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Talk:Question evolution! campaign (view source)
Revision as of 19:46, July 20, 2011
, 19:46, July 20, 2011→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.
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.
--[[User:AwesomeDude111|AwesomeDude111]] 12:00, 11 July 2011 (EDT)
--[[User:AwesomeDude111|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.