The Tea Party is about the ECONOMY!

[Doc Savage Fan]

Religion and gods are a evolutionary byproduct of our survival, we created them and passed them down through generations to deal with the lack of science explaining how the world works. (also for political reasons) We are growing up as a species now. Religion is dying worldwide and most that say they are religious are more into some benign god or idea of spirituality. Even that is faltering.

Religion is nothing but an old human idea of feudalism, both are outdated social structures. Hence the old phrase from the age of enlightenment "may the last king be strangled with the guts of the last priest". Not a pretty thing to imagine but very telling as to where ideas of freedom and democracy come from.

Case in point.

 

[Matt1970]

Matt1970

"For that matter, explain how a creature knows to evolve in the first place."

Just asking this shows your ignorance. There is no requirement for any species to "know" it should evolve, and evolution science makes no such reference to anything like it.

Instinct is in fact, programed into DNA. Many animals supplement this information storehouse with a brain that allows for additional storage and allows for processing a wider range of variables in their environment.

Trees that have the traits you mention are more likely to survive and reproduce than those that don't. They never needed any intelligence to make a decision, they simply had DNA that allowed them to prosper in their environment while other species did not.

There is no "willful" control by an organism of its DNA, and evolution makes no claim that such a thing is required. Both random mutation and environmental factors can cause significant changes in DNA, by mutation and switching gene sequences on or off. All very well documented facts.

DNA instructed your body to grow arms instead of fins. I would think you should know that.

"science really doesn't know squat"

That's actually pretty funny. You equate your minuscule knowledge of science to the vast body of knowledge that science actually represents. The classic example of a closed mind.

Oh it's ignorant to want to know how and why a creature evolves? By definition we all came from the sea and at one time had fins and gills. At some point something had to tell our DNA to change to grow arm and lungs. My question is what told it to do that? That's the missing link. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "know" as I can't sit there and think I should grow a third arm and somehow magicly my offspring will have a third arm.

 

[Steeplerot]

Oh it's ignorant to want to know and why a creature evolves? By definition we all came from the sea and at one time had fins and gills. At some point something had to tell our DNA to change to grow arm and lungs. My question is what told it to do that?

Nothing told anything stuff, the creature with bigger fins and the ability to absorb more oxygen -to "hold their breath longer" to haul their ass up to land to escape predators (or most likely diseases) in sun/nutrient rich shore areas survived after many many many generations of life and death. The ones with better gills or faster swimmer stayed in the ocean to continue their evolutionary journey there -or died off from getting eaten by predators for being slow or died to diseases.

Mutations happen through breeding and disease, not some wand waving action. This still happens everyday and is observable.

Virus are a different story -virus CAN and WILL mutate DNA. A lot of humans dna code we have now are from environmental changes, but a whole lot more are from us adapting to harmful virus and bacteria. We even keep some of it around now we adapted to to help us digest our food and keep our skin cells healthy. This is how nature works.

Our ancestors were fish yes...we all come from the dudes with the biggest beefiest fins that could hide on land from crap like this that grew to the size of a city bus:

We evolved to get AWAY from these kinds of characters who hang out on the shorelines, now we eat them.


The actual genetic reality of nature is so much more fascinating then a human created god story.

 

[Matt1970]

I love that picture, but the question of how our DNA gets changed and what made the change is still not answered.

 

[Steeplerot]

I love that picture, but the question of how our DNA gets changed and what made the change is still not answered.

DNA does not "get changed" (unless it is from a virus or radiation (radiation only ruins it really though.) The animals with the traits with the best chance to survive continue on to breed, the DNA chains with for example good swimming vs the guys with strong fore-fins and able to hold their "breath" would not help the animal get away from crab things so they get eaten instead of breeding more strong swimmers. Now think in terms of 100s of thousands of generations. Millions of generations and different predators/environments/plagues across 4 billion years. That is our history.

You can see how much of another repeating pattern we really are when you compare our atomic makeup to junk floating around in space. We are nothing more then the byproduct of complex atoms since our star has gone through 3 cycles of birth and death. We are the junk it spews out now and again to make planets in a eternal cycle of chemical reaction guided by the laws of physics. All measurable, no god needed.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I think "debunking" is the wrong term.

Usually to be debunked, something needs to have holes or not be really solid.


The tea party generally prefers to ignore reality and instead live in their biblical fantasy-land, and they want to force everybody else to as well.

 

[sandorski]

I love that picture, but the question of how our DNA gets changed and what made the change is still not answered.

It has been answered, you either ignored it or just don't get it.

Mutations happen, some give certain critters an advantage or new ability, it survives and passes that Advantage/Ability onto its' offspring. Repeat millions or billions of times.

 

[Matt1970]

DNA absolutely has to change or the very definition of evolution can't be.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

I love that picture, but the question of how our DNA gets changed and what made the change is still not answered.

DNA is usually changed by errors in DNA replication, which happens many, many times every second in every cell in your body. It can also happen during conception when errors occur in merging genetic material from two organisms.

 

[Matt1970]

It has been answered, you either ignored it or just don't get it.

Mutations happen, some give certain critters an advantage or new ability, it survives and passes that Advantage/Ability onto its' offspring. Repeat millions or billions of times.

No, it hasn't and not all mutations just happen. Animals DNA change in colder climates to grow more hair or a thicker hide to deal with the environment. The question is what tells the DNA to change?

 

[Phokus]

Wow, that's almost as big as some of the gaps in the theory of evolution.

Did you time travel from the 19th century or something? We've already observed evolution in a laboratory setting.

 

[comptr6]

No, it hasn't and not all mutations just happen. Animals DNA change in colder climates to grow more hair or a thicker hide to deal with the environment. The question is what tells the DNA to change?

Yep, just like you or I moved to the mountains in Alaska our dna would change to so we would grow thick hair and a thick hide to protect us from the cold.

 

[sandorski]

No, it hasn't and not all mutations just happen. Animals DNA change in colder climates to grow more hair or a thicker hide to deal with the environment. The question is what tells the DNA to change?

I just told you.

When you go to a Cold climate your body adjusts because it has the ability to adjust to conditions, that is not a DNA change. Everyday your body is adjusting to temps and other environmental factors.

 

[jonks]

can't. fix. stupid.

 

[JSt0rm]

Yep, just like you or I moved to the mountains in Alaska our dna would change to so we would grow thick hair and a thick hide to protect us from the cold.

lmao. It's true. I live next to the coast and my body is getting more webbing inbetween my fingers in anticipation that i may go in the water.

 

[DrPizza]

Well you seem to have really answered nothing. I already know about the mutations in DNA, but it doesn't "JUST" happen. Something has to tell that tree it needs a defensive system. Something has to tell the DNA string to change. And instinct has absolutely nothing to do with a persons tatse prefrences or individuality.

Matt, let me give you a very analogous situation that happens over a much shorter duration of time. I raise goats. Goats get parasites ("worms.") I monitor each goat quite frequently and look for signs that the goat needs medicine to eliminate these parasites. Unfortunately, the medicine does not kill 100% of the parasites. Some of them are weakened, but do not die. If I administer this medicine too frequently, what I would end up with are parasites that are resistant to the medications.

What you seem to be asking is how do these parasites "know" to evolve. They don't. There is natural variation provided by occasional genetic mutations. Not all mutations are beneficial. Some mutations cause organisms to die much more quickly. Some mutations do absolutely nothing. But, some mutations give organisms a slight advantage whatever is selecting organisms to die in their environment. In my case, occasionally, there is a parasite that's just slightly less affected by the medication, and more likely to be weakened, but... survive. If that parasite reproduces, then unless there is another genetic mutation, that gene that benefits the organism is passed on and on and on. And, over generations of parasites, some will have mutations that cause them to die more quickly or not survive at all; some will have mutations that provide a slight beneficial advantage over others. Unless I succeed in killing 100% of the parasites - something difficult to do - then over the course of years, I am slowly selecting for the parasites that are most resistant to that medication. (We of course, take steps to reduce this effect.)

This is seen in medicine every day. Look at how many bacteria have developed over the past several decades to be resistant to many of the antibiotics that are on the market. Do you understand how that happens? God just doesn't say "hey, I'm not done creating here. I think I'll create a new variety of bacteria." There is no shortage of examples like this where we see evolutionary changes in organisms.

Now, since you brought up the case of trees, all you have to do is realize that these very slight changes are going to occur over a much longer span of time. And, you also need to realize that the changes occurred in both species simultaneously. A great example of this is elm trees. In the Himalayan area, where Dutch elm disease apparently spread from, the fungus and the trees evolved side by side. Over 100's of generations of trees (that's a long time), and many many more generations of fungus later, the trees survive attacks of the fungus, and the fungus has become more potent against elm trees. Once that fungus made its way into Europe and North America, via imports, it's wreaked havoc on the trees that did not evolve side by side with it, wiping out virtually all of the trees that it's encountered. And now, hybrids are being selected (by humans) which carry the genes from those resistant strains in the Himalayas or wherever they are, so that trees can be replanted in the US and Europe that are resistant. If humans suddenly weren't around to modify the environment & plant these trees, then what we would possibly see is the very slow spread of the surviving trees from portions of Asia where they exist into the rest of Asia and Europe, over 10's of thousands of years. Unless, of course, the trees were geographically isolated.

And, speaking of geographically isolated populations, we're just getting into some more of the basic nuts and bolts of understanding evolution.

In short, though, your objections to evolutions seem to stem from (pun intended) ignorance. "Wow, it's so complicated that I think I'd be too dumb to understand. Therefore... it was magic."

 

[Steeplerot]

Matt obviously does not understand or want to understand what a genetic mutation is. Most take 100s of thousands of generations to make a big time change in the species.

Whales used to be land creatures and you can see this in their skeletons still, we still have a little bit of our monkey tail left jutting out the base of our spine. How can someone be so blind?

The human appendix does not even function anymore and is going away more and more every generation. It (was) to help us eat raw meat. Wisdom teeth also are on their way out of the species since we don't eat much uncooked vegetables anymore. But these traits will still be available in our genetic code. -if needed. All this took time, way more then recorded history back to tiny stuff 4 billion years ago. Yet even as individuals our species adapts quickly. That's our big advantage at this point. We can speed things up so fast now with science (as Pizza pointed out above so well)

 

[DrPizza]

Crap, I'm not keeping up with the thread.

Climate changes, animals. I deal with one species of goat. Within my herd, I have a lot of genetic variation - a wide variety of colors, etc. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist this winter too much time to figure out that "hey, among all these same species of animal - same variety within the species, some of them are really, really fuzzy, and some of them aren't anywhere near as fuzzy." Guess which ones thrived best this winter. That shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out either. It was a much colder winter than normal. I think that since about December 1, the number of days where it stayed above freezing can be counted on one hand. In fact, I recall that 2 years ago, there were only about 10 straight days in February where I had to break ice out of water buckets in the barn. This year, breaking ice was more the rule than the exception. Had these goats been on their own to fend for themselves, rather than have me caring for them several times a day, the non-fuzzy ones would have seriously struggled. The biggest, strongest, warmest goats sometimes have triplets - who all survive. The smallest, coldest goats tend more toward just one offspring. If you even have the most basic understanding of genes, you should realize that within even half a dozen generations, the percentage that are hairier is going to increase, while the percentage with coarser, sparser hair is going to plummet.

 

[Matt1970]

Really? I understand it takes thousands and millions of years. I understand what a Genetic mutation is.

Let me put it this way. You are one of the first creatures to come out of the sea for whatever reason. You are now in a new environment. You body obviously is now under the strain of having to walk with fins and breath with gills. Some how, your body will have to tell the next strain of DNA to start growing legs and lungs and whatever other changes. Now sure it didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen from one offspring to the next, but somewhere along the line changes are being made to DNA. What is making those changes to the DNA?

 

[sandorski]

Really? I understand it takes thousands and millions of years. I understand what a Genetic mutation is.

Let me put it this way. You are one of the first creatures to come out of the sea for whatever reason. You are now in a new environment. You body obviously is now under the strain of having to walk with fins and breath with gills. Some how, your body will have to tell the next strain of DNA to start growing legs and lungs and whatever other changes. Now sure it didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen from one offspring to the next, but somewhere along the line changes are being made to DNA. What is making those changes to the DNA?

:\

Been splained, repeatedly.

 

[Matt1970]

I just told you.

When you go to a Cold climate your body adjusts because it has the ability to adjust to conditions, that is not a DNA change. Everyday your body is adjusting to temps and other environmental factors.

There is a huge difference between what our body can do to adjust to the conditions (viens moving away from the skin, blood going more to critical organs and us shivering) and someone growing thicker skin and hair.

 

[Matt1970]

:\

Been splained, repeatedly.

Really, refresh my memory. What organ was it again that changes DNA?

 

[JSt0rm]

Really, refresh my memory. What organ was it again that changes DNA?

Nobody cares that you are retarded. Next.

 

[Matt1970]

So when you can't answer someones question you call them retarded. Nice.

 

[comptr6]

Really, refresh my memory. What organ was it again that changes DNA?

I'll ask my youth pastor that, he was the one who explained intelligent design to me in the first place. Once I hear back from him I'll let you know!