Argument For Evolution

Off Topic
21

[quote]cap’nsalty wrote:

Secondly, if you don’t already know good arguments for it, why do you believe it? [/quote]

I didnt say that. Im talking here about just little things you could use for examples on why you believe in evolution. Like I said, Ive read a few books about it and that doesnt mean i even comprehend it very well at all, but with all that ive read im thouroughly convinced. But I cant exactly relay a few books worth of information to someone if they say to me “What makes you believe in evolution??” in a casual conversation.

And thanks to anyone else who posted, good stuff. I appreciate it.

23

[quote]Valar Morghulis wrote:
cap’nsalty wrote:

Secondly, if you don’t already know good arguments for it, why do you believe it?

I didnt say that. Im talking here about just little things you could use for examples on why you believe in evolution. Like I said, Ive read a few books about it and that doesnt mean i even comprehend it very well at all, but with all that ive read im thouroughly convinced. But I cant exactly relay a few books worth of information to someone if they say to me “What makes you believe in evolution??” in a casual conversation.

And thanks to anyone else who posted, good stuff. I appreciate it.[/quote]

I think I misunderstood you the first time, then. I’m sorry for dragging the creationist baggage here, in any case.

To be honest, asking “Why do you believe in evolution?” is akin to asking “Why do you believe in electricity?” or “Why do you believe in gravity?” It’s a phenomenon that exists, is testable, and is repeatable.

So, if someone asks you, you can literally reply with: “It happens.” Then you can cite any of the various examples of evolution (that is, random mutations that are advantageously selected over time). The bacteria example above is a good one. You could also point out that any domesticated animal is a good example of evolution happening (mutations that created “good” traits were selectively bred for).

Note that this has nothing to do with the exact “reason” behind evolution. Evolution is a phenomenon that has been shown to happen in the modern world, and there is a large body of evidence that it has happened before. Whether the course of evolution is dictated by God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or a Random Number Generator has nothing to do with the phenomenon itself.

24

[quote]cap’nsalty wrote:
This is either a not clever joke, or you sound like you just want to be an ass. A “hardcore” evolutionist? What does that even mean?

Secondly, if you don’t already know good arguments for it, why do you believe it? [/quote]

Because he’s “HARDCORE”.

If you ask me, the best response in ANY argument is “Is too(is not)”. There’s just no debating such a point.

DB

25

i don’t agree with evolution. My concept of it is that organisms get better by adapting - this to me would suggest something being added to the gene pool of that organism. The more specialised the “thing” the worse off it is i think. for example dogs “purebred” are stretched to their limits in a gene way and so have a host of health problems whereas a “mongrel” dog has more of a gene pool and are basically indestrucible lol.

I agree with natural selection and think this is what most people think evolution is.
Spray bugs with ddt and loads die then in a couple of years time ddt is useless against the bugs - have they evolved? No - some had a natural immunity and as they are the only ones left they breed and their little baby bugs are also immune. Are they “better” or has their overall gene pool from which they can draw on become vastly reduced.

26

my dad is extremly religious but noone else believes in it in my family.

im Agnostic myself, theres so many religions out there like they all cant be right.

i do believe in evolution of some degree but not to the degree that mokeys have evolved into humans but you never know it sounds more realistic than any religion.

humans are still evolving for example the average height is becoming taller.

27

[quote]Psnatch wrote:
The bacteria example you gave is not a very good example of evolution. The cells that show immuntiy are genetic mutations of the original bacteria which is why they are unaffected.[/quote]

What do you think evolution is? Change in allele frequencies in a population.

This is called the cost of resistance. It is not a “step-back” in evolution. There isn’t such a thing. It is a well studied phenomena. All it means is that one mutation is beneficial under one circumstance, but costly under another. Gene x environment interactions. This is basic stuff man.

As for your insistence on directionality in evolution, again, there is no theoretical reason to expect directionality except under constant directional selection. Antibiotics being used and then stopped is more like disruptional selection or fluctuating environments, of course you’re going to get cycling of genotypes, or displacement of genotypes.

28

[quote]Ryu wrote:
i don’t agree with evolution.[/quote]

Whether you believe in it or not is pretty much irrelevant. It happens regardless of your belief.

Uh yeah, they adapt, that’s evolution.

That is called mutation.

A specialist isn’t worse off for what it is adapted to do, is it? It can outcompete a generalist in a specific niche.

You’re getting into ecology now, however. This is an argument of whether an ecosystem of specialists or overlapping generalists is more robust. Interesting question, but it has nothing to do with evolution.

Uh, negative.

Purebreds have recessive deleterious mutations from repeated inbreeding. Mixed breeds are outbred, hence they have fewer recessive deleterious mutations. This is kind of basic. High school biology stuff.

[quote]I agree with natural selection and think this is what most people think evolution is.
Spray bugs with ddt and loads die then in a couple of years time ddt is useless against the bugs - have they evolved? No - some had a natural immunity and as they are the only ones left they breed and their little baby bugs are also immune.[/quote]

Dude, are you really this ignorant or is it a put on?
Of course they evolved, shit man. I mean, of course
there are DDT resistant bugs in the population prior to DDT spraying at low frequencies (like 1/1,000,000). So you have wild-type, sensitive bugs, and a few mutant DDT resistant ones. How did you get the resistant ones? Mutation. Then you select on them via pesticide application and lo and behold, now you have a population of almost exclusively DDT-resistant bugs.

Better is a qualitative term. Has the gene popl been reduced? Hard to say. During the initial selective event, of course. Will they have the same standing variation a number of years later? Depends on migration rates and mutation rates, right?

29

[quote]Psnatch wrote:
Valar Morghulis wrote:
So I was thinking today, i’m a pretty “hardcore” evolutionist, and ive read a few books on the subject lately, but what would I say if I had to debate with someone my own reasons for believing in evolution? Im not trying to start a war here between religious people and evolutionist… so i’d apprecuate if no one posted here trying to convince me that evolution isnt real and stayed on the topic.

Now, to the topic: If you, as someone who believes in evolution, was asked why you believe in evolution, what would you say? I guess I would say something about how you can really watch things evolve, like bacteria, for example, by exposing them to antibacterial chemicals until some mutate, become immune, and all of a suddon its somewhat a form of evolution (not nearly as on a large scale as people coming from bacteria, but you get the point).

I’d also talk about how close our behavior and genetic makeup is to gorillas, chimpanzee’s, etc. I also have some good “comebacks” to certain points someone could bring up, but I wont list all of it here.

So, im done rambling. Tell me why YOU believe in evolution, if in fact you do so, and again, please no one try and start an evlution/creationism thing =P.

The bacteria example you gave is not a very good example of evolution. The cells that show immuntiy are genetic mutations of the original bacteria which is why they are unaffected. But, when the original bacteria is re-introduced the mutated cells that were immune die out as they cannot compete due to their mutation. The immune mutations are actually a step back in terms of evolution.[/quote]

Dude, not always and not if the hazardous condition remains. It’s a very good example of evolution.

Evolution does not mean better, bigger, faster, stronger, cuter. It means more cut out for a new environment.

30

[quote]Valar Morghulis wrote:
…what would I say if I had to debate with someone my own reasons for believing in evolution? …[/quote]

The first thing you have to understand, is that you do not believe in evolution!!

The Theory of Evolution is a logical/reasonable explanation of the facts. We have evidence gathered from many angles: the fossil record, molecular biology, lab experiments, etc.

Facts, evidence, are not dependent on what you believe.

So please, stop using the word believe. As a person of reason it should not be part of your vocabulary.

31

[quote]superscience wrote:
i do believe in evolution of some degree but not to the degree that mokeys have evolved into humans but you never know it sounds more realistic than any religion. [/quote]

Monkeys didn’t evolve into humans. No respectable biologist ever said such a thing. Humans evolved from other hominids, which evolved from apes, which shared a common ancestor with monkeys, what, 20 millions plus years ago?

That said, the fossil, morphological, DNA, behavior and every other type of evidence is pretty hard to look over. We share an awful lot with apes, and we share some with monkeys (less so with the New World branch of course).

If we didn’t share a primate ancestor at some point, where do you propose we evolved from? Or came from? Pretty odd that we’re pretty much primate through and through and would have shared no relatives with them.

The first part is true, humans are still evolving. There is, however, no compelling evidence that humans are getting taller. Mean height of given populations changes all the time. Sometimes the mean is higher, sometimes lower. Mean height was a lot taller before the advent of agriculture, a lot lower once agriculture was introduced. A great deal of height is environmentally (e.g. diet) related. Kids with bad diets don’t get as tall (bad as in missing certain micronutrients–apparently in America kids can eat poorly and get fat and tall). Wealthy classes, until recently in history, were taller, on average, than the poor. The wealthy kids got meat, the poor didn’t. So mean height changes, but variance in height shows little change. That is, there have always been midgets and always been 7 footers. In other words, the mean of the distribution is not greatly skewed towards the tail of the distribution.

Beyond that, you’d have to show differential reproductive success for taller men. I very much doubt that you could show this. Short guys still get laid and they still have kids. Women aren’t out selecting taller guys–sure, up to a point they are. More often than not, all things being equal, the 6’2" guy will do better than the 5’8" guy. Given current demographics it is unlikely. Most people don’t have more than a couple kids, and the number of kids they have is not correlated with height (at least I’m willing to bet this is the case). Also given that short people don’t die at a higher rate than tall people, there is really no difference in survival and reproduction. So almost any change in mean height is due to environment and diet.

32

[quote]Valar Morghulis wrote:
“Give me reasons/points that to you, prove evolution”. I dont know if that makes more sense but… yeah.
[/quote]

Sorry, but just like you should get rid of the word believe, you should also get rid of the word prove. Science is not in the business of proving truth. People that think that the work of science is to “prove something is real” have a misconception of science.

For example, the Theory of Gravity is not a proof that Gravity is real. It is an explanation of how gravity works, supported by evidence, experiments, and with tested predictive power. But, it could be that tomorrow we discover that the average number of black stripes in the Zebra population has an influence on gravity, and as a consequence we would have to make adjustments to the Theory of Gravity to fit the new Zebra-evidence.

33

[quote]superscience wrote:
my dad is extremly religious but noone else believes in it in my family.

im Agnostic myself, theres so many religions out there like they all cant be right.

[/quote]

How old are you?

The reason I ask is I here alot of younger Irish people are turning away from religion in general because of all the problems it’s caused over the last millenium…

34

About good arguments for people that do not understand Evolution, check out http://www.talkorigins.org/

36

Science is only concerned with questions that are testable. The question whether God exists is not testable, so it should be left outside the sphere of science as a question that can’t be proven one way or the other.

We can’t try and inject something untestable like God into a theory such as evolution and still expect it to be scientific.

As has been said before, evolution exists. How or why it occurs can be explained in many different ways, some scientific and others unscientific.

The problem with Creationism is that it tries to pass itself off as scientific when it is really injecting untestable leaps of faith into the process.

I have no objections with Creationism as long as it acknowledges that it is based on faith, but a lot of Creationists flaunt ID as though it has scientifically proven or disproven something, which it hasn’t. It’s a nice thought experiment, though.

37

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Maybe it is speculated in the fossil record but not observable.
[/quote]

What do you mean that the fossil record is a speculation?

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Humans may “share an awful lot (emphasis mine) with apes”. Maybe. Maybe not. Some would say we share some with apes. Some would say we also share some with rats. Some with almost any mammal. Some with bacteria.
[/quote]

You should not say maybe, we do. I would suggest you spend some time talking to a Molecular Biologist.

[quote]pushharder wrote:
But let’s be clear on what we’ve been discussing as established facts and strong scientific evidence - it’s speciation and adaptation.[/quote]

I think you are contradicting yourself. Don’t you see millions of years of speciation leading to a new genus?

38

survival of the fittest was taken out of context from the Origin of Species. It was Survival of the Aptest.

39

[quote]Ryu wrote:
i don’t agree with evolution. My concept of it is that organisms get better by adapting - this to me would suggest something being added to the gene pool of that organism. The more specialised the “thing” the worse off it is i think. for example dogs “purebred” are stretched to their limits in a gene way and so have a host of health problems whereas a “mongrel” dog has more of a gene pool and are basically indestrucible lol.

I agree with natural selection and think this is what most people think evolution is.
Spray bugs with ddt and loads die then in a couple of years time ddt is useless against the bugs - have they evolved? No - some had a natural immunity and as they are the only ones left they breed and their little baby bugs are also immune. Are they “better” or has their overall gene pool from which they can draw on become vastly reduced.

[/quote]

that is exactly the point. Those that survived pass on their genes, those that dont, dont. Also, it is a good point about gene pool, but if there is a reduced gene pool and this causes probems, they would die out too, ergo extinction. A danger that our scientific knowledge is good at preventing.

40

Gentlemen, don’t confuse evolution with adaptation, humans getting taller, bacteria getting stronger is just adaptation, in evolution we’re expected to believe in one species evolving into another species.