Designated Religion Argument Thread

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I heard about this one in college. It is clearly not a mutation and was not presented as such. I believe both variants have been around for a very long time, it just the dark variants were eaten quickly and so not really noticed much before the mid-1800's.

There are simply two forms of the insect each with a slight genetic difference (think of blue eyes versus brown). I'm not sure which trait is dominant, but both the dark and light can produce offspring that is either dark or light (the ratio depends on the lineage). As the light colored variant is eaten and dwindles down, the dark colored variant breeds more and becomes more numerous. The reverse is happening today. That IS evolution. You can call evolution, microevolution, macroevolution, or even Fred for all I care. It shows a change in a species in response to it's environment -- that's evolution in progress (natural selection).

[ August 11, 2005, 15:52: Message edited by: T2Bruno ]

 

Aldeth : you give NOG too much credit There is no way the moon (or other astronomical body besides the Sun) will shield Earth from meteorites (to any significant degree). Let's take the moon, for example. The only way it can act as a shield is if it cames directly in the path of the meteorite. The fact that the moon might came closer to the meteorite at some point does not matter at all, since the gravitational pull of the moon is way to weak to affect bodies moving with such a large speed.

So, then it is a simple geometry problem. The moon has a diameter of about 3,000 Km. The distance from the Earth to moon is about 100 times as large, that is, R = 300,000 Km. So, the moon should cover the circumference of a circle of length 2 pi R = about 2 milion Km. So, chances that a meteor coming straight to earth will strike the moon are about 1 in 600. Kind of small, I would say.

As to the other planets: they are bigger than the moon, but much farter, too. So their 'shielding' effect will be even smaller.

Of course, you are perfectly right that what mostly shields the Earth is the atmosphere. This works for most of the small meteorites. The larger ones, well...

 

Aldeth:
Your quite right on all points, but you missed the point. The point is that all these things lessen the number and frequency of impacts to the point that life can recouperate and develope between them. Imagine if another massive asteroid had impacted only a hundred years after a massive impact. There's already a significantly reduced world population, and here you get a double whammy. The ash cloud from the first is still in effect and here you have a second. If you look at the moon, there are a few very big craters there. I don't think we have any way to know when they got there, but if we didn't have a moon, those would have hit Earth instead.
Khaavern:
As for the other planets, the same principle applies, though the effect is greater than you'd think. Look at Shoemaker. Without Jupiter, it could well have impacted Earth, and yet just getting close to Jupiter's gravity well was enough to radically change it's course and shatter it into numerous smaller asteroids, all on different courses. Only one of could possibly have hit Earth even if they had escaped Jupiter and continued on.
Blackthorne:
My marsupial-placental question was as much why didn't placentals take over Australia when they obviously could (dingo introduction by colonists) as it was why didn't marsupials thrive elsewhere.
As to the eye, these differences are as common within one common heritage as they are between them. The differences are minimal compared to the similarities.
Felinoid:
Natural selection requires that ana mutation be better or worse, but these intermediate stages were all but the same. If reptiles and mammals thrive and the early intermediates were just as good and no better than reptiles, why did they die out? Why did stage 2 replace stage 1, and 3 replace 2, when there's no functional differences between them? Ans if there's just as much difference between reptiles and 1 as there is between 1 and 2, why didn't 1 replace reptiles?
All:
Blackthorne's link had another problem, too. It said all ife uses the same polymers, but biochemists have recently discovered another polymer in human mitochondria. The only two places in the known world it occurs is human mitochondria (no other form of life) and certain clay layers. How does that make any sense. They also can't tell (yet) what it does or if it is beneficial or not. For hundreds of more points like this one, well documented, go to Origin of Life: the chirality problem . This is only one of many articles on this site, including a rather thorough debunking of the ape to man issue; go to the main page and click on the "This is no History" article. The final conclusion is that evolution explains a lot, but there's also a lot of stuff it should explain that it doesn't. The assumptions I was talking about is that all these things 'just happen to have happened'.

[ August 11, 2005, 17:19: Message edited by: NOG (No Other Gods) ]

 

Thanks, khaavern; I needed that.

Because 1 wasn't there any more. The reptiles are 'perfect' for their environment, so it's the worse branches who are forced to go out to other environments and start evolving, or else they die off. They find a different place that's better suited to their mutation, and they thrive there.

 

Theoretically possible, but what are the f'ing odds? The frequency of these things aren't measured in term of centuries or even millenia. They are measured in terms of tens of millions of years. In fact, the average time between mass extinctions is between 40 million and 60 million years.

Sure. If you define "it well could have" being about 100 million to 1 odds.

Let's go back a little bit first. I wasn't saying that things like shoemaker-levy never happen. I'm only saying that the solar system is big - like really BIG No matter what, there's a whole lot higher probability of a projtile hitting nothing - the earth or otherwise - than hitting anything in the entire solar system. That's why we see comets coming back year after year after year. If there was any realistic chance of them hitting something - anything - we wouldn't see them anymore. Haley's comet has been coming around every 75 years or so for at least a few centuries (likely earlier but it was not documented). Is there a chance that 55 or so years from now Haley's comet won't show up? Yeah, I guess, but chances are it will because the odds of it hitting anything are remote.

So what does that tell us? Most projectiles aren't going to hit the earth just based on statistics. Now you're saying that we're protected by these other planets from impacts. That means that you are taking the already miniscule possibility of something being on a collision course with the earth, and combining that with another miniscule possibility that it is simultaneously on a collision course with some other planetary body. What are the f'ing odds of that happening?

But anyway, I'll be generous and say that when we combine all of these factors that they reduce impacts on earth by 50%. I don't think it's anywhere NEAR that - probably more like 1% or 2% but like i said, I'm being generous. Now, instead of having impacts every 40 to 60 million years, we'd have them every 20 to 30 million years. Guess what? The planet repopulates much faster than this. So the mere thought that without these other factors a major impact with an extraterristrial body would happen once a century is ridiculous. The only way it would make any significant difference is if one these factors stopped an earth-ending event. Like an asteroid a few hundred miles across hitting the earth - that would leave a mark. Keep in mind that the object that ended the dinosaurs existence on this planet was thought to be about 12 miles across as a reference for how big we're talking here.

I'd like to expand upon this point as well. Many people have this thought that evolution is working towards some goal. That humans are the pinnacle of evolution and that all of evolution up to this point was the development of a species that would dominate the planet. It simply doesn't work that way. If you have a good design for the environment, you won't change that much. Sure, there's still survival of the fitest, in that the strongest and best tend to pass on their genes more frequently, but there won't be many changes in actual morphology from one generation to the next. Look at sharks and crocodiles. These things are pretty much exactly the same now as they were millions of years ago. Why? Because if your design works really well, it won't be replaced unless you get a design that actually works better. That's what Fellinoid means when he says "perfect". That the odds of finding something better are remote to say the least.

 

NOG: The arguments you bring sound plausible, but they do not really hold to deeper examination.

It is true that large planets can break comets which come to close. However, the comet has to be really close. For example, for Jupiter the Roche limit (how close to the planetary surface a comet should get before breaking up) is around 100,000 Km . The diameter of Jupiter is 150,000 Km. So, pretty much the comet has to hit the planet head on. (and note that Jupiter is by far the biggest planet in the solar system)

Actually, Shoemaker is a bad example for supporting your argument. There would have been no chance for the comet to hit Earth before breaking up. There would have been a bigger chance for a fragment of it after breakup (not big enough to matter, but anyhow). So, one can argue large planets can increase the chance of asteroids hitting Earth

I also took a look on the website you mention. Now I think I can figure where you come up from with such arguments

Felinoid: happy to be of help

 

But I bowed out of this thread when you guys got into specifics of Evolution. Oh, Wait, it's Alley of Dangerous Angles, not Jokes or smells...

 

I've been growing some mammary cancer cells in a lab for a year now. Today we got some new ones in, exactly the same line as the ones I've been growing. The difference is night and day. The new ones are morphologically different (even a layman could spot the difference), divide slower, less resistant to certain enzymes, more easily transfected... etc etc. These cells are exactly the same from the same source, only the old ones have been growing longer. They are probably no longer mammary cells, just by phenotype I'd say they were generic epithelial cells.

Evolution in action.

 

Felinoid:

How were the early stages worse? It was like having the bones in our crown rotated a few degrees, there's no difference because they don't move anyway.But if this were true, the intermediate stages would be in different places than reptiles, not right along side them.
Aldeth:
I freely admit that I am an engineer with many other interests and am not an expert in the fields, but this is a position that is respected, not universally accepted, among astrologers and astrophysicists. I don't know what the probabilities actually are. By the way, the size of objects for impact, is that before they enter the atmosphere, or on actual impact, because that can make a large difference, can't it? Just asking if anyone knows.

So waht your saying is that these things have stopped evolving, or at least will never evolve into anything better?
Blackthorne:
Hail, fellow engineer. Anyway, the time thing doesn't work because dingos were intoduced in the 1700's I think, maybe 1600's, and have thrived.

That's my point. They aren't in one common herritage, but the differences between them are minimal compared to the stages they individually came from.

The cycle goes on. For every debunking of either side, the other claims to have debunked it. Some of these are true, others are not, but I'd be interested on any that you can link to us.

I know. I haven't been trying to prove it wrong, I've just been trying to show that it is far from the scientific fact that so many people think it is.

Edit: Blackthorne: I'd especially be interested in any Origin of Life Problem debunkings.

 

Oh, come on. At least give him specific points to debunk. Just telling him to debunk the ENTIRE WEBSITE is a little unreasonable. The specific page you linked certainly did not have anything to debunk -- there was no smoking gun there, more like a smoke screen.

The whole issue of chirality is moot. Enzymes give the proper chirality due to millions of years of evolution developing these enzymes. The enzymes can be used to make the proper orientation in chemistry and it's currently being done. In fact, the use of enzymes to make the proper orientation of medicinals is a huge area of research (by the way, cocaine can not made synthetically because it's stereoisomer is toxic -- that and the Medellin drug cartel would probably kill anyone who succeeded).

Polymerization is commonly carried out with a 'seed' polymer -- this seed serves as a blueprint for the mass of polymer being made and specific orientation can be developed in the polymer (the same process makes silicon wafers). This is very similar to how the enzymes work.

The article (and the couple others I read on the site) just throws a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo at the layman. The advertising industry does the same thing -- put all kind of technical stuff (and some person in a white labcoat) and the unsuspecting public just thinks, 'wow, that MUST be correct, look at all the scientific terms.' The cosmetic and food supplement industries are notorious for this.

If you can't impress them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bull****.

 

Someone probably does, but that someone isn't me. I saw that fact on the Discovery Channel or something of the like. I don't remember if they specified as to whether it was on impact or entering the atmosphere, and I'm not really in a position to ask them to find out which they meant.

No., for two reasons. First, a level of microevolution is occuring in every population - that is survival of the fitest. The biggest, stongest, fastest, etc. are always going to have a better chance to live longer and reproduce more, thereby getting as many bigger, stronger, faster, etc., genes as possible into the next generation.

Second, just because macroevolution has not occured to any noticable degree in things like sharks and crocs doesn't mean that the species has somehow lost the ability to evolve. However, given that they have not evolved in so long, it does suggest that there would have to be major envorinmental change that would make their presently very effective forms ineffective under the new conditions. Evolution happens based on selection pressures, so it essence, for evolution to take place, a new external pressure would have to materialize.

 

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that science cannot disprove the possibility, so assuming it to be false, for whatever reason, is no better than assuming it to be true. Also, if this evidence is so convincing that all professionals in the field concider evolution fact, why hasn't it become a scientific law? As far as I know, general acceptance by the scientific community is the standard.
Aldeth:
The Discovery Channel, while interesting and informative, is not always a reliable source. I have seen that pepper moth incident cited as proof by them several times, whick dropped my previously high concideration of them conciderably. (mopes off to once again tearfully assault a shredded Discovery Channel poster in the corner) Oh the fallen heroes of old! Sorry.

 

Blackthrone:
Ok, I don't know who that guy is, but that's just rediculous.
The guy I quoted said (in different words) that christians assume it must be God if they can't explain it, and several people have assumed that it can't be God because other things can be explained. Also, what's a theory if not a possible explanation for something you do not (yet) understand. The entire foundation of science is basically, make something up about what you don't understand, see if it's right, if it's wrong, repeat.

 

I posted this link in another thread, but it's applicable here too:

Creationism vs Evolution

 

Blackthorne:
Ok, what I'm trying to say is that the development of a theory is not a purely analytical process wholly devoid of the creative. Scientists make possible explanations for observed phenomena they do not understand in an effort to understand them, but that's still making something up. On the surface, religion is the same thing, it just uses an explanation that cannot be tested.

 

... turning it into the opposite to science as testablility in order to verify an observation and the conclusions made is a precondition for science.

Insofar it is not at all the same thing.