I am sorry but if creationists \"need\" micro-evolution then creationism is utterly pointless, because mechanistically there is NO difference between micro- and macro evolutions. There is no such thing as micro-evolutionary theory and macro-evolutionary theory and I am sorry, but you have to be consistent in what you reject. You cannot say that this and this specific mechanisms operate on the level of population but do not on the above species level, because then YOU have to explain WHY. After all it is YOU who is trying to build and alternative theory, YOU propose that specific mechanisms (selection, and forces of evolution for argument sake) operate on the intra-population level but for some reason do not on inter-population of inter-species. Since you propose this alternative theory you have to explain why is that. Sorry, \"the will of god\" argument I do not accept - creationisms is supposed to to be science, not religion
Stirring the pot - creation vs. evolutionism
- Thread starter johnboyjjb
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I am sorry but if creationists \"need\" micro-evolution then creationism is utterly pointless, because mechanistically there is NO difference between micro- and macro evolutions. There is no such thing as micro-evolutionary theory and macro-evolutionary theory and I am sorry, but you have to be consistent in what you reject. You cannot say that this and this specific mechanisms operate on the level of population but do not on the above species level, because then YOU have to explain WHY. After all it is YOU who is trying to build and alternative theory, YOU propose that specific mechanisms (selection, and forces of evolution for argument sake) operate on the intra-population level but for some reason do not on inter-population of inter-species. Since you propose this alternative theory you have to explain why is that. Sorry, \"the will of god\" argument I do not accept - creationisms is supposed to to be science, not religion
philologus
Subgenius
I\'m not a biologist. I need help with a question. Natural selection determines which organisms survive, right? Well when we say \"survival of the fittest\" and ask who are the fittest, the answer is \"the survivors\". It always seemed like circular logic to me. Especially since I have never seen a textbook cataloging the long list of spectacular failures, or fossils of \"unfit\" types. Where did all the failures go? Shouldn\'t there be a LOT of flops in the fossil record?
No it doesn\'t. Natural selection only alters conditional probabilities. In other words at given specific conditions in a given niche a given set of traits confers higher probability of passing said set of traits to the progeny. Notice, I did not use word \"survival\", and I did not define \"trait\" here. The survival is somewhat irrelevant as long as you can ensure effective propagation.You can survive for 10000 years but unless you have progeny you personal survival is irrelevant for your species, from the species point of view you could as well be unborn. You fitness in this case is 0. However, let\'s for the argument sake assume that you, due to your extreme personal longevity can pass along information to younger generation and THAT improves their chance of passing their genetic information. In this case your fitness become non-zero, since while not having your own progeny, you increase survival chance of your species as a whole
I thought creationism was built on the supposed fact that the universe (and the things in it) was created by a deity or deities? If that is the case, the line of science vs religion would be blurred a bit, as it would be the beliefs of a particular religion that governed exactly \"how\" the universe was created.
..my head is starting to hurt...
philologus
Subgenius
Yes, but where are the failures?
Failures on what level? Individual? Resolution is simply not enough? In fact resolution is just not enough to have a full catalog of all species that ever existed. On the higher levels? Plenty - pretty much any fossil species (with all reservations for the use of the term as far as fossil concern) that doesn\'t exist now is a failure. It used to be fittest at his specific conditions but couldn\'t adapt at different conditions. The adaptability of each species is different, very specialized once (like koala for example) can survive only in a very narrow set of conditions others (cocroaches) can survive almost anything and anywhere
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
What do you mean by failures? One spectacular failure in one condition is a big success in another one. If you\'re looking for one legged dogs with no teeth that one\'s not going to survive long enough to even make a new specie..
But there are some odd animals out there, don\'t you agree? Basically the \"failures\" are those that are left on the way.. There are lots and lots (and lots) of species (like dinosaurs) that didn\'t make it. We don\'t have that large insects nowadays for example afaik because the oxygen level is far less...
philologus
Subgenius
Which leads back to my original question about circular logic. The ones that aren\'t around aren\'t the \"fittest\" the ones that are still around constitute \"fit\"; at least for the time being. If we find a fish that should be extinct, still swimming around off the coast of Madagascar, then we just relocate him to the fit category.
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
What is fit? There is no objective meaning in that word for this.. there is no selection criterias per se. Some species might have more difficult in adapting though and that might be one reason for their extinction. But I mean there are many different reasons. We humans have extincted quite a few species. So has natural distasters, other animals, climate change etc. etc.
Yea...but I didn\'t think long-term evolution was the commonly accepted reason for the dinosaur extinction ( I could be wrong, as I haven\'t followed it for a while now)....
Isn\'t science leaning more towards the \"Cretaceus-Tertiary\" event (or something like that)?
I mean..the K-T boundary still shows no ground-dwelling dinosaurs on fossil record \"above the line\", so to speak--unless something has been found recently.
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
Hmm.. maybe I am using a too broad definition of evolution? Or that evolution is a term that says much more than it should?
But as I see it (I might be wrong) a natural disaster is a part of the \"natural selection\" just as we, extincting different species, are. The physiology of a certain specie led to their demise just as the physiology of another specie made it survive. It\'s not really about progress or something becoming objectively \"better\" then the other, just constantly changing surrounding and a constantly changing variations in the gene-pool. Sometimes those changes in the gene give rise to a new kind or specie that can survive better then it\'s predecessors. That might be that it can handle heat better or just that it\'s cuddlier
. Sometimes they can continue to function side by side.. or on geographically different spots.And that could be by scientific explanations--I can\'t speak to that one way or the other...
But it seems like following that logic---when the neighbor\'s house gets struck by lightning, explodes into a ball of flame and turns all the occupants into carbo-gelatinous heaps---
That could potentially classify as \"natural selection\" as well.
I\'m just not sure where that line is drawn....
But it seems like following that logic---when the neighbor\'s house gets struck by lightning, explodes into a ball of flame and turns all the occupants into carbo-gelatinous heaps---
That could potentially classify as \"natural selection\" as well.
I\'m just not sure where that line is drawn....
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
From my POV.. yes. There isn\'t any difference about being a white moth against black tree then being at the wrong place at the wrong time. So if someone founds a way of distracting lighting.. Either that you get \"immune\" by lighting or by the tools that we made.. we have a higher percentage of surviving. But in this case.. it doesn\'t matter much as not many people die from strikes of bolts of lighting.
Actually \"fitness\" is a term that has a numerical value attached to it and the way to calculate it.
To Philolgus. I fail to see circular logic here. If extinct fish used to populate whole ocean but now exist only in Madagascar it is NOT fit by definition because its population clearly diminishes, the niche it colonizes shrunk from whole ocean to a small portion of it. Species do not disappear in one day, you know... takes time... sometimes long time.
In addition to this adaptability now is often difficult to estimate due to human influence.
Say, you are a tiger. You could be adapted like nothing to you normal ecological niche yet it is rather difficult to adapt to high-powered rifles. To bows you can still adapt given low population density of bow-users, to rifles - hardly
I see the view...but it\'s not how I understood the theories that support evolution. The dinosaur/catastrophic event question leans more towards adaptation/acclimatization---which, is a form of evolution---but I think Biologists used the terms adaption and natural selection to mean two different things.
Adaptation--humans aren\'t immune to lightning, so they build houses to increase the survival probability. As adaptation also includes the change in behavioral characteristics.
natural selection--Some sub-set of humans genetically build an immunity to lightning--where some don\'t---where this immunity increases the probability of the propagation of the species.
That\'s the line I was talking about---I just don\'t know where one supporting mechanism (natural selection, genetic drift, adaptation, acclimatization, et. al.) of evolution stops and the other starts.
I guess I need to read a book (for once..)
Originally posted by Rodnik
I see the view...but it\'s not how I understood the theories that support evolution. The dinosaur/catastrophic event question leans more towards adaptation/acclimatization---which, is a form of evolution---but I think Biologists used the terms adaption and natural selection to mean two different things.
Adaptation--humans aren\'t immune to lightning, so they build houses to increase the survival probability. As adaptation also includes the change in behavioral characteristics.
natural selection--Some sub-set of humans genetically build an immunity to lightning--where some don\'t---where this immunity increases the probability of the propagation of the species.
That\'s the line I was talking about---I just don\'t know where one supporting mechanism (natural selection, genetic drift, adaptation, acclimatization, et. al.) of evolution stops and the other starts.
I guess I need to read a book (for once..)
Yes, adaptation and natural selection are two different things. The first is a trait that improve fitness, the second it the process that increases the frequency of this trait. As such you cannot adapt to catastrophic event that leads to your immediate death
(see my example about tigers and rifles vs bows).
From this POV Lightning is a bad example, because it is a catastrophic event that lead to death and it doesn\'t occur with a frequency high enough to affect the fitness of the species.
If you want to think about it in term of human example consider, say malaria and traveler\'s diarrhea. In certain areas of the world with endemic malaria the gene frequency for certain blood diseases is increased because heterozygous carriers are resistant or partially resistant to malaria.
We have selective pressure - malaria - it kills substantial portion of people who contract it and therefore decreases fitness of the population. It doesn\'t kill all of them at once (otherwise we would have our catastrophic event). People heterozygous for above mentioned blood diseases are resistant so they survive malaria better and their frequency increases with time. Now this particular heterozygots WILL NOT be adaptive UNLESS you have proper selective pressure (malaria) and this adaptation never arises (because it is not adaptation without malaria)
In the case of traveler\'s diarrhea we do not have selective pressure because the disease, while annoying and inconvenient does not affect you fitness - it is not lethal. Well, abstinence from sex during severe diarrhea doesn\'t count
. So despite being much more prevalent then malaria traveler\'s diarrhea doesn\'t change genotype frequencies in population, doesn\'t affect your fitness and therefore is not exerting any selective pressure.
Avelorn
Sven Jonsson
Originally posted by Rodnik
I see the view...but it\'s not how I understood the theories that support evolution. The dinosaur/catastrophic event question leans more towards adaptation/acclimatization---which, is a form of evolution---but I think Biologists used the terms adaption and natural selection to mean two different things.
Adaptation--humans aren\'t immune to lightning, so they build houses to increase the survival probability. As adaptation also includes the change in behavioral characteristics.
natural selection--Some sub-set of humans genetically build an immunity to lightning--where some don\'t---where this immunity increases the probability of the propagation of the species.
That\'s the line I was talking about---I just don\'t know where one supporting mechanism (natural selection, genetic drift, adaptation, acclimatization, et. al.) of evolution stops and the other starts.
I guess I need to read a book (for once..)
I definately see your point and agree (I\'m not sure we were actually disagreeing at all) The edges at least for me gets very blurred and do tend to lend somewhat to the \"natural\" vs. \"unnatural\" criterias. Or things you can make a model of and things you can\'t. I don\'t know.. I\'ll have to ponder about it somemore.. and maybe read a book or two!
Need to go to sleep though now! Edit: Saw the reply by skeeve.. hm. Yea.. definately need to think about it some more..
@Skeeve: Yes.. I\'ve discussed models of selection briefly with my friend. From what I understand they stem from a solid reductionistic viewpoint though. And co-competition about food from other animals and the sort is areas that they are beginning to explore at the moment. I do have a reluctance towards overly mathematical models of behavior though as I find it hard to be convinced on generalisation and prediciton when you basically are dealing with an oversimplified version of the world. Maybe I\'m comparing it too much with Rational Choice theory.. but many of the models are the same or have similar foundations.
Phew!!!!
Okay. I\'ve just waded through all of this dang thread, being in \"catch-up\" mode - not to be confused with \"Ketchup\" or \"catsup\" model - though I\'d relish a discussion of wither one
The comments and discussions have been very interesting. As usual, I think this community deserves a great deal of credit for the large lack of name-calling and general ugliness when these topics are discussed. It\'s a rare community indeed (especially on the internet) that can manage to discuss so many controversial topics without a great deal of rancor. I think we all deserve a great big Group Hug!!! Okay. So maybe not. Perhaps a group grope ???
As for my personal beliefs... [shrug]. I tend to side with open-mindedness in general and shy away from dogma of any stripe. I believe that \"scientists\" that only believe other scientists are just as dogmatic and closed-minded as \"religionists\" that only believe religious teachings. And to say that everything science asserts can be proven without a doubt is absurd. Much of \"cutting edge\" science requires almost as much faith as religion. And no field of study or belief system has a corner on the idiot market. I will admit, though, that \"religion\" seems to have more than its share of very vocal ones. However, I don\'t think you can dismiss all people of faith based solely on the rantings of televangelists.
Anyways... What the hell was I talking about? Seem to have lost my way Ummmmmmm... Carry on.
Okay. I\'ve just waded through all of this dang thread, being in \"catch-up\" mode - not to be confused with \"Ketchup\" or \"catsup\" model - though I\'d relish a discussion of wither one
The comments and discussions have been very interesting. As usual, I think this community deserves a great deal of credit for the large lack of name-calling and general ugliness when these topics are discussed. It\'s a rare community indeed (especially on the internet) that can manage to discuss so many controversial topics without a great deal of rancor. I think we all deserve a great big Group Hug!!! Okay. So maybe not. Perhaps a group grope ???
As for my personal beliefs... [shrug]. I tend to side with open-mindedness in general and shy away from dogma of any stripe. I believe that \"scientists\" that only believe other scientists are just as dogmatic and closed-minded as \"religionists\" that only believe religious teachings. And to say that everything science asserts can be proven without a doubt is absurd. Much of \"cutting edge\" science requires almost as much faith as religion. And no field of study or belief system has a corner on the idiot market. I will admit, though, that \"religion\" seems to have more than its share of very vocal ones
. However, I don\'t think you can dismiss all people of faith based solely on the rantings of televangelists.Anyways... What the hell was I talking about? Seem to have lost my way
Ummmmmmm... Carry on.