@ RC: "For evolution to be true..." (page 3)

cofty

But what is the fundamental difference between male and female?

This is the key to answering the objection.

DarioKehl

What an uneducated argument. Right off the bat, the speaker loses. Evolution by definition is "a change in allele frequency in a population over time." That's it.

An allele is an expressed gene. DNA mutates all the time, randomly. Most mutations are inert (they cause no change because the mutation occurs in parts of the DNA which already don't code for anything). Some are detrimental (like achondroplasia or cystic fibrosis). Others may allow an organism to thrive in their environment or better equip them to thrive in a changed environment.

The point is, the changes accumulate within a population over time. In other words, ALL individuals in that population will eventually have the new allele. So yes, male and female evolve together, over time, having their alleles positively selected for by the environmental pressures they're subjected to.

This guy is giving a false analogy. In his mind, he believes evolution can't work because genes rapidly change between genders of individuals within a species from one generation to the next. He would have you believe that male/female mutations are like lowering a window blind with one string at a time so it descends unevenly with each yank. Male and female members of a population are tightly "braided" genetically--both being exposed to the same environment--much like a braided or capped window blind drawstring, allowing the window blind (or balance of similar alleles) to raise & lower at an even level in response to natural selection.

In humans, 44 of our chromosomes are not sex chromosomes, only 2 are. Actually, pretty substantial changes CAN occur between male and female as long as they're still able to produce compatible germ cells. Look at male birds vs female birds in many species. There are huge differences in allele expression and yet they can still produce offspring.

But I guess the dirt man and rib woman in a magic garden who fucked up everything for the rest of us by taking dietary advice from a talking snake makes a helluva lot more sense. My bad! Sorry for murmuring.

DATA-DOG

True, Cofty. It's just not that simple.

It's easy for those of us who taken very painful and often frightening steps towards knowledge to say that ignorance is willful. Some people are not willfully ignorant, they cannot be. They are not even aware of the facts, it hasn't occured to them that there is another viable choice.

I say viable, because Dubs are given a "choice" between Jehovah and Satan, but it's not a true choice. They don't know the game is rigged, they are duped. Only a few seem to wake up to the scam, but time will tell. The Information Age could be the death knell for the WTBTS.

I will stop there. I don't want to hijack this thread.

DD

cofty

DarioK - That isn't quite accurate. Males and females don't evolve in parallel as you described. In fact we all start off as female.

Remember we all have 2 copies of every chromosome. The exception is the sex chromosomes. Females have two x chromosomes and males have an x and a horribly deformed Y chromosome.

Females have all the genes for a penis and men have all the instructions to build female genitals. It is sex hormones that switch on specific genes during development in the womb and determine the outcome.

So, any mutation that occurs in the gene pool will be passed on equally to offspring regardless of their sex.

DarioKehl

Yes, yes. There are genes and growth factors that go off at different times at crucial points during gestation and we are all indeed "female."

(great videos are out there of testes vs ovaries and clitoris vs penis based on sex hormone expression)

I was just trying to highlight the fact that mutations accumulate over a long period of time across the entire population of a species and NOT in parallel (as the speaker was arguing) so I omitted sex hormones entirely. That is a biggie as well (and, sex hormones are coded for by DNA).

fortunately, the fact that sexual reproduction "shuffles the genetic deck" is another fail safe against radical changes (in most cases) from one generation to the next that prevents this incompatibility problem the speaker is trying to promote.

LisaRose

This is similar to the argument they make about the eyeball, that half an eyeball is useless, so how could eyes have evolved? It's a straw man argument, saying evolution teaches eyes evolved as they are in humans and all at once then calling it impossible, so then everyone nods their head and think how much smarter they are than silly scientists.

The reality is there are organisms that live in the ocean with a very crude version of an eye ball that simply sees the difference between light and dark. This gives them an advantage over organisms with no sight as they can see that a predator is approaching. From that point on anything that improved sight was an advantage to survival and would get passed on.

Sexual reproduction is no different. Early versions of sexual reproduction was very simple, but gave an advantage because mixing DNA was an advantage over non sexual reproduction. It gradually become more complex as organisms became more complex.

Billy the Ex-Bethelite

According to a JW contact, one of the speakers at the Regional Convention™ stated that "for evolution to be true, two of the same kind would have had to evolve at the same time; one would have to be male and the other would have to be female, and then they would have to find each other". Apparently the crowd had a good laugh over how evolutionists overlook such a simple "fact".

Of course, a JW argument like this against evolution is also an argument against the Noachian flood.

For example, upon leaving the ark, the two kangaroos would have to travel together in close contact all the way to Australia over mountain and water. If they would have strayed far from each other, they would have lost contact and become extinct. And technically it isn't just one kangaroo species, so the WT model of history would require several such pairs to make the journey without evolving in any way. And the same thing would have to happen with all those other unique animals down under, including the koala which only eats eucalyptus leaves. If they didn't evolve to this diet, it's the only thing they could have eaten the last 6000 years. So they would have had to travel along a string of these trees from Turkey to Australia... and those trees along the way would have died and left no trace that they ever existed in the area.

Now the forum can have a good laugh over how JWs overlook such a simple fact.

DarioKehl

Right, billy! And ONLY the marsupials went there.

Island Man

That elder's statement is typical of the arrogant ignorance plaguing creationists. There is no bigger fool than the one who has convinced himself that he's wise while being totally ignorant.

The elder's comments reveals that he does not understand what evolution is. He clearly imagines evolution as being a process where one individual animal of a particular kind changes to a completely new kind with no transition whatsoever.

But the reality is that individual animals do not evolve. Whole populations evolve. Evolution is a phenomenon that happens at the population level and it happens very, very, very, very, very, very, very gradually over an extended period of time and over many, many, many, many, many, generations of an animal population. The transition between one kind and another is an extremely long one spanning many, many, many generations, such that one cannot point out the exact generation where one kind becomes another. So given that it is an entire population that evolves then both male and female members of that population come out in the new kind at the same time and are all able to reproduce with each other throughout the transition to the new kind.

The transition from one kind to another is as gradual as the transition from the darkness of midnight to the full light of midday with each second of time representing a new generation of the population. Just as one cannot identify a single second as being the defining moment when midnight turned to midday, in the same way one cannot identify the exact generation when one kind evolved to another. There would never be a single animal of a population - male or female - evolving into a new kind all by itself and having to wait for others to evolve to its kind so they can reproduce.

So the elder's comment is as stupid as someone saying:

"for the theory that one side of the planet is in daylight while the other is in darkness, to be true, there would have to be day/night boundary moving across the face of the planet and one should be able to stand at that boundary with one foot being in darkness and the other foot being in daylight."

flamegrilled

@Cofty

Flamegrilled - What is the fundamental difference between male and female?

Men are from Mars and Women from Venus ?? I don't know.

I read what you subsequently wrote, and don't discount it. Do you have a good source for researching this in a bit more depth? I'd really like to understand it better.

As far as some fungi having 36,000 sexes that is fascinating. But what does it mean in practice? I'm guessing that in the case of such a fungus then the chance of any two chosen at random being able to reproduce would essentially be 35999/36000. Is that basically how it would work?

@ RC: "For evolution to be true..."

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