Evolution is Fact

[C1ay]

Evolution is currently based on Monday morning quarterback theory. When the game is on, it is in the dark. They know someone will win. It is not until Monday, then they can go back, look at highlights and say they should have thrown the ball here.

 

This is tantamount to claiming that you cannot make testable predictions from evolutionary theory. This could not be further from the truth. Evolutionary theory makes predictions about what additional supportive evidence from the past would look like if it is discovered and it also allows us to make predictions about the outcomes of experiments designed to test the theory.

 

It is not simply a static hypothesis based on observations of the past. It is a dynamic theory that is constantly revised through new observations of predictions of both the past and future. Perhaps you should consider this come Monday when you look back at what you said :phones:

[HydrogenBond]

I work under the assumption that evolution has goal in mind. When the solar system evolved, the goal was a star with conditions right for a secondary goal that involved making planets. Getting to that goal has some flexibility but since it is controlled by natural laws, such as gravity, there is a narrow range for final affects. We will not get cubic planets. The closer to the sun the hotter, etc. In terms of the evolution of life, if it was to happen again from scratch, the goal would use DNA all over again. Single cells would appear before multicellular. Nerve type cell will appear, then a brain. The brain will advance, etc. The environment is also changing with time, setting potentials that will meander life as it moves toward its own goals.

 

The reason evolution may look random, rather than have a sense of purpose beyond survival or adaptation, is the environment has its own direction or agenda. Being the dominate potential in nature, it adds a wild card variable forcing life to adapt and meander as it pursues its own long term goal.

 

An analogy is bush whacking up a mountain. The goal is to go from the base to the top of the mountain. Since you are bush whacking the terrain will cause one to follow a path that is not a straight path. If the terrain was favorable the path would be straight. When we breed animals we can take a straighter path. If we take the hike out of the context of the environment and the goal, the path looks like a drunken hiker. But if you take into consider both the goal and the terrain, the path of the drunken hiker now makes logical sense, as the path of least resistance.

 

If you ever tried bush whacking sometimes one may have to back track to get around some obstacles. In terms of a final goal, this could mean the need to de-evolve before continuing to evolve. But without a goal in mind it may look like forward progress. There is a difference in philosophy.

 

For example, four animal appendages, like four legs, and then two legs and two arms was the goal. Animals that fell off that fast track, forming additional appendages, reached a ceiling in terms of the evolutionary speed toward the highest possible goals. But without a goal in mind, one might assume eight legs could have also been the path of earth evolution. This philosophical orientation wanders in the dark not knowing where it is going. It can remember where it came from, but trying to look into the future all there is, is more wandering. Based on this blind wandering, we can look at the short term, and see life trying to optimize. But if we saw a goal then it is not always clear if this is heading up the trail. It could be a by-pass that is first needs to de-evolve. Selective advantage, at times, can mean using regressive traits to reestablish a solid baseline for another assault.

[InfiniteNow]

I work under the assumption that evolution has goal in mind.

And this is part of the reason you've been wrong about evolution so many times, using false premises and inaccurate understandings when discussing it in the past.

 

Evolution does not have a "direction" of "improving."

 

That isn't how evolution works.

 

An individual is either lucky or unlucky in the alleles with which it is born. If those alleles give it greater likelihood of exploiting the environment around it then the lucky individual lives better and has more offspring than the unlucky. After hundreds of generations (with more lucky individuals having alleles that can exploit the environment), you will have a population that is now better at exploiting.

 

Evolution does not have a "mind" nor does it have a "goal." Once you've wrapped your head around this, your conclusions won't be so far off base and out of left field.

[C1ay]

I work under the assumption that evolution has goal in mind.

 

Evolutionary theory like all theories does indeed have a goal in mind, to attempt to find the truth and understand it. That is how science works. From an observation of a phenomenon one forms a falsifiable hypothesis that attempts to explain the underlying cause of that phenomenon, really nothing more than a guess. One then tries to test how accurate the guess or hypothesis is by making predictions based on the initial hypothesis and testing them to see if they support or refute the hypothesis. If they support it then the validity of the hypothesis is increased but if they refute it the hypothesis is tossed out or altered and tested again. In this way the hypothesis evolves toward an truthful explanation of the phenomenon. Ultimately the goal you speak of is to learn the truth without leaping to conclusions.

[Pyrotex]

...If you ever tried bush whacking sometimes one may have to back track to get around some obstacles. In terms of a final goal, this could mean the need to de-evolve before continuing to evolve. But without a goal in mind it may look like forward progress. There is a difference in philosophy....

This PRECISELY what does NOT happen with evolution.

 

Please read, "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins. It's an easy read--actually fun to read.

 

Evolution NEVER devolves. The only changes that evolution affects are changes driven by the environment (natural selection). Natural selection will only and CAN ONLY cull out those who are (ever-so slightly) less fit or adaptable to the environment. Evolution is blind.

 

You may want to read, "The Blind Watchmaker" by R.D. as well.

 

For evolution to have a "goal" you MUST state where this goal is stored and how the goal was derived. Evolution has no "mind". It has no central repository of knowledge and goal-seeking. It has no "senses" to "see" if it is approaching its goals. It has no "sensory system" to act as a central decision-making process.

 

The idea of evolution having goals is fairy-tale stuff. It's unsupportable.

 

OH!!! Warning!!! If you're a true-blue believer in Jehovah and the Holy Book, then reading Richard Dawkins will send you straight to hell for all eternity. :)

[Moontanman]

that is not the only way, but i'll let you think about it

cuz i think you know :)

 

Planets spin because the edge of their accretion disk had two different torques affecting it. The vast majority of the mass in the Sun's accretion disk rotated the same way as the star.

 

As small lumps of rock began to coalesce from the disk they were affected in two ways. The inner edge of their own accretion disk was dragged by the friction of the plane of material rotating around the star, the outer edge was torqued in the opposite direction by the friction of the outer edge. This is not only what imparted rotation to the planets it is also what caused the planets to all rotate in the same direction as the rotation of the sun.

 

This effect was greater for the gas giants since they became much bigger than the inner rocky worlds by accretion of ices as well as metals and eventually gas.

 

Later on collisions between large planetoids in the inner solar system either slowed down or speed up the emerging planets and in the case of Venus started the planet slowly rotating in the opposite direction.

 

This type of collision is what formed the Earth moon system and probably speed up the earth and it may even have formed a large moon in orbit around Venus but orbiting in the wrong direction.

 

This moon would have quickly spiraled down into Venus due to gravitational drag and contributed to it's odd rotation. On the Earth the collision did the opposite and the moon is today spiraling out from the earth, ever slower, and as it does it slows down the spin of the earth.

 

These things can be mathematically shown to be the most probable way this happened. The spiraling down of the Earths spin and the slowly retreating moon can be shown to be true by actual measurements. Very nearly all of the states of the planets in our solar system can be explained in this way.

 

Creation doesn't explain anything it just makes claims that have no data or math to back them up and no correlation with each other to show any connection with each other.

[InfiniteNow]

This PRECISELY what does NOT happen with evolution.

 

Please read, "Climbing Mount Impossible" by Richard Dawkins. It's an easy read--actually fun to read.

Did you mean "Climbing Mount Improbable?" :)

 

 

 

Many of those same concepts were covered in this video which I also shared in post #34 for those who are interested.

 

 

'Growing Up in the Universe' Ep 3: Climbing Mount Improbable http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-690865967686494800

[Pyrotex]

Great video, iNow! The devil's chaplain is one of my heroes!

 

While I am at it... There are TWO "evolutions". One is a FACT. The other is a THEORY.

 

The FACT of evolution is that animals and plants change over time. The life of 10 million years ago was significantly different than the life we see around us. The life of 100 million years ago was profoundly different. We KNOW this from the fossil record. Fossils are not theories--they are facts. We do not have to jump through hoops to interpret them. They are facts in stone. They are what they are, the remains of animals and plants that lived long, long ago. This cannot be disputed.

 

The THEORY of evolution is the explanation of HOW plants and animals could change so radically over geologic stretches of time. Not a "guess", but a rational explanation that fits the vast preponderance of the data, based upon a demonstratable MECHANISM of directed change. That mechanism is Natural Selection.

 

The MECHANISM of Natural Selection, itself depends upon two things: a mechanism of HEREDITY that ensures that each generation of plant and animal will be slightly different (if only statistically) than their parents; and an environment that changes over time. The environment consists of ecosystems (such as food sources, predators, competitors, parasites, etc.) and physical entities (such as mountains, rivers, climate, mineral outcroppings, the tides, chemical makeup of the oceans, etc.).

 

The mechanism of HEREDITY is crucial to the explanation (theory) of evolution. It has to pass qualities down not just to the next generation, but to thousands of generations in a fashion that allows the storage of biological solutions and functions that can be selected from -- where the history of the creature's heredity is stored in a way so it is still accessible to some extent in the current generation. Darwin was clear that heredity had to work within a very narrow outline or his theory would not work. A century later, we discover DNA and the science of genetics, and realize that the mechanism of heredity common to all life on Earth is EXACTLY what is needed to support the theory of evolution.

 

The THEORY of evolution is not merely an explanation, but an incredibly successful explanation, tieing together the facts in the stones with the facts in the DNA as no other explanation has even come close to doing.

[Moontanman]

Great video, iNow! The devil's chaplain is one of my heroes!

 

While I am at it... There are TWO "evolutions". One is a FACT. The other is a THEORY.

 

The FACT of evolution is that animals and plants change over time. The life of 10 million years ago was significantly different than the life we see around us. The life of 100 million years ago was profoundly different. We KNOW this from the fossil record. Fossils are not theories--they are facts. We do not have to jump through hoops to interpret them. They are facts in stone. They are what they are, the remains of animals and plants that lived long, long ago. This cannot be disputed.

 

The THEORY of evolution is the explanation of HOW plants and animals could change so radically over geologic stretches of time. Not a "guess", but a rational explanation that fits the vast preponderance of the data, based upon a demonstratable MECHANISM of directed change. That mechanism is Natural Selection.

 

The MECHANISM of evolution, itself depends upon two things: a mechanism of HEREDITY that ensures that each generation of plant and animal will be slightly different (if only statistically) than their parents; and an environment that changes over time. The environment consists of ecosystems (such as food sources, predators, competitors, parasites, etc.) and physical entities (such as mountains, rivers, climate, mineral outcroppings, the tides, chemical makeup of the oceans, etc.).

 

The mechanism of HEREDITY is crucial to the explanation (theory) of evolution. It has to pass qualities down not just to the next generation, but to thousands of generations in a fashion that allows the storage of biological solutions and functions that can be selected from -- in a fashion where the history of the creature's heredity is stored or frozen in a way where it is still accessible to some extent in the current generation. Darwin was clear that heredity had to work within very narrow outline or his theory would not work. A century later, we discover DNA and the science of genetics, and realize that the mechanism of heredity common to all life on Earth is EXACTLY what is needed to support the theory of evolution.

 

The THEORY of evolution is not merely an explanation, but an incredibly successful explanation, tieing together the facts in the stones with the facts in the DNA as no other explanation has even come close to doing.

 

 

Great explanation Pyro, I wish everyone could see the beauty of the truth in these statements.

[REASON]

Great explanation Pyro, I wish everyone could see the beauty of the truth in these statements.

 

Seconded!

[goku]

I just sense that you are repeating the misguided ignorant comments of others, as opposed to speaking sincerely with your own voice.

 

from who? i git all my information from here.

[goku]

What is 182,251 x 5. And I Can prove it. :)

 

is it the right answer? so many answers would work.

scientists have great imaginations, but their's is no greater than yours.

 

when you believe them you give them power, power to control you.

because of so called global warming, they will control what light bulbs you can buy, and they brain washed you into thinking that you are helping yourself by taking their light bulb.

 

i don't know if that came out right, sometimes it's hard for me to put into words the thoughts in my head, even worse with a key board :confused:

[REASON]

Science wasn't invented

 

Science most certainly was invented, just as every other tool developed and used throughout the history of humankind.

 

In fact, science has evolved as well. :confused:

[goku]

In fact, science has evolved as well. :)

 

hmm, how could it be a scientific fact today and scientifically proven wrong tomorrow? :confused:

[REASON]

is it the right answer? so many answers would work.

 

Yes, many would, all of which could be proven. But many wouldn't work (such as 182251 x 4 = 911255) because you couldn't prove it. That's the point.

 

 

scientists have great imaginations, but their's is no greater than yours.

 

The way I see it the more knowledge and information you have, the greater the potential of your imagination. I would suggest that the imagination of a two day old newborn is incredibly limited.

 

 

when you believe them you give them power, power to control you.

 

Belief is not really about giving power, it's about taking responsibility.

 

 

because of so called global warming, they will control what light bulbs you can buy, and they brain washed you into thinking that you are helping yourself by taking their light bulb.

 

Is this what you're really concerned about? Light bulbs? Do you really care whether or not light bulbs become more efficient?

 

I'm not buying your concern about giving up power anyway. You have obviously given yours to religious ideology and don't seem to have a problem with that, other than the fact that you keep coming here for information. I hope you continue to come here. :)

 

 

i don't know if that came out right, sometimes it's hard for me to put into words the thoughts in my head, even worse with a key board :confused:

 

Well, that's a common problem for people. No worries. :) If you feel you're not being understood, just see if you can restate whatever it is you're trying to get across.

[REASON]

hmm, how could it be a scientific fact today and scientifically proven wrong tomorrow? :confused:

 

What? I'm not sure what the "it" is you're referring to.

 

Science is not product, it's a process.

[goku]

What? I'm not sure what the "it" is you're referring to.

 

the it is nothing specific