Evolution not observed?
The idea that evolution has not been observed is false. It has been observed directly and indirectly.
I have been reading Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth" and he tells us about a species of Lizards, whose primary diet was insects, that changed over a few decades to be able to eat vegetables. It had stronger bones in its jaws, a different head size, and some other features that escape me at the moment. Then, he talked about an experiment with bacteria in which the bacteria was eating a glucose rich...thing (I forget what was happening, help me out here) but one of the test tubes of bacteria evolved to eat another one of the substances prestent along with glucose, encouraging a large surge in bacterial population.
Evolution has also been indirectly observed. Like the theory of continental drift. Who here has EVER seen the continents move? Anyone? Yet we teach that the continents used to be together? How did they move? Earthquakes? There are earthquakes every year for several years, but the continents are still exactly where they've been for decades....wow that sounded like something a creationist would argue.
The fossils show that life was different than it is now. Something happened to the animals. What happened? They evolved. Why did they evolve? Natural selection drove them to.
Our job on this Earth, is to take care of each other. Something that we have ultimately failed at doing, hence why we are so miserable.
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Great saying, Hats off to you man!!
This one is really an awesome post.
If you want to see evolution in action GO LOOK IN A MIRROR!!!! Without evolution all boys would look EXACTLY like their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great........etc. I do NOT mean a strong resemblence, I mean EXACTLY!!! Without evolution the same would be true of girls of course. Throughout history all males would look the same and all females would look the same.
On that bases it should be easy to explain evolution to even the youngest child, they know they don't look exactly like mom or dad. When it comes to full grown nerrow minded creationist theists it just doesn't sink in, their minds have yet to gain the complexity of the youngest of children.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
In the LTEE experiment Lenski let accidentally grow escherichia coli on a medium with citrate residues. The bacteria switched the carbon source (the "growth" material) from glucose to citrate at the 31k generation. If I remember well. Read the Lenski's paper for the 150 anniversary of Darwin.
Anyway speciation has been observed hundred of times. Search "observed speciation". Probably one of the most famous case is the apple maggot fly.
I recall reading about bacteria eating plastic. Since plastic did not exist on Earth until the 1900's, there is no better evidence for evolution.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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There is also a brown moss that lives inside the sarcophagus at Chernobyl. It is brown because it has replaced it's chlorophyll with melanin so that it can carry out gamma ray based photosynthesis. Th at is quite a neat adaptation for less than three decades of evolution.
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I'm sure being blasted with unnatural amounts of radiation helped. We're lucky it hasn't taken over the world.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
I would like to know more about this.
Are there any good references on the web about it?
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
I found this after searching on google for a few minutes.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070422222547data_trunc_sys.shtml
Not sure how reliable it is or how backed the article is.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Thanks Ktulu. I would like some different articles. "science a gogo" isn't filling me with confidence. Although the article does give good information.
A related article on science a gogo was pretty good giving me hope after we humans screw up the earth and are gone maybe some other less meddling species will do a better job.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/chernobyl_environment.shtml
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Well, here is a paper from PLOSone, which source I have seen cited often enough.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000457
I also found another on the topic in a different journal but that costs $47 to download so no on that.
Also, the same author has over a hundred papers on the nih.gov web site. So I am gonna call this one as almost certainly legit. Remember that nothing is ever certain in science.
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AIG, thanks.
Glad Ktulu gave me the first article which I can comprehend. This one I am going to have to study awhile.
What do you mean nothing is ever certain in science? Evolution certainly happened, no? Maybe the mechanism is still not 100% conclusive but its reality is undeniable.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Technically, nothing is 100% certain in science, but Evolution as a fact, and the broadest outline of Natural Selection as the main mechanism, deserve to be put in the category of being as near certain as any empirically-based idea can be.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
So are you saying it's 99 & 44/100 percent certain?
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
OK, you have to remember that Bob is an Aussie, so he may not get references from 70's American TV commercials. BTW: did you know that the ivory snow girl went on to become the noted porn star Marylin Chambers? The only reason that I know that is because she went to school with my keyboard player.
In any case, as Bob points out, on the empirical level, nothing is ever certain. That deserves a bit more of an explanation.
In the history of science, there have been a number of things that we thought were real but later out turned out not to be. That is why science no longer talks about “natural laws”.
Newton proposed the law of gravity. Actually, I am not certain that Newton used that term, it might have been a misinterpretation of someone who came later but whatever. Newtonian gravity is perfectly good for explaining how a batter can hit a home run into the back field stands.
It needs to be modified to account for why the Paris gun had to be pulled back because it was overshooting the target. It turned out that the gun was lobbing shells into the stratosphere where atmospheric drag was lower. The shells were following Newtonian physics but there was a correction that needed to be made that was really not obvious to Newton.
As far as evolution goes, on the coarsest scale, it is fine to say that we know it is real. However, the scientists who actually do the work still are not in full agreement on the details. If memory serves, it was only in the past 20 or so year (and based on DNA studies) since they decided that penguins are really birds.
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Daniel Dennett would use the term 'Vanishingly small' to refer to such theoretically non-zero but negligible magnitudes...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
ok. So, our understanding is good and useful for now, but more will be revealed as time goes on. It is ever unfolding. We never want to say the case is closed because that would kill such progress.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Sure, and the details of evolutionary 'mechanisms' are being studied avidly. The way science seems to work out, any one of those 'details' could expand into a whole new field of study and significance in itself.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology