by ninjaturtle 7 Replies latest jw friends
Evolutionists like to point out that there was 4 billion years for evolution to play with.
But consider http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010222/80/b5mxs.html
it looks like 90% of natural selection was wiped out and the random mutations had to start working with a much smaller base only 250 million years ago.
Ninjaturtle,
it looks like 90% of natural selection was wiped out and the random mutations had to start working with a much smaller base only 250 million years ago.
Mass extinctions actually increases the speed of evolution. New envirionments to adapt to, pressure from the disaster itself, and old niches in nature becoming vacant.
For example, mammals are unlikely to have become very successful if the dinosaurs were not wiped out. Before that, they were mostly small animals serving as dinosaur food.
Of course, the fact that such extinctions occurred isn't exactly helpful for creationists, is it? If 90% of all life perished at a time in the past and evolution doesn't work, why are we all here now? Did God start another creation week? And another?
Edited to add: You seem a bit confused by saying "natural selection was wiped out." On the contrary, such disasters work as a form of natural selection. You also seem to confuse mutations and natural selection. It's natural selection working on mutations, not the other way around. And when we say mutations are random, we only mean they are not goal-oriented towards increased "fitness".
The word "random" is used by creationists in a way that indicates they don't understand it very well. A stack of cards or the flip of a coin is only random because you don't know all the details as an observer. And, natural selection, the rules of the game if you will, are the exact opposite of random.
- Jan
--
- "How do you write women so well?" - "I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability." (Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets")
Makes one wonder what life on earth could have been like....
I feel I have a reasonable grasp of the role of chance in evolution. The chromosomes have to mutate. To get from an amoeba to a human there have to be a lot of mutations (I am guessing). Insofar as there is no specific goal and the mutations are much more likely to make the amoeba less fit. Evolving from an amoeba into a man, or anything of comparable complexity, is really unlikely.
Now it seems to me that these things can, in principle, be calculated and measured. Perhaps now that the human genome is mapped we can start measuring just how unlikely it is for an amoeba to evolve into a creature of human-like complexity and multiply this probability by the number of years.
Question: If such a calculation were made and the probability turned out to be 10%, would you start to doubt evolution, how about .00001% ?
Question: Is evolution falsifiable?
BTW, I'm no creationist, and I don't have any third way version I'm trying to sell. I think there must be something which induces order and perhaps even teleology in the world.
I heard that scientists studying the Sun in the 19th Century concluded it was due to burn out in 1950. They of course knew nothing of nuclear fusion. I think that there is some marvel that science knows nothing of, and that scientists are forced to announce results that will look pretty silly if we ever discover that marvel.
If you are really interested then I suggest you start with what is already published such as "A Speed Limit for Evolution" which article can be found at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/jcollie/sle/index.htm
Question: If such a calculation were made and the probability turned out to be 10%, would you start to doubt evolution, how about .00001% ?
10% is actually very good odds. It is very likely that life is rare. Intelligent life is very rare, or we should be able to "hear" the traffic from other civilizations in the milky way by now. So, we should expect the odds for intelligent life to be low. Intelligence, the trait we are so proud of, is not a teleological goal of evolution, but it surely is a prerequisite for asking questions about it.
But of course, if the odds fall drastically, then this means there is a mechanism of evolution we haven't found yet. So far, it seems the known mechanisms, most notably natural selection, is very sufficient for explaining life as we have it. I have not seen proposed any real riddles in nature that defies an explanation by natural selection.
Question: Is evolution falsifiable?Creationists (and yes, I see you aren't one) often suggests it isn't, and then go around trying to prove it wrong. Go figure.
Yes, evolution by natural selection is very much a falsifiable theory. If any organism had features that could not be brought about thru gradual selection, it would be in big trouble. So would it be if someone found, say, a modern horse fossil in the Cambrian.
- Jan
--
- "How do you write women so well?" - "I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability." (Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets")
I read an article in Scientific American a couple of years back where a scientist theorized that the highest state of matter was conciousness, and that at a sub-electronic level it was always trying to be conscious, so it would have sort of "nudged" along cellular evolution.
Just some crackpot theory probably, but interesting to think about. A motivator for cellular evolution would clear up a lot of our problems with it's statistical likelyhood.
The earlier in the forenoon you take the sun bath, the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing. - The Golden Age
