I was just wondering....

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

rattpoison wrote:

You could say you don't see transitioning now from one species to another because you don't know of the future species.......but the fact that subspecies and different genetic populations exist furthers the point that evolution is still happening, just that it takes a long long time.

Listen Nostradamus, show me real and tangible species right now that are transforming and mutating as we speak into other species and them maybe we can talk.

A silly angle. Evolution doesn't happen overnight.

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species? Has evolution taken a slumber? A genetic mutation in any living being is death to the organism, not a transition to something completely different.

I don't quite get what you mean here. A genetic mutation in any living being does not necessarily mean death at all. That's the whole reasoning behind natural selection. There were plenty of positive genetic mutations that occurred which cumulatively combined to develop in to new variations of creatures, whilst those without said positive adaptations fell by the wayside. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of bad mutations, hence the weaker of the species being phased out. With regards to an in-between stage of animal,, my paleoanthropology isn't fantastic, but I believe species that fall in to the genus Australopithecus act as a good example of an in-between state. All primates prior were quadrupedal, but, although maintaining many similar attributes, Australopithecus was bipedal like modern day humans. It is believed to be an ancestor to species of the genus Homo, which includes us - modern day humans. Its walking adaptations show a progression in primate locomotion.
We will never witness biological evolution in our life-times just because all the evidence we have so far points to it being a ridiculously time consuming process, one that spans more than just a few meagre generations. Furthermore, humanity itself has probably reached quite a significant stopping point as far as its biological evolution is concerned, as our cognitive capacities effectively allow us to shape the environment we're in, rather than the environment shaping us (one of the main driving forces of evolution).

...yeah. I really could go on for ages, but I think I'm spewing too much info as is. Don't get me wrong though, I have no real qualms with people disagreeing with evolution. I'm doing a degree in Anthropology though, so this is basically my academic life at the moment.

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species?

Because Earth is about 5 billion years old.

So evolution has stopped? You're still not giving me any clear evidence of any species in transition, because none exist that we can observe right now. I don't see any hairy animals growing scales or vice versa. Don't give me the 5 billion year excuse. Our universe is more than 13 billion years old, so what's your point?

Smindas wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

rattpoison wrote:

You could say you don't see transitioning now from one species to another because you don't know of the future species.......but the fact that subspecies and different genetic populations exist furthers the point that evolution is still happening, just that it takes a long long time.

Listen Nostradamus, show me real and tangible species right now that are transforming and mutating as we speak into other species and them maybe we can talk.

A silly angle. Evolution doesn't happen overnight.

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species? Has evolution taken a slumber? A genetic mutation in any living being is death to the organism, not a transition to something completely different.

I don't quite get what you mean here. A genetic mutation in any living being does not necessarily mean death at all. That's the whole reasoning behind natural selection. There were plenty of positive genetic mutations that occurred which cumulatively combined to develop in to new variations of creatures, whilst those without said positive adaptations fell by the wayside. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of bad mutations, hence the weaker of the species being phased out. With regards to an in-between stage of animal,, my paleoanthropology isn't fantastic, but I believe species that fall in to the genus Australopithecus act as a good example of an in-between state. All primates prior were quadrupedal, but, although maintaining many similar attributes, Australopithecus was bipedal like modern day humans. It is believed to be an ancestor to species of the genus Homo, which includes us - modern day humans. Its walking adaptations show a progression in primate locomotion.
We will never witness biological evolution in our life-times just because all the evidence we have so far points to it being a ridiculously time consuming process, one that spans more than just a few meagre generations. Furthermore, humanity itself has probably reached quite a significant stopping point as far as its biological evolution is concerned, as our cognitive capacities effectively allow us to shape the environment we're in, rather than the environment shaping us (one of the main driving forces of evolution).

...yeah. I really could go on for ages, but I think I'm spewing too much info as is. Don't get me wrong though, I have no real qualms with people disagreeing with evolution. I'm doing a degree in Anthropology though, so this is basically my academic life at the moment.

Good luck on your academic life. You seem passionate about it.

I read Smindy's post......and my head imploded.

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species?

Because Earth is about 5 billion years old.

So evolution has stopped? You're still not giving me any clear evidence of any species in transition, because none exist that we can observe right now. I don't see any hairy animals growing scales or vice versa. Don't give me the 5 billion year excuse. Our universe is more than 13 billion years old, so what's your point?

This is why this type of a conversation is pointless. You're essentially asking someone to prove to you how the chicken comes from the egg by excluding the process in between. You see an egg, and you see a chicken, and you sit there and say, "Make that egg turn into a chicken right now. Oh, you can't? Well, then it doesn't happen. Never has."

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species?

Because Earth is about 5 billion years old.

So evolution has stopped? You're still not giving me any clear evidence of any species in transition, because none exist that we can observe right now. I don't see any hairy animals growing scales or vice versa. Don't give me the 5 billion year excuse. Our universe is more than 13 billion years old, so what's your point?

This is why this type of a conversation is pointless. You're essentially asking someone to prove to you how the chicken comes from the egg by excluding the process in between. You see an egg, and you see a chicken, and you sit there and say, "Make that egg turn into a chicken right now. Oh, you can't? Well, then it doesn't happen. Never has."

Man, Eyesore you are way off point buddy. We all know the egg will turn into a chicken given the right circumstances. Duh! That's one of the weakest arguments/analogies I've ever heard.

Show me an instance when this chicken egg will hatch into a lizard or something else. It's not going to happen. It never has. That's my point. In a billion years from now, that chicken egg will still hatch chickens.

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species?

Because Earth is about 5 billion years old.

So evolution has stopped? You're still not giving me any clear evidence of any species in transition, because none exist that we can observe right now. I don't see any hairy animals growing scales or vice versa. Don't give me the 5 billion year excuse. Our universe is more than 13 billion years old, so what's your point?

This is why this type of a conversation is pointless. You're essentially asking someone to prove to you how the chicken comes from the egg by excluding the process in between. You see an egg, and you see a chicken, and you sit there and say, "Make that egg turn into a chicken right now. Oh, you can't? Well, then it doesn't happen. Never has."

Man, Eyesore you are way off point buddy. We all know the egg will turn into a chicken given the right circumstances. Duh! That's one of the weakest arguments/analogies I've ever heard.

Show me an instance when this chicken egg will hatch into a lizard or something else. It's not going to happen. It never has. That's my point. In a billion years from now, that chicken egg will still hatch chickens.

You missed the point. You're asking to see NOW, something that takes hundreds of thousands of years. That's what you're asking. Show me now!

Moreover, even if I did point out that recently female komodo dragons in captivity gave birth without the presence of any males--something no one has ever seen before--you'd say it always happened, science simply missed it. How does one prove evolution when you can simply say it's something that's always been there, someone simply never noticed.

What about all these new species they discover. No chance they went undiscovered for so long because they never actually existed until recently, right?

Not saying that's the case, of course, but that is much closer to plausible than the theory that some cosmic being pointed his finger and zapped things into place. But whatever. It doesn't matter. There is a built-in excuse here, which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense. It doesn't matter what the proof is, it'll just get shot down. It's the Genetically-altered Gay Fruit Fly angle.

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

How is it silly to ask to see a species that is in-between to transforming into another species?

Because Earth is about 5 billion years old.

So evolution has stopped? You're still not giving me any clear evidence of any species in transition, because none exist that we can observe right now.

The Peppered Moth is a good example of how evolution works in recent times.

The Peppered Moth has a light coloration that keeps it camouflaged amongst the light colored trees and lichen. But during the industrial revolution in England around the late 18th and early 19th century pollution and soot blackened the trees and killed the lichen. The light colored moths juxtaposed amongst the dark trees became easy prey for predators such as birds, but there were some moths that were dark in coloration through genetic mutation and these ones over many moth generations became the dominant color of these moths.

While that's not an example of one species becoming another it shows different populations diverging and morphing away from it's original form through environmental pressures......thus your natural selection. All of which form the main basis for Evolution.

Before someone says well that's microevolution and "i believe in that" but not Evolution on a whole.....Micro and Macroevolution is still Evolution only Micro happens over a few generations and Macro happens over thousands of years. It's quantitative in difference but it is the same thing.

Who are you, RP?

Eyesore - Let me say it one more time. If these transitions take so long, should we not be able to see certain species in transition right now? Thousands of species should be transforming at any given time given the length of their existence (time does not stop, nor does evolution according to the theory), so there should be thousand in transition that we can see now. That's what I'm asking. Are you just not getting it? Do you not understand the nature of my question? How else can I word myself? I have no agenda. If the theory was scientifically proved 100% without a shadow of a doubt, I would embrace it, but there are too many holes, and alas, it's only a Theory and not Fact. And the Cosmic Being you talk about is Faith, not Theory. You either believe you were made in the image of a Creator, or you believe you came from a clump of goo in the swamps that through time and chance evolved into highly intelligent animals capable of destroying each other. I just accept the former, but don't care one bit if you accept the latter, because again, it's Faith, for both you and me.


Rattpoison - When I was taking my AP Biology class in high school, you were probably in 4th grade or so, so I'm really familiar with the Peppered Moth, as faulty as it is. Humans change over time too, people adapt and change to their environment, that's just how it is. That's why we have different skin colors, eyes, body types, etc. The Peppered Moth experiment proves nothing since birds see in UV and could care less for their color and the change in the moths was worldwide at the time anyway. This should have been out of the textbooks back in the 90's when even many scientists dismissed it.

GrandNational, because these adaptive processes are taking so long, we probably are viewing various species currently in transitional stages - we just don't know it because we can't fast-forward to the future and view the end result. It's through viewing their millions of years old ancestors that we can tell they were initially different to begin with. It stands to reason that they will be different to what they are now in millions of years to come.

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore - Let me say it one more time. If these transitions take so long, should we not be able to see certain species in transition right now? Thousands of species should be transforming at any given time given the length of their existence (time does not stop, nor does evolution according to the theory), so there should be thousand in transition that we can see now. That's what I'm asking. Are you just not getting it? Do you not understand the nature of my question? How else can I word myself? I have no agenda. If the theory was scientifically proved 100% without a shadow of a doubt, I would embrace it, but there are too many holes, and alas, it's only a Theory and not Fact. And the Cosmic Being you talk about is Faith, not Theory. You either believe you were made in the image of a Creator, or you believe you came from a clump of goo in the swamps that through time and chance evolved into highly intelligent animals capable of destroying each other. I just accept the former, but don't care one bit if you accept the latter, because again, it's Faith, for both you and me.

Again, I get what you're saying, but no matter what I say you don't want to believe any of it. You have a built-in excuse. So why even have this conversation? So we can get to the point of insulting each other? You're getting pretty close.

I don't like "Evolution." It is one of Korn's weaker songs. It seemed like they were pressing on that last album. They really seem to miss Head.

Eyesore wrote:

GrandNational wrote:

Eyesore - Let me say it one more time. If these transitions take so long, should we not be able to see certain species in transition right now? Thousands of species should be transforming at any given time given the length of their existence (time does not stop, nor does evolution according to the theory), so there should be thousand in transition that we can see now. That's what I'm asking. Are you just not getting it? Do you not understand the nature of my question? How else can I word myself? I have no agenda. If the theory was scientifically proved 100% without a shadow of a doubt, I would embrace it, but there are too many holes, and alas, it's only a Theory and not Fact. And the Cosmic Being you talk about is Faith, not Theory. You either believe you were made in the image of a Creator, or you believe you came from a clump of goo in the swamps that through time and chance evolved into highly intelligent animals capable of destroying each other. I just accept the former, but don't care one bit if you accept the latter, because again, it's Faith, for both you and me.

Again, I get what you're saying, but no matter what I say you don't want to believe any of it. You have a built-in excuse. So why even have this conversation? So we can get to the point of insulting each other? You're getting pretty close.

You're right, I don't believe it fully because it is only a theory. AP Biology was one of my favorite classes in high school, so I have no bones about studying on the theory. Micro-evolution I completely accept within species. That's a no-brainer. Why would I want to insult the Eyesore? Your posts are classic.

Quote :

which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense

Isn't that what darwinists say to creationists also??

Troublezone wrote:

Quote :

which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense

Isn't that what darwinists say to creationists also??

I do believe that you have taken my words out of context.

Eyesore wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Quote :

which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense

Isn't that what darwinists say to creationists also??

I do believe that you have taken my words out of context.

I read what you were getting at and it seems to be very much in context unless you meant that both sides do it to each other.

Anyone see the movie Expelled? It really comes down to a question of how the universe started and the best answer given was: we can't know that, by the leading evolutionist of the day, Richard Dawkins. His answer points to evolution being an improveable theory. And it the second law of Thermodynamics is chaos, known as entropy how can things be mutating into better species?

I think we need to clarify what evolution is so here are three possible answers.

• Evolution #1: First, evolution can mean minor changes in features of individual species – changes that take place gradually over a (relatively) modest period of time.
  

• Evolution #2: The Theory of Universal Common Descent - the idea that all the organisms we see today are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past. This theory paints a picture of the history of life on earth as a great branching tree, from a single cell that “somehow” materialized.
  

• Evolution #3: A cause or mechanism of change, the biological process Darwin thought was responsible for this branching pattern. Darwin argued that natural selection had the power to produce fundamentally new forms of life. Together, the ideas of Universal Common Descent and natural selection form the core of Darwinian evolutionary theory. “Neo – Darwinian” evolution combines our knowledge of DNA and genetics to claim that mutations in DNA provide the variation upon which natural selection acts.
  

You also have to look at how special everything in our world is and ask if you think it's all chance. If we were closer to or farther away from the sun by just a couple miles we'd be toast. Our atmosphere is the only one that can sustain life. Our gravity is perfect. And can it really be that something came from nothing?

NumbskullakaNazgul wrote:

Anyone see the movie Expelled? It really comes down to a question of how the universe started and the best answer given was: we can't know that, by the leading evolutionist of the day, Richard Dawkins. His answer points to evolution being an improveable theory. And it the second law of Thermodynamics is chaos, known as entropy how can things be mutating into better species?

Ya, it was a cool documentary of sorts. Ben Stein was perfect, and he made Dawkins and a few other professors look silly.

Troublezone wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Quote :

which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense

Isn't that what darwinists say to creationists also??

I do believe that you have taken my words out of context.

I read what you were getting at and it seems to be very much in context unless you meant that both sides do it to each other.

Ah, and here we are again.

NumbskullakaNazgul wrote:

Anyone see the movie Expelled?

Nice bit of propaganda.....more to do with politics than actual science though. But then again i much prefer the documentary Judgement Day: Intelligent Design On Trial about Kitzmiller Vs. Dover Area District School.

I'm not sure how some can believe in small changes over a small time (microevolution) but not a whole lot of small changes over a long time (macroevolution).

Quote :

Nice bit of propaganda.....more to do with politics than actual science though. But then again i much prefer the documentary Judgement Day: Intelligent Design On Trial about Kitzmiller Vs. Dover Area District School.

Asking questions is not propaganda. The movie questioned Dawkins and other Darwinists fairly and clearly stumped them. Then you say another documentary that sides with your point of view is ok.

Eyesore wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Quote :

which is why so many people are so damn adamant with their "show me the proof" defense

Isn't that what darwinists say to creationists also??

I do believe that you have taken my words out of context.

I read what you were getting at and it seems to be very much in context unless you meant that both sides do it to each other.

Ah, and here we are again.