My 2 cents on Creation and Evolution

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Evolution is a wonderful idea. It's very elligant, beautiful, and certanly has large bodes of evidence in it's favor. I myself find it very compelling, but I have to admit I have lots of glaring questions reguarding how it works and wether or not it really works. Understand that I am not saying Evolution is false, just that their are lots of reasons why people, including a semi-silent but persistant underground of non-creationist scientists are unconvinced of it's entire truthfulness.

No one has ever seen an animal species evolve into another one. Oh sure we see a given microbe and plant species improve on itself, but we have not seen in animals any kind of species transmutation within the lifetime of science. We have used genetic manipulation to activate dormant genes in flightless birds to cause them to grow teeth. We have seen black moths survive in coal soot over white ones because of their natural camoflage. We have seen birds in the galopogus islands grow larger bills as an adaptation to food supply due to a massive fire. But, in each of those events the species did not "evolve". When the factory was shut down, the number of black and white moths returned to normal, and in the Galopogus finches, the beak sizes eventually returned to normal.

On the other hand, micro-evolution does happen. Species do indeed adopt to enviornments or diseases. But, that has nothing to do with wether or not those given animals or plants can still suscesfully interbreed with given members of their species. When Europeans came to North America and many Native Americans did indeed get wiped out by their diseases, that does not mean that the Europeans could not interbreed with the Native Americans. Though the Native Americans were not adopted to European diseases, that does not mean that they were not genetically compatible with the Europeans.

The big stumbling block for Evolution in my mind lies not in adaptation, but in reproduction. In human reproduction and in the reproduction of all live-birth animals, the mothers body is very intollerant to forign organisms. This means that the genetics of the offspring cannot be differnt from hers species wide by anything less than very tiny fraction of a percent. Otherwise, her body will reject the offspring through miscarrage, and if she does not the offspring will not be viable. Downs syndrome, mental retardation, and other similar disorders are examples of what happens when the genetics of a human child are abnormal. If we existed in a state of nature, predators would pick off such weakly ones in no time if their mothers did not abandon them.

My 2 cents.

 

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Xevious ...

Welcome to Sciforums.

If I give you 1¢ back, will you leave?

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Take care, and enjoy.

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Great. Now newbs will confuse me with a creationist poster.

*Hides in shame*

Viva la resistance.

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You've heard of fossils, right?

Evolution by natural selection disproves evolution? What have you been smoking?

Welcome to sciforums, btw.

 

I thought you two might be related. I thought she might be some sort of derivative of Xev, but not anymore after reading her post

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With reguards to my genetics argument, your pointing out correctly that Genome A, B, and C are indeed a transmutation. However, you are not taking the genome of the father into account. As long as the females are mating with other members of her species, her genetics will remain normal for the species. Darwin argued that they must live as part of a seperate population, which will interbreed certain characteristics through local genetic closeness. The problem is, nature does not allow that to happen either.

The world's Cheeta population is in serious jeopardy because they are all very close genetically. Because no "new" genes are being introduced, the Cheetas have a very high mortality rate amoung it's young. Evolution demands however, that the genetic closeness of the Cheeta population would be spurring evolution because of interbreeding of close genes. However, that is not what's happening. Cheetas are dying out. Clearly, genetic closeness kills a species, not improves it.

 

Sigh

What happens is that two large populations get separated somehow. This needs not be a physical separation, it could also be part of the population feeding on something different. We see this all the time, but normally the two populations dont diverge permanently, it could happen however.

This species division, however, is partly arbitrary. While we can all agree that girafees and moths are different species, the case is much more complex with others. Take horses and donkeys; they can interbreed, but the offspring is not normally fertile; one day, though, a fertile mule might appear. Among fish, especially fresh water fish, many species can interbreed if their habitats come in contact.

All this is damn futile anyhow. Try to look at it this way:

You see a mountain before you. You cannot understand how that mountain has come into existence, and the explanations you get from learned people are incomplete and not entirely coherent. Which conclusion do you draw:

a) Since the learned people cannot explaint it, the mountain is not there.

b) The mountain is clearly there, but it seems the learned people dont know everything.

The mountain I'm talking about is the mountain of evidence that evolution happened: Fossils, the whole family tree of interelated species, the adaptation we see everywhere, the entire genetic system we have quite recently discovered. All findings support that evolution has taken place and is still taking place.

So there are a number of things we cannot explaing in detail? What of it? We cannot explain a lot of things about how the Earth is functioning, does that lead you to doubt its existence??

Hans

 

You and I both know inbreeding causes birth defects and other abnormalities. We see it in our own species and in others all the time.

 

And as we can see from the real world, rather than spurring sudden evolutionary changes to help the species survive, that inbreeding is just killing off the species.

 

Are we confused yet?

Inbreeding is more likely to give rise to genetic defects... but it can also double the potecy of desirable traits. Study how it worked out in the royal familes of Europe with hemophila in Victoria's line. Keep in mind that inbreeding is carefully used by animal breeders in an attempt to get recessive, rare traits to be expressed, such as albinism.

To say it spurs speciation wouldn't really be accurate. What spurs speciation is isolation of populations, and differing environmental pressures that cause nature to "select" different traits for continuation.

Although humans shun the thought of breeding with relatives, it is not always as deadly as it is said to be. It is detrimental over time, however. Variety is not just the spice of life -- it is the main dish. Learn about meiosis and sexual reproduction on the molecular level, and you will see how awesome a power it is. Not only independent assortment of chromosomes, but crossing over, mutations (of various types)... it's enough to make me want to read that chapter in my biology book I "liberated" all over again!

And this variety is what drives change in sexually reproducing organisms. No two are 100% the same... it's natural that one may be the better model, to breed with another better model, and hope that their offspring can be better yet.

Or so I think. Was that wordy or what?

 

Downs syndrome, mental retardation, and other similar disorders are examples of what happens when the genetics of a human child are abnormal

I missed this the first time.

Down's syndrome and often mental retardation are caused by errors in meiosis. Sometimes sister chromatids do not separate and the sex cell has an extra chromosome or two, or it is missing one or two. Many serious disorders are of this nature. The disorders are not encoded in DNA and passed on, but are caused by chance errors in cell division. Down's syndrome can not be eliminated or increased in the population as far as evolution's mechanism's are concerned, unless some people are somehow genetically coded for more cell division errors.

Just nitpicking.

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It's true that more desireable traits can become more dominant due to inbreeding. However, at what cost? Those individuals often tend to have other traits that are detrimental, or they have mental instabilities. The actions of the Royal Families is evidence enough of that. Maybe they stayed in power a while, but eventually they were swept out of power by the masses, and they did indeed become more and more unstable with each generation.

The Dog petigree business is in serious trouble because of inbreeding. Their is tons of info on that subject.

 

However, the discussion of inbreeding is entirely irrelvant to the discussion of evolution.

Hans

 

Not entirely. Humans have a very low genetic variability given the time our species has existed (when compared to other primates, such as chimps for example.) It has been conjectured that at some time near its origin, our species teetered on extinction. That means our ancestors at least at that one point in time did a lot of inbreeding.

Inbreeding helps combat the problem of genetic dilution. For example, even if a mutation arises it is less likely to take hold if the population is large and varied because every time during reproduction it only has a 50% chance (if dominant) and a much lesser chance (if recessive) of being passed on to progeny and spread to the point that it becomes common in the population.

For humans (and immediate ancestors), this is prevented by the fact that historically they lived in relatively small, tight communities -- so there must have been much more inbreeding than there is today. Only with relatively recent technological progress can we have large concentrations of population supporting themselves and/or being in contact with other, remote populations.

 

If your inbreeding and getting genetically closer, the new DNA can only be introduced by random mutations, which augment survivability. I see where Darwin's thinking was going, but I don't believe that nature allows this to happen. What your talking about is microevolution eventually adding up to macroevolution, and reproduction so far does not allow this to happen. Extreme changes of DNA which would add say a 3rd eye for example are rejected by reproduction because they are not at all normal for the species.

 

"No one has ever seen an animal species evolve into another one. "

I got something for you to smoke. Then you'll see.

Seriously, though-

go read something by Karl Popper or something about logic and argumentation in general, and what fallacies are. Read about something called Hempel's Raven. Then you'll take care not to use such statements like "no one has ever seen..."

Xevious, you seem to not see a similar property in adaptation on a micro level, and evolution, which is a macro-level phenomenon that occurs over billions of years. On the net you can find a timeline of the earth's history, as elegantly posed by Carl Sagan as a single calendar year, that civilization and all their observations of finches arise only in the final seconds before midnight of December 31. Life comes along in late September or so (beginning of the fiscal year), but that's a lot of weeks to make some changes in management before posting first quarter earnings- sorry my metaphor client got stuck on my editor here. So, getting back to billions of years, that's a big laboratory. Plenty of time for lots of species to develop, and, alas, die out, even through inbreeding. Every species is an experiment, a test, a hypothesis, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are considered a failure upon extinction, it's that they're no longer relevant to the ecosystem. I wonder much the same about our own species. I don't know if you're taking an ID tack or outright creationism, but prepare to be crushed if that's the case. You seem to know a thing or two about evolution and biology. Now go learn a third.

Le Coq

Check
http://www.upfromdragons.com/01mirror.htm

 

I can't leave this alone, there's so much rich material.

". As long as the females are mating with other members of her species, her genetics will remain normal for the species. "

Huh? You're interchanging plural and singular concepts here...
What does "remain normal" mean?
A daughter is always genetically different from the mother. A genetic line can bend, but if it ever breaks (as in the case of a mule, or an offspring of normal parents that is born sterile or with a wildly mutated genome that won't find purchase), it doesn't continue. As days go by, my dirty vegas, the line may be far and away very different from earlier generations. We may not be able to mate with early homo sapiens with procreative success. Given enough grant money, I'd give it a shot, but I would say with good probability that I could go far enough back that I would find a great-to-some-power grandmother that I won't be able to have kids with. But I bet I could have decent kids that could make it most of the way through public school if I were to procreate with, say, my great-great grandmother. Where am I going with this? You tell me. I forgot.

Cheetahs, who appreciate being spelled with an h, are dying out because of a declining gene pool. This means that there isn't enough variety in the species, and so the inbreeding of cousins and sisters are closing in on themselves, because their habitat is closing in. It's like being at a trading card convention and most everyone has all the same cards. It's a bum convention. The market has been saturated, and rarity and true variety has been depressed. Almost all species have to expand to a sustainable volume and territory, and most eventually split and travel for distant lands, and take divergent paths genetically. Some go past the current limits of territory and volume, overpopulate, and die off back to sustainability or even worse. Some are prevented from propagating to these limits for whatever reasons (asteroids, bulldozers, etc.). The plight of cheetahs may have something to do with human-induced factors. In any case, there is a delimiting point that a species cannot exist under, in terms of variety of genomes, to continue propagation for an indefinite amount of generations. Cheetahs have most likely slipped under this point, and may not return.
RIP, dudes. Some of us will represent.

And nothing in Evolution "demands" a declining gene pool to spontaneously "phoenix" itself out of a jam. It doesn't rule it out, though.

Le Coq

 

"Science is not only about fact but orientation -- who and what we are. We are part of the universe, an instance of life, and an individual expression of what is still only partially understood - the phenomena of mind and consciousness. What is the relationship between us here -- question asking and fact seeking intelligent beings -- to this much larger story of all things? The cosmic mirror aims to put you in touch -- here we seek to stop you reading this book as yet another about science and instead get you to see your hidden self. You - here as you breath and reflect -- are history from the Big Bang, the formation of the Earth, the origin of life and the varied stages of biological existence that led to you. But you need to see - that other self in the mirror."

All you have to do is read the 1st paragraph and see what science is from the prespective of the author. It's about seeking a spiritual connection with the universe and with life around us. It's about finding a wonderful meaning in everything you see, and how you are a part of that. Wow, that sounds like a religion.