PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
I thought whales came from bears that fell into the ocean while slurping?
Evolution - A serious question.
- Thread starter TroutBum
- Start date
I thought whales came from bears that fell into the ocean while slurping?
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Now we don't even grow from the same branch. Damn all these different sects are confusing.
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
lol, so now misinformation and painting the same picture with a different brush are now sects.
Of course, not surprising.
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
I don't follow. Your getting butthurt at my exasperation at people using the same misguided and intentionally incorrect arguments about what evolution is really doesn't have anything to do with your intelligence.
Gyp Rosetti
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Moscone, Bail Bonds!
LogGrad98
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Bacteria and viruses are phenomenally successful, with very limited genetic diversity. And as the first single-cell organisms developed the mutation requiring sexual reproduction of some sort, did a "male" a "female" develop at the same time? What was the mechanism that allowed 2 of them to mate to begin passing along separate genetic material? This seems like a fairly substantial jump in mutation and evolution.
I am not being argumentative, just pointing out questions I have always had regarding this topic. My genetics professors had answers, of a sort, but when we got into discussions about the move from aesexual to sexual reproduction and the ascendancy from there of multi-legged - quadriped - bipedal and the transitionary examples the water got very muddy. I have not kept up on it as closely as I would like over the intervening 18 years, and I am sure there have been new discoveries and advances in the theory, but on the fringe, from what I understand, these are the places where we still do not have the best answers. So I am curious if anyone who has more knowledge than me has better answers.
Tangential aside:
Has anyone else read the Uplift Trilogy and the associated books by David Brin? I think this is an interesting take on human evolution.
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
Can only really speak about the quadrupedal to bipedal change. For the human line, it was long believed that it was an evolutionary reaction to the lost forests and being able to see better over the resulting savannah. New discoveries in the past couple of years suggest that human's ancestors became bipedal before the loss of forestry. Suggestions have included the freeing up of hands for gathering (making bipedal mates more attractive than quadrupeds).
Bugs will one day rule the earth. Arachnophobia is probably pretty close to the truth.
is the one picking his nose supposed to be me?
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
I knew I'd get you to bite on the "your" part, Trout. 
And it just so happens that "your" is correct usage there.
And it just so happens that "your" is correct usage there.
JohnStockalypse
Well-Known Member
The-Joker said:
Then how do you explain gingers?
Also, your blackjack "analogy" was terrible.
I knew I'd get you to bite on the "your" part, Trout.
Aren't you glad that it was a positive rep and not a public reprimand? I know I am. /sheepish.
That would be Archie. Until you post a pic of yourself on the site you cannot be represented.
Being able to only speak for myself, at least the "Big Balls" part is correct.
And while I haven't read the whole thread (I made it through the first page before I became too bored to read any longer) since I missed it when it was first started and knowing it has probably moved on from this point, I will say the following:
I believe in the presence of a God. I believe he created man. I believe he created the laws of physics and science. Why would he not use these laws to create man? Why would he not allow for evolution to take care of that?
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
Don't feel sheepish at all. I actually read incorrect "your" posts as the way I wrote that one until I get jarred by the sentence being incorrect and seeing that the correct word should have been "you're." I should amend my previous post from "you" to "anyone," as I suspected someone would take the bait, not necessarily you.
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
I'd like to throw in one little snippet here that I always thought was extraordinarily interesting.
I took a class way back in my second year of undergrad called "Diffusion of Innovation." It was a class exploring the mechanics of how new technology and ideas diffused to the wider society (for a great popular book on this, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a compulsively readable little book, although Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations is the definitive treatment). In any case, I always wondered about how evolution as a concept entered the school systems and what sort of battles were waged there, etc, and so I decided to do my final paper for the semester on just that topic.
The first big event, of course, was the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which it was ruled illegal to teach evolution in public schools. I think most people probably know about that one. Also unsurprisingly, it went back and forth through the court a number of different times. One study showed that the presence of evolution as a concept within high school biology textbooks hit a huge spike in the early 60s after gaining more mainstream acceptance... but then by the early 70s, creationist pressures had reasserted themselves, and the presence of the concept actually decreased within the same series of textbooks.
But by far the most interesting article I found was an old article from a 1929 periodical. The author, one Orlando Kay Armstrong, had endeavored to do a survey of one hundred high school biology teachers in Tennessee (the same state as the Scopes trial... and only four years after it had ended) to see if they did, in fact, follow the law concerning teaching evolution or not. The answer was a resounding "no." Apparently the only real effect it had on teachers of high school science was to force them to substitute the word "development" quite generally for the word "evolution." Only four years after the Scopes trial, teachers were already referring to the law as "an amusing relic," and insisting that "we are not going to teach a 17th century science because of a 17th century law."
The thing to remember, too, is that evolution was generally accepted by the scientific community by about 1880. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had proposed a cogent evolutionary theory right around 1800, before Darwin was even born. Darwin's Origin of the Species proved more lasting than Lamarck's efforts because it better conformed to the facts, but it was only the best, most comprehensive theory among similar theories that had been tossed about for his entire life. It wasn't like evolution fell out of the clear blue sky... it had been gaining momentum in the scientific community since the early 1800s. It took the discovery of Piltdown Man in the early 20th century to really get the general public into a tizzy; before that, they simply didn't know or care. But scientists had been united on the evolution front for at least 30 years by the time it became a "hot-button issue."
In the end, it comes down to this: I am not a biologist. But all biologists I know personally -- and all but a very few "creation scientists" who make up less than 5% of the scientific community -- believe evolution is a fact. And since I'm not an expert in the area, I'm going to defer to the people who actually know something about it, much as most of them would defer to me on picking good video games. The people who claim not to believe in evolution... well, unless you're a biologist and have some compelling evidence for me, I'm not terribly inclined to listen to you, because 95% of the relevant experts are telling me something differently.
I could get into the whole "science vs religion" and "nature of religious revelation" thing here, but I'll leave that for another day.
Armstrong, Orlando Kay. (1929). Bootleg Science in Tennessee. The North American Review, 227, 138-142.
Skoog, Gerald. (1979). The Changing Classroom: The Role of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. Science Education, 63, 621-640.
I took a class way back in my second year of undergrad called "Diffusion of Innovation." It was a class exploring the mechanics of how new technology and ideas diffused to the wider society (for a great popular book on this, Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a compulsively readable little book, although Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations is the definitive treatment). In any case, I always wondered about how evolution as a concept entered the school systems and what sort of battles were waged there, etc, and so I decided to do my final paper for the semester on just that topic.
The first big event, of course, was the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which it was ruled illegal to teach evolution in public schools. I think most people probably know about that one. Also unsurprisingly, it went back and forth through the court a number of different times. One study showed that the presence of evolution as a concept within high school biology textbooks hit a huge spike in the early 60s after gaining more mainstream acceptance... but then by the early 70s, creationist pressures had reasserted themselves, and the presence of the concept actually decreased within the same series of textbooks.
But by far the most interesting article I found was an old article from a 1929 periodical. The author, one Orlando Kay Armstrong, had endeavored to do a survey of one hundred high school biology teachers in Tennessee (the same state as the Scopes trial... and only four years after it had ended) to see if they did, in fact, follow the law concerning teaching evolution or not. The answer was a resounding "no." Apparently the only real effect it had on teachers of high school science was to force them to substitute the word "development" quite generally for the word "evolution." Only four years after the Scopes trial, teachers were already referring to the law as "an amusing relic," and insisting that "we are not going to teach a 17th century science because of a 17th century law."
The thing to remember, too, is that evolution was generally accepted by the scientific community by about 1880. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had proposed a cogent evolutionary theory right around 1800, before Darwin was even born. Darwin's Origin of the Species proved more lasting than Lamarck's efforts because it better conformed to the facts, but it was only the best, most comprehensive theory among similar theories that had been tossed about for his entire life. It wasn't like evolution fell out of the clear blue sky... it had been gaining momentum in the scientific community since the early 1800s. It took the discovery of Piltdown Man in the early 20th century to really get the general public into a tizzy; before that, they simply didn't know or care. But scientists had been united on the evolution front for at least 30 years by the time it became a "hot-button issue."
In the end, it comes down to this: I am not a biologist. But all biologists I know personally -- and all but a very few "creation scientists" who make up less than 5% of the scientific community -- believe evolution is a fact. And since I'm not an expert in the area, I'm going to defer to the people who actually know something about it, much as most of them would defer to me on picking good video games. The people who claim not to believe in evolution... well, unless you're a biologist and have some compelling evidence for me, I'm not terribly inclined to listen to you, because 95% of the relevant experts are telling me something differently.
I could get into the whole "science vs religion" and "nature of religious revelation" thing here, but I'll leave that for another day.
Armstrong, Orlando Kay. (1929). Bootleg Science in Tennessee. The North American Review, 227, 138-142.
Skoog, Gerald. (1979). The Changing Classroom: The Role of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. Science Education, 63, 621-640.
Darkwing Duck
Well-Known Member
Of course, religion is the only reason this is even debated as hotly as it is. Though I wonder why other scientific concepts don't cause controversy. I mentioned continental drift earlier, and no hardcore religious people complain about that, even though continental clearly shows the earth to be a LOT more than 6000 years old.
Would people off hand dismiss the comparison of evolution of today being hated by the masses as much as the masses 2000 years ago hating the concept that the earth isn't the center of the universe?
Would people off hand dismiss the comparison of evolution of today being hated by the masses as much as the masses 2000 years ago hating the concept that the earth isn't the center of the universe?