Evolution...

[Bones Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bones]

Hey

Just wanted to know if there were any hardcore evolutionists in here?

I have been reading internet articles and this book called "Rethinking Darwinism" and i have literally started to rethink evolution...

Can anybody give me a scientific explanation to why evolution is or is not a valid theory?

Just briefly from what I can remember from the books and articles is that,

The whole fossil story where as you go deeper and get to the older soil you find less complex organisms and therefore proves diversity increase and species increase over the time, but complex fossilized organisms have now been found in the deeper layers with the simple fossils thus proving that there was just a spontaneous appearance of complex animals ---> leading towards the theory of creationism/ intelligent design.

The probability of a single cell "mutating" into a complex organ such as the eye by chance/environmental influence is so small it is almost impossible and then to say that from a single cell all 5 forms of the senses we posses happened to form in the same organism which creates an even smaller probability and it is predicted that it is just impossible that this could have happened in the time frame the evolutionists say the world has been around...

PLEASE! I really liked the sound of evolution being a fact... but at this rate I doubt it way too much...
Please can somebody prove me wrong... :P


Bones

[Messerschmidt Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Messerschmidt]

I'd like to see those discoveries you reference. Yes, it is quite unlikely that a single cell would evolve into a human, but given millions of animals on billions of planets across the universe, even rare things will tend to occur. If you were on a planet where life or intelligence never sprang up, you would not have the ability to question why this did not occur. ID proponents occasionally like to try and discredit evolution by referencing the Cambrian Explosion, where conditions existed that allow for a larger than average amount of species to arise overly a relatively short period, but they tend to misconstrued the brevity of that period. We're talking geologic time here, where 10,000 years goes by in the blink of an eye.

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

We probably got put here by the same people that built those damn pyramids and made those funky stone structures. Too bad we'll never know.

[Messerschmidt Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Messerschmidt]

We probably got put here by the same people that built those damn pyramids and made those funky stone structures. Too bad we'll never know.

The Egyptians? I think my skin is a tad pale.

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

Well, there goes that theory...

[Cdn Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cdn]

Just a bit of math. Three trillion cells in the human body (3x10^9) x 6 billion people (6x10^6) = 1.8x10^16 or 18,000,000,000,000,000.
Thats how many cells there currently are in the human population, now throw in all other animal, plant, prokaryotic etc. life and I would be dead before I could finish punching in all the zero's.

Mutation leading to evolution is rare, but when you have enough lottery tickets your going to win, its practically inevitable.

Also in humans the mutation rate is approx. 20ish mutations per generation, aka I have 20 dif.'s from my parents genome on a sequence level.
So the next 1 billion ppl will have 20 billion mutations in comparison to what is currently around.

Now two things for you to look up,

type in phototaxis into wikipedia. It is essentially movement in response to light. Theres some eucaryotes that have primitive "eye" like cells that are able to detect light. They don't form an image but it allows them to move toward or away from the light source depending upon their motivation. I think it is quite logical to see that the development from

no light detection ---------> ability to detect light -----------------> ability to resolve light into image

is reasonable. Also they can't smell, I believe some have cilia for primitive touch, you can see where I am going with this. Not all 5 senses have to be present in a single organism.

Now theres these two little beetles that inhabit apple and hawthorn trees in the U.S, I don't recall their names do a quick search for something like them. In the past 200 years humans have physically watched them seperate into two distinct species.

Last, fossil record is sketchy to begin with and shit happens on a regular basis. Potentially the sedimentary layers got out of order via earthquake or some other geological phenomenom ( I know absolutely nothing about rocks). Also maybe the less complex organisms were degraded and not fossilized while the bigger bonier stuff was. Basically shit happens there could be a dozen other things that explain the fossil record findings and allow evolution to be correct.

People see what they want to see, creationists and ID ppl want you to believe them. So do the evolutionists so take that with a grain of salt.

Personally I am an atheist and I accept evolution as fact but I have actually studied both ID and evolution.

Regards
Cdn

[Qarzan Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Qarzan]

Yes, I agree with Cdn; it's a matter of numbers and probability. Plus, when people say that it "spontaneously" appeared, they're probably talking on a scale of "within a few million years."

So, we have a bunch of single-celled organisms floating around in this soup. For how long? Millions upon millions of years. Mutations appear here and there, but they're ineffective or even detrimental. Then, POOF! One of them gets some kind of structure that reacts to light. It's not a miracle, it's a statistical probability. It was bound to happen one time or another. Doesn't do any harm, but doesn't help either, so it continues to replicate. Then a few generations later (bacterial generations last around 20 minutes, so we're talking a matter of 3 generations per hour... multiplied by maybe a thousand years, that's a whole lotta generations!) one of them develops a way to use and interpret that light. NOW that one has an advantage as it can sense other organisms without running into them... HUNTER! Its population explodes and takes over.

BUT at the same time, as Cdn said, there are mutations upon mutations happening all over the place, all over the entire planet. And how many single-cell organisms were there back in the day? A whole lot. In fact, that's all there were back then. So then life begins to diversify. Again, some of them useful, some of them not, and some of them even detrimental. The new HUNTER comes across other mutations and either breeds with them, if possible, or competes with them and drives down the weak population.

Anyways, I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

[Batwoman Moderator ReservePEGym Hero Find all posts View Profile Close Batwoman]

If you are seriously interested in understanding evolution and are willing to put in a little time, then take a look at these websites:
Understanding Evolution
NESCent: Education & Outreach: Postcasts

Many ideas about evolution in the popular media are either biased by religious teachings (which have no place in science) or are written by journalists who have no training in biology, and thus don't do a very good job of explaining things. It is much better to get your information on science from resources that are written by scientists who truly understand the topic they are writing about.

[itsaverage Banned Find all posts View Profile Close itsaverage]

and where did this first cell come from? Just magically appeared?

[Messerschmidt Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Messerschmidt]

and where did this first cell come from? Just magically appeared?

A good question, but not one for evolution. Evolution deals with how the diversity of life occurred and how organisms went from simple to complex. The question of how life comes from non-life is abiogenesis and I believe that is a newer and less concrete science. Though I'm sure someone else will have better information on that, my knowledge of the current theories in that field is pretty shaky.

[ByggD Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ByggD]

and where did this first cell come from? Just magically appeared?

Let's not turn this into a circular argument. Circular arguments are not fun and nobody learns anything from them.

[Cdn Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cdn]

and where did this first cell come from? Just magically appeared?

These two scientists performed an experiment now known as the Miller-Urey Experiment. Basically they put all the basic molecules of life (C, N, O etc.) and put them in a sealed unti with an electric spark and water. After one week, some amino acids, ribonucleotides, lipids etc. were present. These were the basic building blocks of life what was needed was a way for them to polymerize together for which there have been proposed theories that are EXTREMELY difficult to test.

The spark represented lightning strikes which would have been present on primordial earth and created a reducing enviroment (lack of excessive oxygen basically). This situation is ideal for the formation of an incredibly basic "cell" to form.

Someone suggested that clay could provide an excellent surface for polymerization of RNA and proteins (or at this point a ribozyme). Lipids were present and naturally form bilayers (cell membranes) in the presence of water.

To my knowledge the experiment has not been repeated with nearly as great of a sucess as Miller and Urey were able to achieve.

Regards
Cdn

[Bones Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bones]

All VERY interesting :P and I find myself leaning towards the possibility of Evolution

Going to read Batwoman's links! Should be good

[HotRod Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close HotRod]

These two scientists performed an experiment now known as the Miller-Urey Experiment. Basically they put all the basic molecules of life (C, N, O etc.) and put them in a sealed unti with an electric spark and water. After one week, some amino acids, ribonucleotides, lipids etc. were present. These were the basic building blocks of life what was needed was a way for them to polymerize together for which there have been proposed theories that are EXTREMELY difficult to test.

The spark represented lightning strikes which would have been present on primordial earth and created a reducing enviroment (lack of excessive oxygen basically). This situation is ideal for the formation of an incredibly basic "cell" to form.

Someone suggested that clay could provide an excellent surface for polymerization of RNA and proteins (or at this point a ribozyme). Lipids were present and naturally form bilayers (cell membranes) in the presence of water.

To my knowledge the experiment has not been repeated with nearly as great of a sucess as Miller and Urey were able to achieve.

Regards
Cdn

Then again, life may have travelled to this planet on a comet or other object.

[HotRod Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close HotRod]

The whole fossil story where as you go deeper and get to the older soil you find less complex organisms and therefore proves diversity increase and species increase over the time, but complex fossilized organisms have now been found in the deeper layers with the simple fossils thus proving that there was just a spontaneous appearance of complex animals ---> leading towards the theory of creationism/ intelligent design.

This is religious propaganda you're reading. Creationists famously use arguments like this. If you look around, you'll find scientists who have the patience to demonstrate that the creationists don't have their facts straight. This is one of the points that easily reveals them for what they are.