Talk:Question evolution! campaign/Archive 1

Do we want these 15 questions answered? I can answer some of them right here --HarabecW 14:27, 20 June 2011 (EDT)

I'll answer some now, I may not be able to get to all of them right now.

1. How did life originate? Evolution does not deal with the origins of life, it deals only with it's diversity. The dictionary definition of evolution is "change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift."

2. How did the DNA code originate? I do not have the background to properly answer this question

3. How could mutations create huge volumes of information in living things? What is "information" in this context? This is never defined.

4. Why is natural selection taught as‘evolution’ as if it explains the origin of the diversity of life? Natural selection is the mechanism that works with speciation to produce an effect we call evolution.

5. How did new biochemical pathways, which involve multiple enzymes working together in sequence, originate? I do not have the background to properly answer this question

6. Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know that they were not designed? Because we can see many examples of things we know and can see were designed naturally but look like they should have been designed by human hands. The snowflake is a prime example; it appears extremely complex and designed however we know snowflakes are formed via natural processes. Living things also dont appear designed, at least not designed by anyone with any sense. The human body has some quite complex features but if taken as a whole, it's incredibly poorly thought out.

7. How did multi-cellular life originate? I do not have the background to properly answer this question

8. How did sex originate? I do not have the background to properly answer this question

9. Why are the countless millions of transitional fossils missing? Simply, they arent. We have BOATLOADS of fossils and scientists have spent a great deal of time arguing just were in the evolutionary spectrum many of them fit. Fossils themselves are uncommon simply because the conditions necessary to form them are rare, but we have an incredibly diverse fossil record already (http://www.transitionalfossils.com/)

10. How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years, if evolution has changed worms into humans in the same time frame? Evolution has not changed "worms into humans." These organisms havent changed because they have had very little evolutionary pressure to do so, they are very well adapted to their environment.

11. How did blind chemistry create mind/ intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality? It didnt, humans did. These are names we have given to things that help us reinforce our social groups, one of the key reasons humans have become dominant.

12. Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ storytelling tolerated? It isnt. If you can demonstrate another theory that explains what evolution explains in a better way with more data, prepare a place on your mantle for a Nobel. Science encourages informed dissent.

13. Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution? There are far too many to list here, most of our modern understanding of biochemistry, genetics, and large parts of our medical science rest on evolution being factual; if it werent, these sciences simply wouldnt work.

14. Science involves experimenting to figure out how things work; how they operate. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as this operational science? Evolution is not a theory about history, it is an on-going biological process.

15. Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes? Evolution is not a religious idea. --HarabecW 20:13, 23 June 2011 (EDT)

Several of your arguments are critically flawed.

1. Because life was divinely created, even if evolution did occur, it would be affected by the divine grace of God, and not just random chance.

Can you demonstrate that life was divinely created? Additionally, no one has claimed that random chance guides evolution.

3. Information is basically stored knowledge, such as God storing the exact series of proteins needed for an organism to survive as DNA.

You're talking about instincts, right?

4. Because of natural selection, specialization could never occur, as hypothetical "transitional animals" could never out compete a specialized animal. Thus, the number of species should only decrease as time goes on.

You misunderstand what speciation is. If you have two groups of the same animal that become separated by some sort of barrier, they will become genetically different as time goes on via genetic drift. Once enough time goes by, those two species will no longer be able to reproduce together because their genes are too different. It's not a question of out-competing one animal, it's a question of adapting to different evolutionary pressures.

6. A snowflake is not a self-replicating series of biochemical reactions, so it is not an accurate comparison. The human body contains no vestigial organs, even organs previously though of as "useless" have been discovered to have important functions. The human body no redundancy, unless said redundancy is extremely important or advantageous for survival, such as having two eyes or two lungs. random chance could never produce such a perfect system, the only logical explanation is that there was some kind of divine plan for us.

The human body is FAR from perfect and we have many vestigial features, one example being the goosebump response. In other animals, this response makes the hairs on their bodies stand up when frightened or cold to make them appear larger or trap a thin layer of insulated air. We humans do the same thing, however we do not have enough body hair to make it work as it does in other animals and serves no other purpose. Having two eyes is not an example of redundancy, it's an example of binocular vision which is what helps us perceive in three dimensions.

9. Those fossils barely contain proof of an organism, let alone a true transitional species. We can't even be sure that they are legitimate fossils, and not just hoaxes propagated by the organizations that claim to study evolutionary "science".

They show the bone structure and often the physical form of an dead organism, what more do you need? Except for a handful of fakes that the scientific community has expelled from the research, we have no indication that others were faked and I'd like to see your proof that current fossils are faked.

10. Although a slight oversimplification, the "theory" of evolution does in fact state that over a series of generations, humans did evolve from worms. In addition, because evolution is caused by mutations, shouldn't millions of years of random mutations eventually lead to evolution? Even if only neutral or positive mutations remained in the gene pool, eventually, these ancient species should look at least slightly different.

No, it does not. It states that we share a common (VERY distant) ancestor, not that we evolved from worms. To the other point, with very little evolutionary pressure to select for a specific set of mutations, the population changes very little because natural selection is not weeding out the weaker genes.

11. And why do only humans have true morality and altruism? Chemistry has no emotions, and the expression of true, human empathy can only come from a god-fearing Christian.

You dont know that only humans have morality, you assume that. And altruistic behavior has been demonstrated in many other species. In us, it's a way to reinforce the social group. I cant speak to the existence or not of a "nice" gene, but we are biologically programmed to need and want to be part of a group, it's what helped us survive our days before our dominance.

12. Such as creation theory, which is more logical and explains the origin of life, among other things, much better.

Creation theory is poorly supported by established science and rests mainly on supposition, anthropomorphism, and a lack of understanding in science.

13. Those disciplines study phenomena God created in the first place. Nothing about medicine relies on evolution, even the study of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance occurs because of the transfer of already existing antibiotic resistance plasmids between bacteria.

There is actually a paper written on the subject, it explains why medicine rests on evolution much better than I can http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050112

14. It's impossible to preform experiments that test evolution, and any attempts have either failed or have been critically flawed. Thus, evolution is not operational science, or really science at all.

It is not impossible to test at all, but it takes an extremely long time to test as you have to breed MANY successive generations such that they are genetically dissimilar from their parent species to the point where they can no longer breed. Most universities are not willing to fund a study that would last probably three or four human lifetimes, even with an animal that reproduces quickly, to get it's results and prove something the scientific community accepts as true from evidence gathered by other means.

15. Evolution requires more faith than any religion I have ever encountered, and it is certainly taught religiously by the few teachers who haven't realized how critically flawed it is.

This claim is repeated again and again but I have seen no indication of it nor has any been presented to me.

Don't feel bad, if there is one thing evolutionists are good at or understand, its how to deceive and lie like any liberal. Critical thinking is important to any academic study, so you can't accept something as true unless you are willing to appreciate that you might not be learning the truth, as liberals are willing to lie for their own agenda. FCapra 19:44, 24 June 2011 (EDT)

I'm not interested in this descending into partisan bickering, so I'd thank you to not take the first step down that road and stick to objective discussion rather than name-calling.--HarabecW 22:38, 24 June 2011 (EDT)

Why is there a campaign about this? It is a waste of time and money could go toward better things.Agalcal 17:40, 28 June 2011 (EDT)

This is a farce, you are embarrassing yourself

This is a farce, you are embarrassing yourself.

For example:

1. Evolutionists can't have it both ways on the Origin of life. You can't spout on about chemical evolution from one side of your mouth, but on the other hand say it has nothing to do with evolution. Face it, evolution is a religion/philosophy. It is not science.

Evolution explains the diversity of life, it DOES NOT NOR HAS IT EVER purported to explain how biological life began.

2. I see a noticeable lack of footnotes and/or support for your contentions. But even if you had footnotes and/or "information", you would probably link to or provide junk science "information". (talkorigins, etc.).

To avoid flooding the page, yes I left footnotes off. What specifically would you like information for and I will provide it.

By the way, are you an atheist? If so, please provide proof and evidence that atheism is true.

I suggest rereading Conservapedia's evolution and atheism articles over and over until they sink in. conservative 17:52, 28 June 2011 (EDT)

The Evolution article is seriously flawed and no, I'm not an Atheist. I actually do believe in Theistic Evolution, but I cant provide any verifiable evidence to support that idea so I dont advance it as fact. --HarabecW 18:46, 28 June 2011 (EDT)

Theistic Evolution is just as valid a theory as Creation, as they both explain the method by which humans were divinely created. The only difference is that Theistic Evolution is directly refuted by The Bible. As someone who has studied biology in both private and academic settings, the evolution article is perfectly valid from a logical viewpoint and brings more than reasonable doubt to the "scientific" theory of evolution. FCapra 19:15, 28 June 2011 (EDT)

Theistic evolution is unbiblical (poor Bible exegesis) and is just jerry-rigged evolution.[1] conservative 19:17, 28 June 2011 (EDT)

When it comes to the biblical creationist work ethic vs. the atheist/evolutionist work ethic, we all know who is going to win in the Bible Belt state of Texas, don't we?

Question: When it comes to the biblical creationist work ethic vs. the atheist/evolutionist work ethic, we all know who is going to win in the Bible Belt state of Texas, don't we?[2] Conservative 06:49, 9 July 2011 (EDT)

But when it comes to evolutionist work ethic vs creationist work ethic in the Midwest, we all know who has already won. NOBODY BECAUSE ARGUING GETS US NOWHERE

Question Evolution?

Do you think the campaign will work? I mean, evolution is for some reason very widely accepted within the scientific community... personally I'm hoping to "teach the controversy" where both intelligent design and evolution can be taught in class. And yes, evolution is science, the theory has many holes and personally I don't believe in evolution, but bad science is still science. --AwesomeDude111 12:00, 11 July 2011 (EDT)

The Answers You've been waiting for!

A response from a High School Freshman

I can answer some of your questions right here. Ready? Probably not, but too late for any of that.

1) How did life originate? A: While evolution is actually a theory to explain the diversity of life, it is thought that the first cells could have been formed by the spontaneous formation of plasma membranes due to the polar nature of lipids, thus containing organic molecules required to have life.

2)How did DNA originate? A: Being a high school freshman, the best hypothesis I can give you is that sequences of common organic chemicals were incorporated into early cells, possibly first as RNA then as DNA.

3) How could MUTATIONS create information? A: As you already may know, when cells reproduce, small changes may occur in DNA. These changes are usually very minor changes because much of DNA is just old code that has been passed down but serves no purpose. However, sometimes mutations can be harmful or helpful, creating new proteins by changing the order of codons. The helpful changes tend to be passed on when an organism has reproductive success, thus creating a new organism with that heritable trait. These mutations are NOT the cartoon "mutations" where the character rolls in radioactive waste and grows 4 arms, these are subtle changes in the order of the nucleotides.

4) How is Natural Selection a creative process if it selects from existing data? A: Natural Selection works in combination with the mutations discussed above, so if Bug A has a mutation that makes it darker, it will survive better on a dark background than Bug B, which is pure white. However, if the bugs live in the snow, then Bug B will have a higher chance of surviving. In this example, Natural Selection is not the creative process, it is only the method to sort out the best adapted species.

5) How did new biochemical pathways consisting of multiple enzymes arise? A: I honestly haven't done very much reading on this, but the best response that I have is that chains of enzymes are created to do their job, they have no discrimination because they are only proteins, therefore they work on whatever fits into the active sites. They work in chains because a series of multiple enzymes are created through protein synthesis, allowing the proteins to work in a pathway.

6) How do evolutionists know that organisms were not designed? A: Because things ARE evolving before our eyes. To all those wishing not to have their minds blown, skip to 7. To those remaining, people are evolving. Multiple people in Japan have been born without an appendix, and some people have the genes for webbed feet. Even more important, animals are evolving. Tuskless elephants in the wild tend to live longer due to the amount of poaching for ivory, so the number of elephants with a mutation that causes them to stop growing tusks has increased. One more, from "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin. A group on unicellular algae left in a petri dish will develop into clumps of multiple cells when exposed to a predator, but after 1000 cycles only the clumps big enough for each cell to avoid the predator but small enough to take in enough light will be left. The creation of new species is an example against design.

7) How did multicellular life originate? A: This is too easy, so I will go further than the question. We have already discussed the algae example above, so I won't use that one. Instead, I draw your attention to the placozoan, a 4 celled amoebalike predator. The placozoan developed to be able to skim small algae, thus it must be bigger than the algae to feed via phagocytosis. My interpretation of this question, however, is how differentiated multicellular life arose, and my explanation is that only the most basic multicellular life can be undifferentiated, so differentiation must have occurred in response to predation. This happened via mutation and selection, and most likely led to an "arms race" between species to avoid predators and to feed on more developed prey. Species probably came on land later when competition in water caused prey to move onto land and achieve reproductive success, then predators followed. One of the earliest ocean/land transition fossils to date is Tiktallik, which appears to be a predator, and has an amphibious build that shows it's evolutionary history

8) How did sex originate? (get your giggles out now) A: Sex most likely originated when multicellular species grew to sizes where asexual reproduction would cease to be advantageous. Early sexual reproduction might have started with a parent having both gametes and leaving a fertilized egg, then sex may have grown to involve a male and a female when species started schooling and mixing genes created better results. The reason scientists can only hypothesize about this is because fossil records are incomplete (see question 9)

9) Why are we missing countless transitional species? A: It is estimated that 99% of all once living species are extinct, so it should make sense that we would find trillions of fossils in the ground. The problem is that not every species becomes a fossil. In order to become a fossil, the bones must be buried in a sedimentary rock, have the right temperature and pressure, and have a good exposure when a scientist is there. Scientists don't excavate unless they have some sign of fossils, and usually erosion destroys exposed fossils if they are not found in time. In short, we do have the fossils of these transitional species, its called sand. You might just have a little bit of T-Rex in your swimsuit next time you go to the beach.

10) How do living fossils remain unchanged? A: We don't know that these animals are unchanged, the soft tissues may have changed over time but the bones tend to remain the same. These species may be unchanged because they tend exist in isolated groups with very little gene flow, creating the "island time capsule" effect. This only means that the gene flow hasn't changed enough for animals to make a significant change in appearance. This is most observable on Madagascar, which is the only place that has lemurs, a relative of modern monkeys, because lemurs had no competition and no gene flow from the rest of Africa.

11) How did blind chemistry create morality? A: The game theory accounts for morals and altruism. Game theory suggests that animals are bound in groups, defined by either Zero-sum or nonzero-sum. A zero-sum game accounts for hedonism, in which the actions of one have a direct opposite effect on the other. Nonzero-sum games account for altruism because the the entire group either benefits or is harmed. Nonzero sum games account partially for morality when it would be advantageous for a member of the group to act in favor of everyone. A zero-sum game can also account for part of this by creating a psychological debt, in which a member of the group feels that it must repay another for a sacrifice that was made to benefit that member.

12) Why is evolutionary "just-so" tolerated? A: What are you talking about? or is this just a filler question? The only reason an evolutionist can't answer this is because it's not a question, but I swore on my fishes life that I would do my best to answer these all, so here we go. The reason that natural selection might favor a male who spreads his seed (maybe even fish or coral style, hm?) is because it has a higher chance to impregnate more females, thus creating more offspring, but this would be a bad idea in situations where offspring need attention from the parents, like in humans. Human babies actually are born the instant they can survive outside the womb, taking some burden off of the mother. The human baby needs the parents to raise it in order to finish its development, thus the parents stay. The response is not a "just so" response, the response has its nature because the response depends on the situation. Like if I were to tell you, the reader, that you had to catch and kill something, you wouldn't use a fishing rod to kill a deer and you wouldn't use a rifle to kill a fish, the same applies to the survival strategies of species.

13) Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution? A: Well for one, you are currently reading. That's some pretty nice evolution, eh? Second, we have (get ready...) MOLECULAR BIOLOGY!!! Thats right, we use the principles of evolution to interpret the findings of molecular biology. Third, we have entomology (the study of insects), which is using genetic variations to predict the behaviors of insects. Finally, we have basically anything to do with viruses, though the one I will cite is AIDS research because a friend of mine had a friend staying with her while her parents are at world AIDS day. Without further ado, put your hands together for.. kidding I'll just paraphrase what she said. Anyways, AIDS researchers everywhere know that AIDS is caused by HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. Viruses have an amazing skill with mutations, and HIV is no different. Currently, AIDS researchers are tracking multiple strands of HIV and hoping that they will never become airborne pathogens or the world would be doomed, but they are also searching for patterns within the reverse transcription based reproduction that might unlock a treatment.

14) Science involves experimenting.. blah blah blah.. why is evolution history based and not experiment based? A: While we have had several evolution experiments (see question 6 for a good example using algae), I would prefer to actually target your first statement. Science can also be observation based, like in astronomy, paleontology, etc. (you don't see us yelling "ASTRONOMY IS A FAKE THEY DON'T EXPERIMENT ON STARS BECAUSE WE BOYCOTT THE NEW HADRON COLLIDER") and the history part of evolution is based on observations made in fossils as well as in the lab. The observations made in the lab can also include moving cells to induce mutations, especially in fruit flies, so not only do evolution researchers experiment, they use real scientific observations.

15) Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a belief system based on unproven dogmatic statements, allowed in the classroom. A: It's not religion, its science. If it was religion, we'd be going to a building to pray to natural selection or something, and we'd probably go out and kill Muslims then try to blame the Muslims for it. But let's not open that can of worms, instead I'm just going to say, evolution is science, go reread this if you don't believe me. And seriously, get over the school thing, this is possibly the lowest you could ever go. It's like when a child gets angry because his brother is going to the zoo but he's not in his brothers class so he has to stay at school. Don't try to censor me, don't disbelieve, I could argue with you till the internet blows up from the sheer force of my words.

A note to Mr. "This is a Farce": feel free to send me any questions/requests for footnotes. even better, go on cracked.com, its less of a waste of your time than trying to disprove me, or better yet, go get that book I mentioned, its an introductory text but its fun. Best of all, just go play video games, nothing calms you down like telling your pokemon to fight others or using your awesome skills as Bowser to beat Mario in a kart race by throwing shells and banannas at him.

Please leave questions or footnote requests here