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Darwin's theory
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The fundamental idea of Darwinism is laughable.
The notion that natural selection acting on random variations can cause a very simple organism to morph into complex ones, slowly and gradually, is not only illogical but the evidence for it isn't there. The limited adaptations that Darwinism can explain is unjustifiably extrapolated to account for the emergence of new species.
The fossil record is completely at odds with the Darwinian dogma of slow, gradual, step-by-step change. Most phyla made sudden appearances in a relatively short period of time, known as the Cambrian explosion.
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The fundamental idea of Darwinism is laughable.
The notion that natural selection acting on random variations can cause a very simple organism to morph into complex ones, slowly and gradually, is not only illogical but the evidence for it isn't there. The limited adaptations that Darwinism can explain is unjustifiably extrapolated to account for the emergence of new species.
The fossil record is completely at odds with the Darwinian dogma of slow, gradual, step-by-step change. Most phyla made sudden appearances in a relatively short period of time, known as the Cambrian explosion.
If you limit yourself to a very simplistic form of archaic Darwinian evolution, and expect all speciation to be gradual as a result, then yeah: that is not backed up by what we can see in the fossil record. At least not all the time. So the version you get taught in primary school is indeed incorrect, or rather it is of limited use to explain what we can see.
We do have some examples of gradual evolution, however. The development of the whale is relatively well documented, for instance. The problem is that once you produce it, detractors simply move the goalpost and demand ever more granular examples.
That said, we do see rapid speciation in the fossil records as well, and for the past seventy years some interesting research has been going on regarding it.
Gould has proposed Punctuated Equilibrium: very simply put, species stay more or less the same until a change in selective pressure occurs, which forces them to change rapidly (from a geological perspective... still millions of years).
Others have pointed out that we actually carry genetic material very similar to that of completely different species... it is just that we regulate them differently. A change in the genetic information that regulates the information in the protein-specifying information would have rather radical results... most of them catastrophic, of course, but some of them could not be and could lead to very swift evolutionary changes. Experiments have shown that by removing the genetic material that suppresses the formation of limbs in the abdomen of fruitflies will lead them to take on a radically different body plan right away.
There is also the fact that while your genetic material is fixed, the way in which this is expressed is not always rigidly determined. Another theory, therefor, is that it is sometimes possible for the phenotype to change first, and for genetic selection to follow.
So perhaps the problem is that we tend to think of genes as single-purpose information carriers, in stead of as replicators of building blocks that can be used in widely different ways, and that we have a predisposition to prefer simple, broad explanations over complex ones.
Deriding a dumbed-down version of evolution is a strawman argument, however, and competing theories until now do not avoid good old Occam's razor to my knowledge: they seem to rely either on unsupported wild speculation, or on special cases where the laws of nature are temporarily suspended.
You yourself seem to favor a sort of Gaia hypothesis, from your earlier comments. The only support I have ever seen for it seems to be arrived at by starting with the idea of a global organizing agency, and then working backwards, emphasizing whatever is compatible with this idea and considering a sufficient amount of this as a compelling reason to assume it is correct.
But perhaps you have some compelling evidence that is not of this nature that you can share?0 -
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The fundamental idea of Darwinism is laughable.
The notion that natural selection acting on random variations can cause a very simple organism to morph into complex ones, slowly and gradually, is not only illogical but the evidence for it isn't there. The limited adaptations that Darwinism can explain is unjustifiably extrapolated to account for the emergence of new species.
The fossil record is completely at odds with the Darwinian dogma of slow, gradual, step-by-step change. Most phyla made sudden appearances in a relatively short period of time, known as the Cambrian explosion.
Where have you been? This thread has needed some of your.....
...whatever it is....
....for a while now. Surprised it took you this long to find it!0 -
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Vivisectus wrote: »So would there be a different apparent age of the universe to, say, cuttlefish?
Well, dogs have calculated the age of the universe to be approximately 98 billion years.
And this has been confirmed by the one true dog.0 -
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The fundamental idea of Darwinism is laughable.
The notion that natural selection acting on random variations can cause a very simple organism to morph into complex ones, slowly and gradually, is not only illogical but the evidence for it isn't there. The limited adaptations that Darwinism can explain is unjustifiably extrapolated to account for the emergence of new species.
The fossil record is completely at odds with the Darwinian dogma of slow, gradual, step-by-step change. Most phyla made sudden appearances in a relatively short period of time, known as the Cambrian explosion.
I realise people have already responded to this video, but I feel I need to throw my own opinion in here as well. Apologies if I cover anything people have already said, I haven't read the posts thoroughly.
Firstly, notice how the man in the first video is introduced as a professor at UC Berkeley. Good credentials, right? Bzzzz, no points for you. He's a law professor. Which doesn't in itself mean he knows nothing about the subject of course, but since he's introduced as a professor, the assumption is that he's a professor in something related to the field he's discussing. Biology, geology, something like that. It's misleading, and I'd guess intentionally so.
His arguments make no sense either. The fossil record has become no more complete since Darwin's time? Bollocks. We unearth more (and I hate using the term but it's a good simplification) 'missing links' all the time. Please, any of you who don't believe this please go and look at some images of human fossils over time. The change over time is there right in front of your eyes if you let yourself see it. If you really don't want to look at the human examples, look at the transitional forms between lobe-finned fish and tetrapods. Theropod dinosaurs and birds. They're just some of the more interesting examples. Acting as if all of evolutionary biology is based on extrapolating from Darwin's finches? More bollocks. There's plenty of anatomical (as I mentioned above) and molecular data supporting evolutionary theory, but of course he doesn't mention this because it would discount his points. He's basing his refutations at a 1st year secondary school, at best model of evolutionary theory. It would be like refuting chemical theories based on the bohr model. I can't quite follow his second point, he seems to be stumbling over words and going off on tangents, but he seems to be implying mutation cannot occur and this is evidenced in the literature (it isn't) and also seems to hint at the idea of 'irreducible complexity' which is proven nonsense.
The second video is worse again. It starts with reasonable, but again oversimplified introduction to evolutionary theory, then proceeds to shit all over it. Arthropods didn't evolve from chordates? Of course they didn't, and no one ever claimed that they did. If you watched these videos taking a shot every time they uttered a logical fallacy, you'd probably need to get your stomach pumped. A phylum is as different as it can be from other phyla? What does that even mean exactly? What about convergent evolution?
The Cambrian explosion talk is also inaccurate. They state that all bodyplans came around at this time, over a very short time period. While it's true that the base bodyplans of most phyla popped up in the fossil record at this time, that doesn't mean they all appeared at that time. Think about it. How many animals that die do so in a location where they would be preserved as fossils? Not too many. And many organisms today have bodies that preserve much more easily than those of the Cambrian. I'm not even sure what they're suggesting. I doubt they even do. Creation occurred in the Cambrian? Then where's the human fossils? :pac:
These pieces of 'evidence' might seem to make sense on first glance, but they're omitting major parts of evolutionary theory just to suit their agenda, and that isn't science.0 -
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,163 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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I'm truly not sure if you're being serious... I hope you're not.The proto-humans were under the water, obviously!
Eh... firstly as ScumLord notes how did the compression keep all the structures intact? Never mind that some of these folks may have been deliberately buried by their group/family. Kinda hard to do if you're under thousands of feet of water. Never mind that corpses of animals that drift down to the deepest parts of the ocean today don't distort. Did this water pressure make the skulls thicker too? Decrease the size of the brain cavity? Grow the size of the teeth? Change the makeup of the dental profile itself? Increase the size of the eye orbits? Increase the size of the nasal cavity? Shorten some limb bones, lengthen others? Remove chins? And do this consistently in some groups and not in others?The weight of the water would have changed the shape of the skulls.
As I say I do hope you're not being serious here. Though having engaged with creationists before I suspect you might be. I have found their knowledge of basic science around this area to be scarily lacking. Hence so called "experts" can make up theories that sound plausible to them.
Going by the story A) he created that life and that environment.As for the morality or otherwise of God's decision, well:
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
he knew beforehand that this would be how it would have turned out. C) Knowing beforehand and allowing that environment to take shape he purposely condemned millions of his beloved humans, men women and children to death(then again he's a prolific enough child killer so...). Never mind all the animals who would be innocents in this. Even to a six year old that's gobsmackingly immoral.
And fill it with enough breeding stock to cover every single animal and plant species(never mind microscopic life) on the planet. To save the ecosystem of just the Phoenix park in Dublin would require a vessel at least the size of the largest oil tanker in the world today and you couldn't make it from "gopher wood".14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
Observable reality is significantly more so.It's pretty straightforward stuff, wibbs, come on! :rolleyes:Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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