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Is the Theory of Evolution on the ropes?

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sao123 said:
im still a little fuzzy on this math thing... i just want to think about this for a minute...



The accepted age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years?
The accepted age of life on earth places abiogenesis at about 2 billion years ago.

So... there are about 9 unique million species living on the earth.

With a linear model, you would have to find a new species approximately every 220 years in order to have the variety of life we see today.
With a binary model, using a 2^23 (slightly less than 9 million) as a base, you would have to have the number of species double every 86 million years. This is an average of 730,000 new species every 86 million year period or 1 every 115 years...


The simplest of all organisms on the earth right now has about 2000 genes to the most complex having about 25,000 genes. For the sake of math argument, lets assume the average number of genes per species is about 10,000, which we know is on the low side. How many of them must change for a new species to exist? 1, 2, 100?


Logic tells me there must be more positive transformations than there are years available, not including all the failed ones.... The rate of change is too slow for this to be solely responsible for the amount of species here today.
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I'm not saying that your mathematics is the right approach in the first place, but I'm going to point out a MAJOR flaw in your approach. According to your assumption that the number of species has to double every 86 million years - that would mean that each individual species would have to evolve into two separate species over 86 million years. Your error is in doing a calculation assuming that only one species on Earth evolves at a time. i.e. okay, new form of bird, you have 115 years to evolve. Okay, the bird is done, now it's your turn little snail.

You're not honestly saying that a species couldn't possibly diverge into two different species in the course of 86 million years, are you?! And, to satisfy your computational method, that's all that would have to occur. However, according to your calculations, on average, humans should be able to observe speciation approximately once every 115 years. Thanks for answering the question why we don't see speciation occur every 45 minutes in a lab. Nonetheless, somewhere in this thread, I linked to a list of a couple dozen examples of speciation that HAVE been observed. Far more than you would predict. Now, since you're one of the more reasonable posters in this forum, I hope you can at least acknowledge the flaw in your mathematics.


Also, someone mentioned dogs in the thread. It is *not* true that the pool of genes for modern dogs is the same as the pool of genes of their canid ancestors (wolves.) There are genetic differences that are a result of mutations. And, those genetic differences give rise to a larger variety of sizes, snout length, etc., than exist in wolves. I hunted for an article that explains it well enough on a level that most people can follow.
http://www.karelianbeardog.us/kbd_science.html
Gibsons can probably chime in with how accurate this article is (if he has time.)
 
Carfax83 said:
Wow, can you try not frothing at the mouth and have a reasonable debate?

May be I was wrong to post this topic on this forum, as people aren't as civil as I thought they'd be.
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For reference, I believe that any "frothing" starts up as a result of a combination of things:
- People pushing primitive imagined mythology as a viable alternative to real-world observations and sound scientific theory.
- Other people actually believing that Creationism/ID is truly a valid thing, and pushing ignorant vote-hungry politicians to inject their mythos into science classes.

(I'd like to clarify something: "Intelligent design," at least in the US, has a bad reputation because its primary use of late has been as part of a sociopolitical scam to shoehorn a fairly specific creation myth into science classes, in an attempt to bypass the church/state boundary simply by stripping out some proper nouns from the original story.
Separated from that, yeah, maybe some massively intelligent and powerful alien entity did make the life on this planet, and maybe even the planet/solar system/galaxy/universe. Given the various things that are messed up with our environment and genome, maybe we're a first draft, or a freshman science fair project, or an alpha version of an elaborate computer simulation. Thus far though, there's no solid evidence to support these ideas - and I'm not going to start demanding that they be taught in science classes.)
 
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HELLO

Based on the arguments in this thread and the drinks I've had tonight, I've concluded that evolution is indeed on the ropes and most likely an invalid theory. It is very clear now. Thank you for the discussion.
 
Evolution is absolutely on the ropes. Bacteria that are better adapted to living on ropes survive and multiply better there than those that aren't.

Oh, wait..
 
Wait... it turns out the OP was correct. Evolution is in fact on the ropes:

rockstandstall.jpg
 
Jeff7 said:
For reference, I believe that any "frothing" starts up as a result of a combination of things:
- People pushing primitive imagined mythology as a viable alternative to real-world observations and sound scientific theory.
- Other people actually believing that Creationism/ID is truly a valid thing, and pushing ignorant vote-hungry politicians to inject their mythos into science classes.
Click to expand...


So if you don't agree with someone else's opinion then it's grounds to stop being civil? Nice.
 
Red Squirrel said:
So if you don't agree with someone else's opinion then it's grounds to stop being civil? Nice.
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When the person's opinion is pure idiocy, repeated endlessly, impervious to reason then yes, the person should expect scorn in return for loudly venting said opinion. Facts are not subject to opinion. To pretend otherwise is to throw away five centuries of intellectual progress.
 
IronWing said:
When the person's opinion is pure idiocy, repeated endlessly, impervious to reason then yes, the person should expect scorn in return for loudly venting said opinion. Facts are not subject to opinion. To pretend otherwise is to throw away five centuries of intellectual progress.
Click to expand...
Just wanted to keep this up where it belongs.
 
Carfax83 said:
One of the tenets of the Scientific principle is observation. Some of the greatest Scientific theories cannot be tested in any way, ie the Big Bang theory.

The big bang theory was established because astronomers observed that the Universe was expanding.

The theory of evolution was born under similar circumstances as well.



It has been tested, and found wanting. Random mutation, the supposed enabler of evolution, has never been shown (or even directly observed) in Nature or the Laboratory to be able to make positive changes to any creature to the extent that the creature would become a new species.

In fact, mutations tend to be neutral or harmful, and cells have active defenses and repair mechanisms against it.

And for the last time, I am NOT A CREATIONIST! And if you think Intelligent Design has anything to do with Creationism, then you are ignorant.
Click to expand...

RIGHT!!! Selective breeding of Russian fox to remove agression did not result in flop eared, piebald lapdogs. Intelligent Design was made up to prove Creationism, matter of fact used the same source material.
 
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