Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
4 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,806 Year: 3,063/9,624 Month: 908/1,588 Week: 91/223 Day: 2/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   "Best" evidence for evolution.
DrJones*
Member
Posts: 2284
From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Joined: 08-19-2004
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 241 of 830 (869620)
01-02-2020 3:32 PM
Reply to: Message 236 by Faith
01-02-2020 3:07 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
nope

This message is a reply to:
 Message 236 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 3:07 PM Faith has not replied

  
DrJones*
Member
Posts: 2284
From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Joined: 08-19-2004
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 242 of 830 (869621)
01-02-2020 3:32 PM
Reply to: Message 236 by Faith
01-02-2020 3:07 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
edit: whoops double tap
Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 236 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 3:07 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 245 by dwise1, posted 01-02-2020 3:55 PM DrJones* has not replied

  
DrJones*
Member
Posts: 2284
From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Joined: 08-19-2004
Member Rating: 6.8


(1)
Message 243 of 830 (869622)
01-02-2020 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 240 by Faith
01-02-2020 3:30 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
Sorry but your ability to judge the similarities and differences is ...lacking, to put it nicely.
says the person with no education in the field.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 240 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 3:30 PM Faith has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


(1)
Message 244 of 830 (869624)
01-02-2020 3:40 PM
Reply to: Message 240 by Faith
01-02-2020 3:30 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
quote:
Sorry but your ability to judge the similarities and differences is ...lacking, to put it nicely.
Says the woman who argued that sharper claws were a major difference while the strange proboscis found on a few trilobite species,, the massive size differences, the many variations in trilobite eyes as well as the significant differences in proportions are all minor
Really Faith you need to stop making up this nonsense. It is not productive discussion, it is not honest and it does you no good at all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 240 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 3:30 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 247 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 4:02 PM PaulK has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 245 of 830 (869630)
01-02-2020 3:55 PM
Reply to: Message 242 by DrJones*
01-02-2020 3:32 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
edit: whoops double tap
That's the only way to be sure that you've killed the zombie.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 242 by DrJones*, posted 01-02-2020 3:32 PM DrJones* has not replied

  
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


(1)
Message 246 of 830 (869632)
01-02-2020 4:01 PM
Reply to: Message 228 by Faith
01-02-2020 2:26 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
You are just plain mistaken, besides being miserably, willfully ignorant here. I went to the Houston Museum of Natural History last week, and their twenty or thirty display fossils of trilobites prove that you are either bluffing or jus’ plain dumb.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 228 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 2:26 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 247 of 830 (869633)
01-02-2020 4:02 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by PaulK
01-02-2020 3:40 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
WHAT? I never said such a thing about "sharper claws." PLEASE quote me when you claim I said this or that. Size differences are built into the genome of EVERY creature, that is no problem whatever. We get Clydesdales and we get ponies and we get Eohippus. We get Great Danes and we get chihuahuas. There are no differences in proportions, they are all differences in secondary features or whatever they should be called. The spines can take many forms from the same genome, the eyes also, without violating the basic trilobite shape.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 244 by PaulK, posted 01-02-2020 3:40 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 248 by PaulK, posted 01-02-2020 4:16 PM Faith has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


(1)
Message 248 of 830 (869636)
01-02-2020 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 247 by Faith
01-02-2020 4:02 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
quote:
WHAT? I never said such a thing about "sharper claws."
Sure you did, back when you were arguing that the differences between cats and dogs were bigger than the different cues between trilobites
quote:
Size differences are built into the genome of EVERY creature, that is no problem whatever
But there are limits on the size differences within a species. Even with selective breeding. The proportionate differences within the trilobites are far bigger than your examples - and you have to pull in selective breeding and even a different genus to get those!
quote:
We get Clydesdales and we get ponies and we get Eohippus.
Clydesdales are the product if artificial selection and Eohippus is a genus in itself.
quote:
There are no differences in proportions,
Sure there are, and quite major differences. It appears you have no concept of the differences within the trilobites.
quote:
The spines can take many forms from the same genome, the eyes also, without violating the basic trilobite shape.
Which shows that the basic shape defines a far larger taxonomic group than a species.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 247 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 4:02 PM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 249 of 830 (869639)
01-02-2020 4:59 PM
Reply to: Message 229 by Faith
01-02-2020 2:28 PM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
As I have argued, the only way you can get from one species to another is by trial and error through mutations.
Is that what you think evolution is? Despite years of us trying in vain to explain it to you? And you still have learned nothing?
If you are going to evaluate some system, then you had damned well better learn something about it! If you refuse to learn anything about a system that you evaluate, then your evaluation of it is pure crap!
That is an entirely different process from microevolution in which all the variations are built into the genome and simply appear through sexual recombination in the case of sexually reproducing creatures.
Except that that is not at all how it works! As has been explained to you repeatedly for years! And you still refuse to learn anything!
You don't like it? Oh dear.
Because it is pure crap!
And the reason why it's pure crap is because you have never learned how evolution works, how features would have evolved, and you persistently refuse to learn.
You have to get a genetic change that allows for the development of a fourth chamber.
And what would that actually take? What would it take to turn one ventricle into two? Of course, I'm making a very big assumption that you have the most basic understanding of cardiac anatomy, an assumption which is undoubtedly wrong.
Anatomically, what is the primary difference between a heart with a single ventricle and two ventricles? The answer is a septum, a membrane dividing the two. Furthermore, the best example of a true three-chamber heart with a single undivided ventricle is found in amphibians, because in reptiles we find the beginnings of a division between the two sides of the ventricle. Turtles have a muscular ridge which divides the ventricle very early in the ventricular contraction. Adults of the species of Crocodilia have a four-chambered heart (if anyone knows of Crocodilia species with the more standard 3-and-a-half chambers, please point them out), but biologists and zoologists have pointed out that their young hatch with 3.5 chambers and develop into 4 chambers as they grow, without missing a beat. And as Meddle pointed out, the human fetus starts with three chambers which develops into four chambers towards the end of gestation; ie, the septum grows and closes up.
So again: Just what does it take to change a three-chambered heart to a four-chambered? Or have you never ever given it any thought? We have. Why haven't you?
Since it isn't built into the genome the only way you are going to get it is by many different mutations that are probably not going to get you anywhere near that result . ever, but at least in bazillions of tries.
You almost start out in the right direction, but then you veer off straight into the weeds yet again. How sadly typical.
You start off by finally understanding that your idea of an overloaded genome is wrong and that genomes change though other mechanisms such as mutation. But then you get lost again.
First, do you even understand what mutations are, what kinds there are, and what their effects are? No, I didn't think so. Suffice to say that we are only speaking of genetic mutations that are heritable (since only they can be involved in evolution) and which can express as a difference in the phenotype.
Second, how many mutations are needed to change the phenotype? The effects are not necessarily proportional in that a small change in the genotype can express as a large change in the phenotype (as you would have learned if you had followed AnswersInGenitals' suggestion in Message 218 to read about hyperdactyly, but of course you refused to for fear of learning something). If an organism with a 3.5-chamber heart already had a rudimentary septum, then how much of a mutation would it need to complete the growth of that septum? Probably not much at all.
Third, what kind of changes do you envision (or rather have not bothered to even think about yet)? Are you thinking of a completely new and novel organ? Wrong! Are you thinking of a complete and novel reorganization of an existing trait? Wrong! If instead you thought of a minor change in an existing organ or trait, then you would finally be getting back on track.
The changes needed to go from a 3.5-chamber heart to a 4-chamber are almost trivial. Doesn't take much, which would be obvious to anyone who has ever given it much thought. Which you obviously haven't, but we have.
Fourth, you are wrong to say that those changes would not get us anywhere near the result. We are already near the result! Evolution works in small steps, not huge leaps: Natura non salta! ("Nature does not leap!"). It was the saltationists arguing for the sudden appearance of new and novel features that forced Darwin into a position of fairly strict gradualism (despite knowing that the rate of evolutionary change can change, the "new discovery" of punctuated equilibria).
Instead, the trait is already close, so the amount of change needed to complete the new trait is not that much. Everybody who has any understanding of evolution and how it works knows that already. But since you don't know anything about evolution, you don't know that.
 
Indeed, your emphasis on the non-evolutionary model of "trial and error" and "bazillions of tries" (no such number exists ; refer to my page, Number Names) tells us that your misunderstanding of evolution is far worse.
Please read my pages, MONKEY and MONKEY PROBABILITIES (MPROBS) (they are a pair: Monkey explains my experiment while MProbs explains why it works). Basically, when I read Richard Dawkins' description of his WEASEL program in The Blind Watchmaker, I could not believe it so I tried it myself -- since he didn't give a program listing (probably written in BASIC), I used his description as the specification for my own program, MONKEY (in honor of Eddington's model infinite monkeys typing Hamlet -- refer to the Internet The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS), RFC 2795), which I implemented in Turbo Pascal. That worked so incredibly well and quickly (compiled Pascal is much faster than interpreted BASIC) that I still could not believe it. So I analyzed the probabilities involved (and wrote that analysis up in MProbs) and finally understood why it was virtually impossible for it to fail (SPOILER: the probability of every single parallel attempt always failing becomes vanishingly small). I uploaded it to a CompuServe library where for the next half decade that I remained on that service it continued to be downloaded at least once for each and every month. On a web page collection of all such WEASEL programs, mine was rated as being most faithful to the original (small wonder, since the original was my specification). And all creationist attempts I've seen to "refute" WEASEL relied on adding features (eg, "locking rings") that did not exist and certainly do not exist in mine.
WEASEL was so named because it would produce a single line from Hamlet in which the characters look for shapes in clouds: "Methinks it is like a weasel." That reference is why I named mine MONKEY, which I chose to produce the English alphabet in alphabetical order (though I provide the option to enter your own choice of target string).
Dawkins wrote WEASEL to illustrate one of his points, the difference between single-step selection and cumulative selection:
  • Single-step Selection. You make repeated attempts to get the end result all in one giant saltation. If you fail, then you start over completely from scratch. Any "close but not quite" outcomes are lost.
    The probability of this method succeeding is abysmally small. In MPROBS I calculated that probability to be about 1.6244×10-37. Then I calculated the number of attempts you needed to attain one change in a million; it turns out that if you ran this on a supercomputer capable of a million attempts per second, it would take about 10,000 times longer than an estimate age of the universe of 20 billion (20×109) to have just one chance in a million of success. IOW, abysmally small.
    When creationists advance probability arguments against evolution, this is the kind of selection that they try to saddle evolution with. But this is not the kind of selection that evolution uses, nor does it have bearing on how life even works.
  • Cumulative Selection. Here, you create a population of possible solutions. You rate them all and select the one that comes closest to the final result, then you use that one to generate the next population, with each new possible solution differing by a single random letter placed in a random position. Rinse and repeat until you arrive at the target solution.
    The probability of this method succeeding is virtually inevitable. For it to fail, every single new string in every single generation would need to fail, which becomes vanishingly small so as to become virtually impossible. When I ran it on my IBM XT clone (Norton Index of 2) it would succeed consistently in less than a minute (depending on the population size I would select; the smaller the population size the longer it would take). Now when I run it on a new Windows box (about 1000 times faster) it appears to succeed instantaneously, so in order to watch it work I have to choose a small population size.
    This is the kind of selection that evolution uses and which is based on how life works. This has led me to a basic definition of evolution as "the results of life doing what life does."
 
So, Faith, when you go on about "trial and error" and "bazillions of tries", you are obviously using single-step selection. We know that that is not in any way how life works and hence is not in any way how evolution would work.
Because of your gross misunderstanding of evolution using your abysmally bad single-step selection, you fool yourself into the false belief that evolution could not possibly work. Which we can clearly see is not the case.
So by not having learned what evolution is nor now it works, you have fooled yourself into filling your head with pure crap.
Just think it through ...
We have and, as a result, we have learned much and have gained a good understanding of many things.
You have not thought it through and, as a result, your head is filled with pure crap.
... and stop complaining.
Only when you finally learn something and stop spouting pure crap.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 229 by Faith, posted 01-02-2020 2:28 PM Faith has not replied

  
AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 150 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 250 of 830 (869642)
01-02-2020 7:10 PM
Reply to: Message 219 by Faith
01-01-2020 9:10 PM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
Hyperdactyly (or polydactyly) is the presence of extra fingers and/or toes or both and occurs in about 1 out of every 500 births in humans. Given that 130 million humans are born every year, that means lots of occurrences. Francesco A. Lentini was born with three legs. Being born with extra limbs is rare, but has occurred frequently enough that it has a name: Polymelia. this article tells us
Cor triatriatum is a rare congenital cardiac anomaly, in which a fibromuscular membrane divides the atrium in two. It was first reported in 1868.6 Cor triatriatum, a heart with 3 atria (triatrial heart), is a congenital anomaly in which the left atrium (cor triatriatum sinistrum) or right atrium (cor triatriatum dextrum) is divided into 2 parts by a fold of tissue, a membrane, or a fibromuscular band.
Note that these birth defects (maybe events is a better word) are sporadic, i. e., they are not inherited from parents but are due to a random mutation. Also, interestingly, Octopuses have 3 hearts and 9 brains.
So it seems that nature cares little for what you find delusional or that would drive you bonkers. Stupid nature.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 219 by Faith, posted 01-01-2020 9:10 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 251 by jar, posted 01-02-2020 7:18 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied
 Message 252 by Faith, posted 01-03-2020 10:15 AM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 251 of 830 (869644)
01-02-2020 7:18 PM
Reply to: Message 250 by AnswersInGenitals
01-02-2020 7:10 PM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
Reality also has more than two species and even mutable species.

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill StudiosMy Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
 Message 250 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 01-02-2020 7:10 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 252 of 830 (869647)
01-03-2020 10:15 AM
Reply to: Message 250 by AnswersInGenitals
01-02-2020 7:10 PM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
Why should mutational anomalies be a problem for anything I've said? Is the extra heart chamber functional? How many more changes would be needed to make it functional? What's to guarantee they'd occur where they need to occur? Why on earth the occasional anomaly is supposed to prove something I don't know.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 250 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 01-02-2020 7:10 PM AnswersInGenitals has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 253 by JonF, posted 01-03-2020 10:25 AM Faith has replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 253 of 830 (869648)
01-03-2020 10:25 AM
Reply to: Message 252 by Faith
01-03-2020 10:15 AM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
Is the extra heart chamber functional?
Irrelevant.
How many more changes would be needed to make it functional
Nobody knows. What would be the interest in knowing whether it's 91 or 1,857 or 893 or ...
What's to guarantee they'd occur where they need to occur?
Nothing. The possibilities that could happen are many orders of magnitude larger than what does happen.
You just can't understand the evolution has no goal.
Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 252 by Faith, posted 01-03-2020 10:15 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 254 by Faith, posted 01-03-2020 10:47 AM JonF has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 254 of 830 (869651)
01-03-2020 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 253 by JonF
01-03-2020 10:25 AM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
It's the main point I was making so of course if you call it irrelevant you don't let me make my point. My argument was that trial and error would be impossible because the number of trials even to get a small functioning part would be impossible and the necessary trials to build on that small function would be beyond beyond. If your anomaly is functional then you are already closer to the goal than I was predicting, but again, I don't think the occasional mutation in the right direction proves anything anyway. You'd have to show a LOT of such mutations to begin to counter my argument.
I understand you guys don't like my arguments but you are awfully obvious about it which kind of makes my point.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 253 by JonF, posted 01-03-2020 10:25 AM JonF has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 255 by JonF, posted 01-03-2020 11:17 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 261 by dwise1, posted 01-03-2020 1:32 PM Faith has replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 255 of 830 (869659)
01-03-2020 11:17 AM
Reply to: Message 254 by Faith
01-03-2020 10:47 AM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
the number of trials even to get a small functioning part would be impossible
Not when selection is operating.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 254 by Faith, posted 01-03-2020 10:47 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 256 by jar, posted 01-03-2020 11:26 AM JonF has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024