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Hmmm, thoughts on evolution?(no, not vs religion)

#121
As evolution is one of the things that fascinates me most, I believe I need to chime in here.

1) Scientists don't believe in Darwinism. It is an outdated theory that has been revamped and polished many times over. It isn't just simply "survival of the fittest" I surely still appreciate his library of work, but to say that Evolutionists are Darwinists is a great injustice to the theory of evolution.

2) The tailbone dissappearing issue. In my understanding its not that it just disappears, its that it no longer holds any stake in the future of the organism. So as other traits are important, the old unused ones are no longer important. Whatever small changes they make will tend to mutate toward less importance, rather than more. Whales still have legs and hipbones. Their evolution is indeed miraculous, and can be readily studied. Maybe the bones will eventually completely disappear, but for now, they are still found.

3) Evolution is not abiogenesis. Which is also fascinating, but is not the same thing.

4) Howabout that primate fossil found recently with an opposable thumb and heel bone! Amazing!

5) Or the evolved Ecoli that was suddenly able to *ingest different nutrients.
*(Very simplistic understanding of the study)

6) Awesome post Bassybill
 
#123
Kosko said:
As evolution is one of the things that fascinates me most, I believe I need to chime in here.

1) Scientists don't believe in Darwinism. It is an outdated theory that has been revamped and polished many times over. It isn't just simply "survival of the fittest" I surely still appreciate his library of work, but to say that Evolutionists are Darwinists is a great injustice to the theory of evolution.

2) The tailbone dissappearing issue. In my understanding its not that it just disappears, its that it no longer holds any stake in the future of the organism. So as other traits are important, the old unused ones are no longer important. Whatever small changes they make will tend to mutate toward less importance, rather than more. Whales still have legs and hipbones. Their evolution is indeed miraculous, and can be readily studied. Maybe the bones will eventually completely disappear, but for now, they are still found.

3) Evolution is not abiogenesis. Which is also fascinating, but is not the same thing.

4) Howabout that primate fossil found recently with an opposable thumb and heel bone! Amazing!

5) Or the evolved Ecoli that was suddenly able to *ingest different nutrients.
*(Very simplistic understanding of the study)

6) Awesome post Bassybill
Click to expand...
Well, thanks - but I can't take credit for it, it's from a university biology department's website. I can't link to the original as the page has moved or updated and my link to it no longer works.

I'm not sure what on Earth you could possibly mean by your first point, though. Yes, there is more to evolution than "survival of the fittest" (depends on how you define fitness, actually, but I won't get into details about what biologists mean by "inclusive fitness" here). But to say "scientists don't believe in Darwinism" is simply incorrect. And Darwin's theory hasn't been so much outdated as updated. In synthesis with molecular biology and genetics it still forms the very core of our understanding of natural history.
 
#126
Kosko said:
I guess my first point was just a frustrated rebuttal to people who have said, "So you believe we come from monkeys?"

Scientists do believe in Darwin, and I did misspeak, but I believe the the underlying philosophy has evolved in the last 100 years.
Click to expand...

I think it's somewhat similar to the situation with Freud: it's fashionable today to claim that psychoanalysis and psychiatry have completely left Freud behind, but we certainly acknowledge the existence of the conscious/subconscious duality, and he was the first person to put his finger on it. He laid the groundwork.
 
#128
Kosko said:
I guess my first point was just a frustrated rebuttal to people who have said, "So you believe we come from monkeys?"
Click to expand...
I get wound up when people ask, slightly more correctly, "Are we descended from apes?" Technically, we ARE apes. I usually answer, "You mean other apes, right?" :D

Our relationship to other contemporary apes is interesting, though. As in, pick the odd one out here, from a family tree point of view - gorilla, orangutan, chimp, human.

The correct answer is orangutan.
 
#129
Ok. How about this?

There are 5 giraffes, 2 with long necks and 3 with short necks. There are some sweet, sweet leaves that giraffes like to eat up in a tree. The giraffes with long necks reach up and eat the leaves which give them nutrition and they live on. The 3 giraffes that can't reach starve to death. The long-necked ones survive long enough to procreate and they have baby giraffes with long necks. The short-necked and therefore non-viable giraffes are phased out over time, leaving us with a whole mess of giraffes with long necks.
 
#131
180px-Pokemon_evolution.png
 
#134
WickedPissah said:
180px-Pokemon_evolution.png
Click to expand...

Yeah I don't get why Ash didn't force his pikachu to evolve into a raichu when he had the chance, raichu is SO much better. And because Ash didn't do it, you couldn't do it either in pokemon yellow. I mean, how stupid is that?! If I wanted a pikachu that didn't want to get in his pokeball or evolve I'd be an anime figure, not a young chap trying to get bloody 150 pokemon on his game. So then I had to somehow get ANOTHER pikachu so it would involve into raichu. You know how hard it is to find a pikachu in pokemon yellow?:mad::spit::hiding:
 
#136
bassybill said:
I get wound up when people ask, slightly more correctly, "Are we descended from apes?" Technically, we ARE apes. I usually answer, "You mean other apes, right?" :D

Our relationship to other contemporary apes is interesting, though. As in, pick the odd one out here, from a family tree point of view - gorilla, orangutan, chimp, human.

The correct answer is orangutan.
Click to expand...

i think its important to point out that we are somewhat 'related' to todays monkeys like gorillas and chimps. humans and monkeys have the same ancestors, and the line split at some point. i don't know if the animal that all monkeys descend from has been idenitfied yet.
 
#138
Kosko said:
1) Scientists don't believe in Darwinism. It is an outdated theory that has been revamped and polished many times over.
Click to expand...

A lot of people including myself have simply adopted the term "Darwinism" as a single word for evolution theory as it has developed since the time of Darwin. It's a way of honoring the guy who got the ball rolling, just like we refer to "Newtonian mechanics" or "Galilean relativity."
 

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