Evolution, why us?

[طالب]

lol why u screaming in ur avi :p looooool

No, no, he's laughing after watching this ludicrous display: YouTube - cristiano ronaldo's cheat dive 2011

[faye]

light 'travels' from the sun in 8.19 seconds. ( that's from 149.6 million kilomeres away from earth) the energy of this sunlight supports almost all life on earth by photosynthesis and 'drives' earths climate and weather.
burns people, warms us, creates light etc. doesn't sound too dead and inactive to me.

[طالب]

light 'travels' from the sun in 8.19 seconds. ( that's from 149.6 million kilomeres away from earth) the energy of this sunlight supports almost all life on earth by photosynthesis and 'drives' earths climate and weather.
burns people, warms us, creates light etc. doesn't sound too dead and inactive to me.

Sure, but can it reproduce asexually or sexually? Is it composed of one or more cells? It simply does not comply with the definition of life that is currently used in biology.

I mean are you suggesting that the Sun is like a dog, or a human being, or a ringed worm, or a bird or an elephant, or a bacteria? The claim that the Sun is alive just seems so far fetched to me...I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.

By your definition anything that sends out energy is alive? Is a kitchen stove alive? A kitchen stove sends out energy. How about a power plug? Or a fire? If a house is on fire is it alive? They all send out energy in one way or another.

[faye]

sun to moon ' hurry up bud, your turn. i've had a loooong day'. you just never know. scientists have only relatively recently decided that animals, birds etc talk to each other. it always makes ME laugh when they make these AMAZING discoveries. something which the caveman could have told them.
yes, i guess i do consider everything alive. there is no death, only transformation/recycling.
so i will leave you now to your limited definition of life, to 'live' with my useless definition of life. thanks mountais goat.

[Midnight_Sun]

you are giving me a couple of extremely complicated terms which i dont know and dont give value..waste of time and at the end i will feel being dumbed down.

Did you even LOOK at the links I sent you??? You don't want to have a constructive dialogue do you? You just want to argue for the sake of arguing. Look at the links I sent you, there is a FLASH video of intermediate and adaptive radiation of certain species.

[Alchemist]

^ Stop it faye...
srsly...enough of your "new age" mumbo jumbo.

"There is no death"...LOL

Everything dies and decays.
This universe is set to die. The Sun will die in 5 billion years. This universe will stretch and dissipate into nothingness. Yes, faye, there is NOTHINGNESS. Stop fooling yourself into thinking that you are going to be born a goat or a cow in your next life. Nothing but conjectures.


All this crap...and thousands of words being spoken flies against the most Fundamental Law of the Universe:

The first law of thermodynamics - Chaos Increases. The natural state of order is DISORDER.

Things don't randomly organize themselves spontaneously...especially into sophisticated beings. Energy dissipates...living things consume energy to live. Non living things expend. A rock over time breaks down. Your room over time disorganizes itself. Have you ever walked into your house...and said "DAMN...everything just randomly fell into their proper place"

And lil girl says "wisdom teeth" is evidence of a vestigial organ. 20 years ago they were saying the appendix is a useless reminder of the days when we ate grass. But now we know that it stores useful bacteria that helps in the digestion process. Go look at the list of vestigial organs from 50 years ago and see by how much it has shrunk. As we learn more about anatomy and physiology we begin to see that every fiber, nerve, bone or muscle serves a function! Nothing is useless. Even wisdom teeth, are still teeth, and serve a function like all other teeth in your mouth. But North American culture...and especially the dentists, have you believing that you should extract them whether they cause you problems or not...and it is an expensive procedure. If anything that has changed, it is our diet. We eat processed food, which requires less chewing and thus less aberration of the teeth into a smaller arch, creating the necessary space for the third molar to break through without pushing teeth forward.

[Midnight_Sun]

LOL @ "Knowledge grows exponentially"

Compare the knowledge that Humanity knew 150,000 years ago and the knowledge we have now. You see the difference? No? Then obviously your logic does not grow exponentially either.

No, my dear 'knowledge doesn't grow'.

Yes, yes it does. I pass knowledge to the next generation, they pass the collective knowledge to the next generation. That's why we went from chucking spears to ballistic missiles. That's why we went from hunting gathering to mass producing. From fossil fuels to renewable energy. With the advent of computers or knowledge is growing at an even faster rate.

You only think that this is the case. But the only reason there is a wealth of knowledge now, as oppose to before, is because of our ability to "write" and "symbolize". We have short life spans, and what knowledge we gain, we tabulate, and record and then pass on. As such, it is our written record that has grown. And that too, NOT an "exponential" rate until the printing press was invented by Gutenberg.

Your arguments are so immature. Your first attack goes "NO YOU ARE WRONG, and then you come back and just re-iterate what I just said. How does writing not grow knowledge? What a joke!

Ok, they don't survive...but where is there remains? Where are the failures?

When species specialize into a certain niche and the environment changes and they die out, right there are your living fossils. Look at the Wooly Mammoth, the Cave Lion of Europe are good examples.

All those fancy drawings with three lines is no different than X-Men comic books, teenage mutant ninja turtle cartoons or the smurf village... they are just the working of your imagination.

Now you are just being extremely immature. From what people said about you, they claimed you were actually intelligent, I guess I was wrong.

Homology is there, but the fact that every living species on the planet has their genetic information coded with 4 nucleotides, does not mean that they all were one and the same at one point in history. Remember - correlation does not equate causation.

You just said you don't 'believe' in diagrams of homologous animals and now you just said "Homology is there". Stop contradicting yourself! Are you against genetic tests to match inter-related species? Because genetics is pivotal in forensic anthropology. That is how we know that Jaguars and Tigers are related, how whales are related to even-toed ungulates.

Even reknowned palentologists...world class elites, reject those silly diagrams.

Oh really? Name me a few? You call yourself an 'expert' but you can't even tell the difference between a MAJOR Hominid species.

[Alchemist]

Compare the knowledge that Humanity knew 150,000 years ago and the knowledge we have now. You see the difference? No? Then obviously your logic does not grow exponentially either.

So silly. How can you make such a comparison?
That is just guess work. If a nuclear bomb goes. The EMG pulse generated from it can fry all the electronic equipments. In an instant we will loose 80% of our knowledge, and it would appear to generations after us that a meteor or some rock shower destroyed all traces of our civilization. So maybe...just maybe...150,000 years ago they had more knowledge than us, but the records of it were destroyed. How could you argue other wise? As a scientist, you cannot discount ANY possibility.

Yes, yes it does. I pass knowledge to the next generation, they pass the collective knowledge to the next generation. That's why we went from chucking spears to ballistic missiles. That's why we went from hunting gathering to mass producing. From fossil fuels to renewable energy. With the advent of computers or knowledge is growing at an even faster rate.

This type of knowledge is materialistic. But your beliefs stems from your arrogance. There is much that we don't understand. And knowledge is not "finite". The people of the past may have had a different type of knowledge that gave them different abilities. For example, we still don't understand how the Egyptians were able to build the pyramids, without pully systems, and yet accurately calculate the length of the year to three decimal spaces and map out the solar system.

Your arguments are so immature. Your first attack goes "NO YOU ARE WRONG, and then you come back and just re-iterate what I just said. How does writing not grow knowledge? What a joke!

Writing is basically symbolism.
If you know how to decode it, then you can read it. The DNA is written information too but we still can't read it fluently. But you made the stupid comment that "knowledge has grown exponentially" and then tried to relate that to "evolution". From an evolutionary perspective, your life experiences can't be passed down to your children. If a monkey learns how to wash potatoes in it's life time, that knowledge does not get genetically passed down to it's offspring. Therefore, the genetic information of organisms is finite. But you are asserting that it is infinite, and therefore, "Growing", "evolving". Stop moving the goal post and try to stay focused on the subject matter.

When species specialize into a certain niche and the environment changes and they die out, right there are your living fossils. Look at the Wooly Mammoth, the Cave Lion of Europe are good examples.

You don't seem to get this through your brainwashed mind. The species doesn't "specialize". It doesn't become an expert on it's niche, only to die off because it's niche has changed. We are not talking about extinction patterns, but evolution of life...that is the process of "specialization". We do not observe species being born of such variance, to bring about a trial and error scenerio. It could be that the Wooly Mammoth was killed off by humans just like how bengali tigers and the panda bears have been run to extinction by humans too. We are an active part of the enviornment, and we are a force of change on the world. As such, extinction rates are higher. It is a fact that so called "Neanderthals" were previously depicted as ugly half monkey half humans in science books. But recently scientists have come to learn that neanderthals were sophisticated people who had a culture. And they did hunt Wooly Mammoths.

Now you are just being extremely immature. From what people said about you, they claimed you were actually intelligent, I guess I was wrong

I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary story] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable"


Paleontologist Niles Eldredge of New York's American National History Museum is also immature and unintelligent I guess.
Show me an example of an intermediary species. Please.

You just said you don't 'believe' in diagrams of homologous animals and now you just said "Homology is there". Stop contradicting yourself! Are you against genetic tests to match inter-related species? Because genetics is pivotal in forensic anthropology. That is how we know that Jaguars and Tigers are related, how whales are related to even-toed ungulates.

Homology is there, but there are more differences than there are similarities. Homology even exists between members of different Kingdoms, but evolutionist can't relate the link. Even those organs that are homologous bare no genetic similarity! The old saying that "phylogeny recapitulates ontology" has been debunked! The Embryonic development of homologous organs in different species is totally different!
Are Humans and octopus related? Then how come the structure and function of the eyes of octopus and humans are so related? Evolutionists, don't want to call such similar complex organs homologous, but analogous (coincidental mutation) . But the way how one organ is defined as or the other is done a priori...based on the preconceptions of the evolutionist. This is not science. According to evolution, wings developed 4 times, in separate classes of organisms - insects, birds, lizards and mammals. Yet there is no diversion from one to the other...is there? So evolution is conscious? Do you know the probability of such coincidences? How about the similarities between a North American Wolf and a Tasmanian Wolf? If you look at their structures, they are nearly identical, so how come one is placental and the other marsupial? Coincidence? Is there a relationship between the two that you could explain adequately and rationally to me?

Oh really? Name me a few? You call yourself an 'expert' but you can't even tell the difference between a MAJOR Hominid species.

Richard Leakey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"One would also see differences: in the shape of the skull, in the degree of protrusion of the face, the robustness of the brows and so on. These differences are probably no more pronounced than we see today between the separate geographical races of modern humans. Such biological variation arises when populations are geographically separated from each other for significant lengths of time" Richard Leakey talking about the differences between homo erectus and modern man


Professor William Laughlin

"When we consider the vast differences that exist between remote groups such as Eskimos and Bushmen, who are known to belong to the single species of Homo sapiens , it seems justifiable to conclude that Sinanthropus [an erectus specimen] belongs within this same diverse species."




"Most of the participants at the Senckenberg conference got drawn into a flaming debate over the taxonomic status of Homo erectus started by Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, Alan Thorne of the University of Canberra and their colleagues. They argued forcefully that Homo erectus had no validity as a species and should be eliminated altogether. All members of the genus Homo, from about 2 million years ago to the present, were one highly variable, widely spread species, Homo sapiens , with no natural breaks or subdivisions. The subject of the conference, Homo erectus , didn't exist"

Pat Shipman, "Doubting Dmanisi," American Scientist, November- December 2000, p. 491



THE EXPERTS HAVE SPOKEN!

[Alchemist]

light 'travels' from the sun in 8.19 seconds. ( that's from 149.6 million kilomeres away from earth) the energy of this sunlight supports almost all life on earth by photosynthesis and 'drives' earths climate and weather.
burns people, warms us, creates light etc. doesn't sound too dead and inactive to me.

Not long after the hoopoe came forward and said, "I have information which you do not have. I have come from the land of Sheba with a true report.
Surely I found a woman ruling over them, and she has been given abundance and she has a mighty throne:
I found her and her people adoring the sun instead of Allah, and the Shaitan has made their deeds fair-seeming to them and thus turned them from the way, so they do not go aright

Quran 27:22

[Midnight_Sun]

So silly. How can you make such a comparison?
That is just guess work. If a nuclear bomb goes. The EMG pulse generated from it can fry all the electronic equipments. In an instant we will loose 80% of our knowledge, and it would appear to generations after us that a meteor or some rock shower destroyed all traces of our civilization. So maybe...just maybe...150,000 years ago they had more knowledge than us, but the records of it were destroyed. How could you argue other wise? As a scientist, you cannot discount ANY possibility.

And you cannot discount ALL possibilities that don't meet your narrow personal beliefs. Honestly, you just right now acknowledged that humans have acquired copious amounts of knowledge, and that computers have played a role (infact by your standards 80%!). And yes, from the point of 150,000 years to now, we have accumulated knowledge and data far more than we ever have achieved in the known past. If you read history, when a civilization is completely destroyed, their technological advancement and even art takes quite a while to recover. Our region is a good example of what happens when constant war disrupts scientific and artistic achievement.

This type of knowledge is materialistic. But your beliefs stems from your arrogance. There is much that we don't understand.

I never claimed we know everything nor that knowledge is infinite, again, stop putting words in our mouths.

Writing is basically symbolism.
If you know how to decode it, then you can read it. The DNA is written information too but we still can't read it fluently. But you made the stupid comment that "knowledge has grown exponentially" and then tried to relate that to "evolution". From an evolutionary perspective, your life experiences can't be passed down to your children. If a monkey learns how to wash potatoes in it's life time, that knowledge does not get genetically passed down to it's offspring. Therefore, the genetic information of organisms is finite. But you are asserting that it is infinite, and therefore, "Growing", "evolving". Stop moving the goal post and try to stay focused on the subject matter.

Again, I never claimed knowledge is infinite, stop creating fake arguments so you can argue with yourself!

The species doesn't "specialize"...but evolution of life...that is the process of "specialization".

Specializing is evolving. Evolving doesn't necessarily make you smarter or more advanced, evolution can even go backwards. Look at the whale for example. First evolved like all land dwelling mammals and then re-entered the open waters and became sea-dwelling. If they have a reason to specialize near coasts and then re-enter land, they will. It's all about adaptive radiation. Anything goes!

We do not observe species being born of such variance, to bring about a trial and error scenerio. It could be that the Wooly Mammoth was killed off by humans just like how bengali tigers and the panda bears have been run to extinction by humans too. We are an active part of the enviornment, and we are a force of change on the world. As such, extinction rates are higher. It is a fact that so called "Neanderthals" were previously depicted as ugly half monkey half humans in science books. But recently scientists have come to learn that neanderthals were sophisticated people who had a culture. And they did hunt Wooly Mammoths.

Again this is not telling me anything new. You aren't making any sense. The Wooly Mammoth is gone, extinct, that's all that matters. If I were you, I wouldn't focus on Homo neanderthalensis when you can't even tell the difference between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Mammoths were evolved for a type of life that is no more and couldn't change fast enough. There were many factors for their decline, predation is just one of them. But it doesn't change the fact that they went extinct like all other major megafauna.

I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary story] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable"


Paleontologist Niles Eldredge of New York's American National History Museum is also immature and unintelligent I guess.

LOL where are your so called experts??? This guy believes already in evolution (punctuated evolution) and cladistics, but he believes in refining the theory even further. He's a biologist and fan of Darwin. Come visit his website, it's rather informative.

Let's keep Evolving! Link: Niles Eldredge - Let's keep evolving!


Come back when you have a real "ELITE EXPERT" like you claim.

Show me an example of an intermediary species. Please.

Why do I have to keep showing you examples and you haven't even shown me one example of a so called "expert' who debunks cladistics or evolution? Ok I'll humor you and maybe Graveyard of Empires will even read it this time:

Manatee

Manatees, also called sea cows, are marine mammals that have flippers and a down-turned snout for grazing in warm shallow waters. In 2001, scientists discovered the fossil of a "walking manatee," Pezosiren portelli, which had feet rather than flippers and walked on land during the Eocene epoch (54.8 million years ago to 33.7 million years ago) in what is now Jamaica. Along with skull features like manatees (such as horizontal tooth replacement, like a conveyor belt), it also had heavy ribs for ballast, showing that it also had an aquatic lifestyle, like hippos.

Homology is there, but there are more differences than there are similarities. Homology even exists between members of different Kingdoms, but evolutionist can't relate the link. Even those organs that are homologous bare no genetic similarity! The old saying that "phylogeny recapitulates ontology" has been debunked! The Embryonic development of homologous organs in different species is totally different!
Are Humans and octopus related? Then how come the structure and function of the eyes of octopus and humans are so related? Evolutionists, don't want to call such similar complex organs homologous, but analogous (coincidental mutation) . But the way how one organ is defined as or the other is done a priori...based on the preconceptions of the evolutionist. This is not science. According to evolution, wings developed 4 times, in separate classes of organisms - insects, birds, lizards and mammals. Yet there is no diversion from one to the other...is there? So evolution is conscious? Do you know the probability of such coincidences? How about the similarities between a North American Wolf and a Tasmanian Wolf? If you look at their structures, they are nearly identical, so how come one is placental and the other marsupial? Coincidence? Is there a relationship between the two that you could explain adequately and rationally to me?

Wait, wait, back up for a minute. You don't believe in homologous similarities and now you do? Stop lying to everybody here. Stop changing the argument to fit your limited range of reasoning. First off, the Wolf of the Northern Hemisphere is not completely HOMOLOGOUS to the Tasmanian wolf (Thylacene), it is ANALOGOUS. The only coincidence is that that they share the same biological niche as apex predators and split a long time ago thanks to convergent evolution, something Mr Niles Elderedge agrees with!

Richard Leakey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"One would also see differences: in the shape of the skull, in the degree of protrusion of the face, the robustness of the brows and so on. These differences are probably no more pronounced than we see today between the separate geographical races of modern humans. Such biological variation arises when populations are geographically separated from each other for significant lengths of time" Richard Leakey talking about the differences between homo erectus and modern man

He's not against Evolution. In fact, he belives Turkana boy is Homo Erectus! Something you can't seem to figure out. Thanks again for not providing one expert that is against Cladistics.

Professor William Laughlin

"When we consider the vast differences that exist between remote groups such as Eskimos and Bushmen, who are known to belong to the single species of Homo sapiens , it seems justifiable to conclude that Sinanthropus [an erectus specimen] belongs within this same diverse species."

I clicked on your link and it took me to a page where that quote does not even exist. I'll accept it might be an error on your part. Find me a better source for the quote so I can further analyze the quote from an older anthropologist who isn't even alive today.

"Most of the participants at the Senckenberg conference got drawn into a flaming debate over the taxonomic status of Homo erectus started by Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, Alan Thorne of the University of Canberra and their colleagues. They argued forcefully that Homo erectus had no validity as a species and should be eliminated altogether. All members of the genus Homo, from about 2 million years ago to the present, were one highly variable, widely spread species, Homo sapiens , with no natural breaks or subdivisions. The subject of the conference, Homo erectus , didn't exist"

Pat Shipman, "Doubting Dmanisi," American Scientist, November- December 2000, p. 491

Oh but he did exist, again the work of Milford H. Wolpoff and the first quote you mentioned do not at all refute what Darwin has said. They believe in evolution happenning. This whole argument is the basis of punctuated evolutionary equilibria. In fact, their words have constantly been twisted by anti-evolution bigots to further their claims:

Professors Gould and Eldredge agree that the new structures are almost always assembled over a number of generations, rather than all at once by macromutation. You should know this also by now Alchemist when you tried to find these quotes. Don't take anybody on this forum for a fool.

If you don't at first succeed Alchemist, try try again!

[Alchemist]

And you cannot discount ALL possibilities that don't meet your narrow personal beliefs. Honestly, you just right now acknowledged that humans have acquired copious amounts of knowledge, and that computers have played a role (infact by your standards 80%!). And yes, from the point of 150,000 years to now, we have accumulated knowledge and data far more than we ever have achieved in the known past. If you read history, when a civilization is completely destroyed, their technological advancement and even art takes quite a while to recover. Our region is a good example of what happens when constant war disrupts scientific and artistic achievement.

In the vast ocean of knowledge, we prick a needle on the surface, and the pull it out. The water that it holds, is all the knowledge we have.
Not copious, not exponential, not anything. The day you realize this, is the day you have shed your ego.

And this is all what it is about for you - your ego. Not that you care to learn something new from our exchange. For I have given you enough evidence to the contrary in this thread and you have acknowledge not even one bit of it. But rather you are confident because you know you are in concensus with the majority. But, my young pedowan learner - universal truth is not measured by mass appeal.

I never claimed we know everything nor that knowledge is infinite, again, stop putting words in our mouths.

Knowledge is infinite.
You cannot dare to make the claim that knowledge is finite or infinite because you look like a fool already for the statement that I held you on previously (i.e, knowledge is growing). So if a tree falls down and no body is around will it make a sound? Boggles your mind.
But you never showed to us how your statement relates to evolution. And now you are denying to have said it?
Doesn't it mean, that evolution is a process where information is added? Because this is the underlying crux of the matter. I am not putting words in your little mouth, but you are regurgitating what you don't understand or comprehend.
Evolution entails that information is being added over time to life. Meaning, from the first simple organism to the last multicellular organism, there has been a steady increase in information, in the form of DNA. However, our understanding of the nature of the universe tells us other. The first law of thermodynamics explains that information/organization dissipates over time, and that universe moves towards disorder.
You are committing a fallacy of equivocation by confusing the meaning of knowledge. In your statement, you treat knowledge as a separate entity, outside the realm of human existence, and hence give an attribute of life, i.e, growth. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that you meant to say that as species evolve, their experiences add to their knowledge and this in turn gives them the ability to adapt. However, now I realize that you are a simpleton who just blurted a random string of word, without understanding it's context or significance. There is no biological basis in your statement, that "our species knowledge grows exponentially". This is a matter of culture. And when I explained to you that Cro magnon man, Neaderthals too have had culture, you scratched your head confused and didn't comprehend the relevance to our discussion. Rather you are committed to your simplistic narrative of the human history that is spoon feed to you in school. So since, brain size is irrelevant to intelligence, then we are back full circle to Wruyun's original question - why us? Why do we have consciousness? Why can we be conscious of our actions? And why not cro magnon? You say you are a muslim? didn't Allah say in the Qur'an that he has destroyed a people far more advanced than us? Do you mean to say that Allah did not know how advanced people would become after the revelation of the Qur'an? I am sorry little girl...but you don't even know what is coming out of your own mouth ..so how would you know what I am putting in your mouth?

Again, I never claimed knowledge is infinite, stop creating fake arguments so you can argue with yourself!

Why would I argue with myself?
Do I seem crazy to you?
If you can't comprehend what I am saying to you, then maybe the short coming is in you...and not me.

Specializing is evolving. Evolving doesn't necessarily make you smarter or more advanced, evolution can even go backwards. Look at the whale for example. First evolved like all land dwelling mammals and then re-entered the open waters and became sea-dwelling. If they have a reason to specialize near coasts and then re-enter land, they will. It's all about adaptive radiation. Anything goes!

\

GREAT!
How neat is this.
Whenever it is convenient for you, you separate the same species into different species - homo erectus/homo sapian for humans. And whenever it suits your fallacious arguments, you combine different species into the same one - Pakicetus, Ambulocetus (land walking creatures) into whales. And then you mock me?
Yes, anything goes, apparently evolution has a mind of its own, and animals can change their mind, they can evolve to land form and devolve to water form like transformers (the cartoon show). Maybe this is your real problem - you have been over taken over by the hype and have lost all reservations for doubt and skepticism about this nonsensical whale theory. So you blasted a few hundred dollars on a b.s evolution course and now you are committed to believing it, even the evidence goes to the contrary. Self deception...which I will continue to expose in your post...as follows:

Again this is not telling me anything new. You aren't making any sense. The Wooly Mammoth is gone, extinct, that's all that matters. If I were you, I wouldn't focus on Homo neanderthalensis when you can't even tell the difference between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Mammoths were evolved for a type of life that is no more and couldn't change fast enough. There were many factors for their decline, predation is just one of them. But it doesn't change the fact that they went extinct like all other major megafauna.

I quoted you major scientists, a whole conference of scientists, who said that there are no differences between the two, yet you persist in your delusion.
And this case about the mammoth, it doesn't serve your argument, so why bring up the irrelevant? To admit that species may become extinct for whatever reason, goes to show that "evolution" is not necessarily the driving force for specialization, specialization or otherwise. Where is your logic?
The Cockroach has been in the fossil record for 350 million years, why hasn't it gone extinct then?

LOL where are your so called experts??? This guy believes already in evolution (punctuated evolution) and cladistics, but he believes in refining the theory even further. He's a biologist and fan of Darwin. Come visit his website, it's rather informative.

No logic still.
Even if he is pro evolution like you say he is, the fact remains that he disagrees with you on the there being differences between homo sapians and homo erectus etc. So if you hold him in esteem then believe him and the conference of scientists.

Come back when you have a real "ELITE EXPERT" like you claim.

"the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Stephen Jay Gould (Natural History, 86:12-16)

Why do I have to keep showing you examples and you haven't even shown me one example of a so called "expert' who debunks cladistics or evolution? Ok I'll humor you and maybe Graveyard of Empires will even read it this time:

One example? I gave you twenty on this thread missy.

But you fail to realize that the crux of the evolutionary argument lies on the fact that mutation DOES NOT ADD NEW INFORMATION!

do you deny this fact?

Manatee

Manatees, also called sea cows, are marine mammals that have flippers and a down-turned snout for grazing in warm shallow waters. In 2001, scientists discovered the fossil of a "walking manatee," Pezosiren portelli, which had feet rather than flippers and walked on land during the Eocene epoch (54.8 million years ago to 33.7 million years ago) in what is now Jamaica. Along with skull features like manatees (such as horizontal tooth replacement, like a conveyor belt), it also had heavy ribs for ballast, showing that it also had an aquatic lifestyle, like hippos.

So basically, you are trying to give evidence that land mammals devolved into sea mammals.
This is not science, this is speculation - guess work - fantasy.
This is a land animal, because it had feet.
The only reason they suspect it to be a manatee is because it's nostrils are a little bit towards it's crown...dolphines and whales have their nostrils on their crown. The set back of the nostrils, and the missing parasinuses, excited the fantasy of the evolutionist, and had him conclude that this is an ancestor of the manatee. However, if you look manatees, their nostrils are located at the front, not the crown! And this is why their nostrils do not open upwards (like hippos). Also, the fact that manatees, sleep underwater, with their nasal valves shut, puts a dent to the evolutionary fantasy that such a mechanism works randomly. It is obviously by design!
If you want to show proof, show the mechanism how feet change to flippers. Hippos spend a lot of time in water, so does that mean that years from now they will lose their feet and get flippers instead? Where is your proof for such a bold statement? There are similarities between cars and bicycles too, but does that mean that cars will lose their wheels and turn into bicycles eventually?

Wait, wait, back up for a minute. You don't believe in homologous similarities and now you do? Stop lying to everybody here. Stop changing the argument to fit your limited range of reasoning. First off, the Wolf of the Northern Hemisphere is not completely HOMOLOGOUS to the Tasmanian wolf (Thylacene), it is ANALOGOUS. The only coincidence is that that they share the same biological niche as apex predators and split a long time ago thanks to convergent evolution, something Mr Niles Elderedge agrees with!

When one thing is homologous and when it is analogous is decided by what is convenient to your delusions! For example, a bat wing, according to you, is homologous to human forearm! LOL! But the differences are ASTOUNDING! Yet you will sit there with a smirk on your face and tell me that there is no coincidence...even though both the tasmanian and the north american wolves are called WOLVES!? Keep in mind my dear, that when the continent of Australia split, there were NO SPECIES OF WOLVES ALIVE!!

In fact, the labels homologous and analogous are decided upon arbiterarly there is no scientific method to it.

"Thanks to LORD EVOLUTION, these two species converged into the same form". OK. makes sense for you I guess.

The mammals became divided into two different categories, marsupials and placentals. Then these two categories under went totally different evolutionary histories, but somehow, they end up producing twin pairs of cats, squirrels, wolves, mice and anteaters and moles. So, according to you, mutation, which is supposed to be random, produced the same thing but this is not coincidence, because they shared an "ecological niche"? Really?

He's not against Evolution. In fact, he belives Turkana boy is Homo Erectus! Something you can't seem to figure out. Thanks again for not providing one expert that is against Cladistics.

It doesn't matter that he is or not. The quote I provided to you proves that homo erectus and homo sapian are not two different species but of the same species. Adam was the father of us and Turkana boy. Yes, Richard classes Turkana as homo erectus, I never denied this. But homo erectus is a race of people, like Richard says, just like how you are from the race of mongoloids, as oppposed to negroids, or Caucasians!

I clicked on your link and it took me to a page where that quote does not even exist. I'll accept it might be an error on your part. Find me a better source for the quote so I can further analyze the quote from an older anthropologist who isn't even alive today.

I just wanted you to know who he is... But I gave you the source. If you have access to Journals through your university, you can find it and verify it. Good luck.

Oh but he did exist, again the work of Milford H. Wolpoff and the first quote you mentioned do not at all refute what Darwin has said. They believe in evolution happenning. This whole argument is the basis of punctuated evolutionary equilibria. In fact, their words have constantly been twisted by anti-evolution bigots to further their claims:

Irrelevant. The point is that homo erectus, homo sapians are the same species. You have no proof otherwise.

Professors Gould and Eldredge agree that the new structures are almost always assembled over a number of generations, rather than all at once by macromutation. You should know this also by now Alchemist when you tried to find these quotes. Don't take anybody on this forum for a fool.

If you don't at first succeed Alchemist, try try again!

If you want to believe that random mutation is the force behind life, then so be it.
This puts a dent in your own Iman and gives you a materialistic out look in life.
As I see it so far. The proof against evolution is stacked up high. Here is some books for you to study:

Amazon.com: Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (9780684834931): Michael J. Behe: Books
Amazon.com: Evolution: A Theory In Crisis (9780917561528): Michael Denton: Books
Amazon.com: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (9780061472794): Stephen C. Meyer: Books
Amazon.com: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (9780465019373): David Berlinski: Books
Amazon.com: The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (9780979014123): David Berlinski Ph.D.: Books

[roadrunner]

By that logic, they're flying into fire too, which is much more tangible and dangerous than the moon..

But it still holds truth that they are genetically attracted to light and genetically programmed to grow old and die.

Thinking about it, why would a moth heading for the moon/light bulb be genetically programmed? Perhaps it's a learned response when they're young.

Haven't heard of any non-senescent organisms but I've heard of the potentially immortal jellyfish.. but that's because it goes through transdifferentiation from being sexually mature to being sexually immature. Basically it turns into a polyp and from a polyp to a jellyfish and form a jellyfish to a polyp again. They can turn into polyps again at any given point in time, hence leading to potential biological immortality (excluding external factors such as predators etc.)

Very good point.


But reality proves otherwise - senescence is present and inevitable. There is no single fountain of youth gene, no single gene that causes aging. If anything, it is a polygenic "trait". Even if an individual is kept in an ideal environment, without predators, without any dangers, the individual will grow old and die.

Negligible senescence does suggest programming in some species, but not others.

When I say negligible senescence, I don't mean biological immortality, but the gradual aging process.

It's important since it shows senescence to be programmed, perhaps the evolved trait, while non-senescence is what is the unevolved trait.

But what is the point of infinite reproduction? Again, from a strictly biological perspective, why are we born just to grow old and die? And no matter how much we reproduce, all the offspring will grow old and die as well.

To ensure the survival of a healthy species (which means the survival of the species itself).

If we were a non-senescent species we would be introducing so many genetic mutations each generation that all the healthy individuals would be less healthy. I think that at a point, too many mutations introduced per generation becomes deleterious for the species, while too few means a lack of evolution.

If they are non-senescent, they would not be limiting the number of offspring - they would be increasing the number of offspring.

What I mean here is that if you take a population of 100 non-senescent individuals that can reproduce all the time say 50 adults, 50 young. You place them in an area that can only sustain 100 adult individuals per year. Eventually the number of adults increases to 100 and they eat all the food, leaving the young without food. Weaker young, or starving young is the result. It's not a favourable trait to have.

I could imagine many thousands of years ago in a world without supermarkets, that it was important to have enough local food to feed the young and not overly populate the area with adults.

The limiting factor are the resources, not the increased amount of sexual reproduction. But that still does not account for senescence. That would not be a natural death, that would be starving. Why would we grow old, it's not like natural selection can psychicly foresee that resources will be limited so Joe is going to start aging as soon as he hits 40.

The more sexual reproduction, the more adults when they grow up. The more resources used. If they're not reproducing, nature wonders what's the point?

[Mayana]

Thinking about it, why would a moth heading for the moon/light bulb be genetically programmed? Perhaps it's a learned response when they're young.

The old nature-vs-nurture..?? It's a behavioral trait and if it was learned & harmful at the same time, those genes would have been taken out of the gene pool in no time and the individuals would stop "learning" that response - have they? No..

To ensure the survival of a healthy species (which means the survival of the species itself).

Survival just implies more reproduction and more reproduction just implies survival. Circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works. What is the point behind it, from an evolutionary perspective?

If we were a non-senescent species we would be introducing so many genetic mutations each generation that all the healthy individuals would be less healthy.

No, they would just be introducing a lot of genetic variation - the harmful of which would be selected against. The mutations of one organism do not affect the healthiness of the other organism. The harmfully mutant one is just taken out of the gene pool.

I think that at a point, too many mutations introduced per generation becomes deleterious for the species, while too few means a lack of evolution.

How so? If mutations (variation), heritability, reproduction and selection are all that is needed for evolution, how can too big of a variety be bad? Chances are you get a lotta bad genes, chances are you get a lotta good genes as well - the bad ones are gonna be selected against anyways so there would more good ones.

What I mean here is that if you take a population of 100 non-senescent individuals that can reproduce all the time say 50 adults, 50 young. You place them in an area that can only sustain 100 adult individuals per year. Eventually the number of adults increases to 100 and they eat all the food, leaving the young without food. Weaker young, or starving young is the result. It's not a favourable trait to have.

But, in that scenario, the young are selected against, not the adults. And the population would go extinct. The limiting factor here was not the population size but the limited resources. Natural selection has no sense of population size.

I could imagine many thousands of years ago in a world without supermarkets, that it was important to have enough local food to feed the young and not overly populate the area with adults.

Let's agree on that for argument's sake. Given that by that logic senescence only exists to account for limited resources, why then is there senescence in human beings now?

The more sexual reproduction, the more adults when they grow up. The more resources used. If they're not reproducing, nature wonders what's the point?

Sexual maturity & reproductive fitness and senescence are not the same thing. If anything, lack of sexual fitness is a result of senescence and not vice versa.

[طالب]

But you fail to realize that the crux of the evolutionary argument lies on the fact that mutation DOES NOT ADD NEW INFORMATION!

Listen, I've been saying it for the last 4 pages in this thread, but the argument for evolution does not fall just because you can't explain the process with which it occurred!

The fact of evolution is defined very simply as thus: "the development of animal and plant species out of other species not at all like them".

When you go to the core of the matter, it doesn't matter about mutations, or Darwin, or Darwinists or transitional fossils, or if people who believe in evolution are a crazy bunch of racists.

Some of those things have bearing on the theory of evolution, but not on the fact of evolution.

The fact of evolution is very easily defended by evidence which is not at all complex or hard to understand. I've been laying out that evidence for the last 4 pages or so, but since you've glossed over all that, I'll lay it out again:

1. all living creatures must have a living parent
2. living creatures are different from each other
3. simpler forms were around before the more complex forms (e.g. invertebrates before vertebrates, single celled organisms before humans)

The only way to deal reasonably with that evidence, when explaining scientifically how humans came to be on this earth, is to conclude that complex forms must have come from the simpler forms (e.g., vertebrates from invertebrates).Or to put it another way, that humans came from those simple, single celled organisms 3.8 billion years ago.

This is a water tight argument. Unless you can dispute one of the three claims I laid out, then the argument holds. It doesn't matter about Darwin or natural selection, how else are you going to explain, scientifically that human beings came to be? Did they appear by magic? Did a rock make them? Did aliens from outer space come along and plant vertebrates on the earth 600 million years ago?

Those things might very well have happened but we don't have any evidence of it and thus it is not a scientific explanation.

That's why evolution is described in biology books, because it is the only reasonable scientific explanation of how human beings came to be based on the evidence we have.

Now please, try to wrap your head around the argument I've just made for a few minutes. It really shouldn't be that difficult to understand. I'd be happy to hear any objections to the claims of that argument. Any objections to Darwin or natural selection or transitional fossils are irrelevant to the argument for the fact of evolution, which you disagree on.

[Alchemist]

Great!
Now troll runner thinks he is a scientist too! lol

[/COLOR]

Thinking about it, why would a moth heading for the moon/light bulb be genetically programmed? Perhaps it's a learned response when they're young.

It's called phototaxis. Even unicellular organisms exhibit such behaviour.
Moths are sensitive to a particular band wave of light, white vs yellow and can sense mach bands more clearly than we do.

Negligible senescence does suggest programming in some species, but not others.

When I say negligible senescence, I don't mean biological immortality, but the gradual aging process.

It's important since it shows senescence to be programmed, perhaps the evolved trait, while non-senescence is what is the unevolved trait.

Senescence happens because of damage to the DNA over time by the accumulation of Free Radicals in the cell , ultraviolet light from sun, other toxins from the environment and etc, etc. (first law of thermodynamics)
To say "senescense" is programmed means that there is a death-gene, however no such gene has been found to exist. IT is rather silly to say that Lord Evolution programs species to die off and then creates male/females, where genetic information is separately programmed, to only combine later, in order to perpetuate it. It is a redundancy. Why would Lord Evolution-sama even bother to create varying species to begin with?

To ensure the survival of a healthy species (which means the survival of the species itself).

If we were a non-senescent species we would be introducing so many genetic mutations each generation that all the healthy individuals would be less healthy. I think that at a point, too many mutations introduced per generation becomes deleterious for the species, while too few means a lack of evolution.



What I mean here is that if you take a population of 100 non-senescent individuals that can reproduce all the time say 50 adults, 50 young. You place them in an area that can only sustain 100 adult individuals per year. Eventually the number of adults increases to 100 and they eat all the food, leaving the young without food. Weaker young, or starving young is the result. It's not a favourable trait to have.

I could imagine many thousands of years ago in a world without supermarkets, that it was important to have enough local food to feed the young and not overly populate the area with adults.



The more sexual reproduction, the more adults when they grow up. The more resources used. If they're not reproducing, nature wonders what's the point?