the same thing just mutated, the genetic makeup for wings should be present in humans too."

No. None of the ancestor species of humans had wings - so the genes should not be present.

Also, being an intelligent, bipedal, tool- and language-using ape is pretty incompatible with wings: we are too heavy, and flying uses up too much energy (which is currently required by our large brains). It's a choice between brains and wings - and we went down the brains route.

> "And I'm not trying to insult you but use more credible sources than wikipedia, the University I attend would flunk you for using that as a source."

Well it's a good job this isn't a final paper or a research project. I already have all the qualifications I require, thanks - and the wikipedia pages I have cited all reference credible sources; they just gather them all together in one place, making citation easier.

> "saying Creationists are lying is a childish argument in an otherwise methodical argument. There is no way of proving Creationists are lying."

I'm sorry - but do you know what "quote mining" is ("a logical fallacy and type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning")? Look it up WRT creationist arguments and then retract your statement.

> "So do not slander other people."

Firstly, if it's written down (like this), it's libel, not slander.

Secondly, it's only libel (or slander) if it's untrue.

> “The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid.” [Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process. San Francisco: W. M. Freeman & Co., 1979, p. 39.]"

Indeed. Steven M. Stanley is arguing for the *punctuated equilibrium* model of evolution and against phyletic gradualism. e is *not* arguing against evolution itself.

This is a prime example of the aforementioned quote mining.

Dr. Collin Patterson once said:

"I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them … . I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

This quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland, and is referring to Dr. Patterson's book "Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.). Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms. For example:

"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs, and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."

Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with: "Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

In other words - another prime example of quote mining.

Since I doubt that you have personally read any of Dr. Patterson's correspondence, I conclude that you have obtained this quotation from a creationist (and hence dishonest) website.

> "Evolution would say that all of these people are different species."

Only if they could no longer successfully interbreed.

> "But would you agree that they are still humans, who adapted to their environment?"

And that "adaptation" is *the same thing* as "evolution". The populations change over time; that is the *definition* of evolution.