[quote]miroku333 wrote:
Makavali wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
I see no need to compare magic to science.
Regardless, nice acting.
right, you know, I mean what was Darwin thinking? Sheesh - animals magically transitioning from one species to another without leaving any inter-stage hybrid-species to be found.
Surprised the hell out of the first wombat when it morphed into the kangaroo - it tried and tried to get its mate to let it back in the den - but noooo - no magically-changed roo was getting into her bed no matter how big his feet were . . . .
I am seriously insane - I need meds . . .
I’m pretty sure evolution didn’t happen overnight.
that’s where it gets a bit sticky, if it didn’t happen in leaps from one species to the next, such as an archeopteryx laying eggs that hatched as hawks or condors or something, then where are the intermediate species?
natural selection does take place however, survival of the fittest and such. within a species, those that have phenotypes that are best adapted to their environment pass on the genetic predispositions to their offspring. I’m not agreeing with the idea that genotypes ever modify favorably however.
I haven’t presented these statements to change anyone’s mind, just to explain why I hold to my particular stance :)[/quote]
I skipped over the rest of the thread because I want to respond directly to this one…
The intermediate species are all around us today. Human evolution is continuing on and on to this day. Think back, say…6,000 years. That would be the arrival of the first human according to the creationist theory. Now pop a laptop in front of him and see how long it takes for him to learn how to use it, you can help him! It probably wouldn’t go too smoothly.
Now fast forward to 300 years ago. Electronics and computers are just as insane of a concept now as they were then, but the learning curve, I imagine, would be much, much shorter. The reason? The human mind evolving.
One of the biggest arguments against human evolution is that such a powerful process should be continuing to this day, and the fact is, that it is happening. Evolution is, as expected, as reactionary response. If people never learned how to make fires we’d be a lot hairier than we are today. The problem with observing human evolution to this point is that humans no longer have to deal with natural selection.
Even an idiot with a club foot and one arm can live a long, healthy life and pass his genes on to the next generation. Thousands of years ago, when the first generations of Homo Sapiens starting cruising around, that person would have never made it to sexual maturity, maybe never even survived past young childhood.
That’s the big misunderstanding with the theory of evolution. People seem to think that evolution works by an accelerated and explosive force in which immediate changes are made to a few members of a species, then put to the test in the wild. That’s not what the theory is, nor how it works.
Natural selection is quite simply the increased likelihood of the strongest, or best suited to survival in a certain environment, passing on their genes to the next generation. This is primary reason why evolution moves so slowly. Their is no magical day where all of the inferior members stop sharing into the gene pool, and it dilutes the pool, slowing the process.
Perhaps the best example of the evolutionary necessity that I can think of would be the path that the horse has taken. Horses millions of years ago were small, light weight, and had shorter legs (relative to their size).
When this oldest species of horse lived, most of our world was either harsh, harsh desert or lush, dense, thick jungle. As there are no horses living naturally in the deep desert today, we can easily make the assumption that they didn’t live in the desert then, either. As the continents began shifting around toward their new, familiar homes, the climate on land obviously changed, and as land shifted away from the equator, the temperatures dropped, creating more temperate environments, with plains and grasslands in abundance.
This open area would mean that predators capable of catching and eating this little horses in the jungle would now have an easier time catching up to them in the open fields. And as the thousands of generations of horses elapsed, those who were born with slightly longer legs, or were a little bigger, or faster were more likely to reproduce, as they were more capable of avoiding predation. Amplify this effect over millions and millions of years and those little changes add up, leaving you with some big ass horses, capable of running 35+ mph, with a kick that could knock and lion on its ass.
These changes are clearly visible in the human population as well. We are simply far too numerous to see any real evolutionary changes. It’s incredibly likely today for a big burly man to reproduce with a petite, barely 100 lb woman, or vice versa. Even more likely is that the kids will fall somewhere between the two, rather than be closer to one or the other (note, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it is not as likely) washing out the evolutionary process even further. That doesn’t mean, though, that we can’t identify the traits that are most successful today, and measure them over a period of time to determine if real changes are occurring.
The easiest marker would be intelligence. Fifty thousand years ago, having brains would be a great thing, but only if you had the muscle and people to back it up (yes, our social inclinations are an evolutionary gift as well) As societies became more complex and larger, they naturally became safer for the individual. That meant that it was no longer 3 guys and a spear trying to bring down a mammoth, but maybe 50 guys with nets and a plan. The individual need no longer be the physically strongest to continuously reproduce (though it helps, even to this day)
As we fast forward through time into more modern societies, the more intelligent you are, the more successful you will be, and the more successful you will be, the more women will be attracted to you, and that naturally leads to babies. Lots and lots of babies. And each of those babies has a better than normal chance of being a little tiny bit more intelligent than the average intelligence of the previous generation (and an OK chance of outsmarting good old Dad, or Mom, lets not discriminate)
This is the very reason for the huge, huge boom in technological power in all of human society starting in the 1700’s. Societies began to mix substantially at this point. The old rivalries, though not dead, through Europe had passed from bloodthirsty to a more passive hatred (though War would still occur, people were far more free to travel) The ideas brought home from the Crusades were being played with and improved upon.
The most intelligent were traveling and making babies with virtually whoever they wanted, all over the world, and this same patterns continues today, we’re just all so much smarter now, that it’s hard to see. A person with a 165 IQ 50 years ago would only score in the 120’s today. Above average, yes, but not by much, and that may be the quickest evolution in history.
