5 best proofs of evolution

[biohazard]

Hehe, what a classic.

If something is too complex for a man to manufacture, it cannot exist unless someone has designed it. Sheesh. How pathetic is it if the only way you can possibly try to prove the existence of your god is to point out that a bacterium's flagellum is complex. That is sooo last year. Please, find yourself a new proof, this one we've seen already!

Hell, a twelve-gram bacterial cell. Who comes up with this **** in the first place, do you actually understand anything about what you write? Well, luckily at least the references are fresh and up-to-date.

[robsabba]

Intelligent Design

We know that design necessitates a designer. In fact, in accordance with this fundamental axiom, design detection methodology is a prerequisite in many fields of human endeavor, including archaeology, anthropology, forensics, criminal jurisprudence, copyright law, patent law, reverse engineering, crypto analysis, random number generation, and SETI. And how do we recognize intelligent design? In general, we find "specified complexity" to be a reliable indicator of the presence of intelligent design. Chance can explain complexity alone but not specification -- a random sequence of letters is complex but not specified (it's meaningless).)

It depends on what you mean by "design." Snowflakes certainly look designed... each is both complex and unique. Are they evidence of a snowflake designer?

Specified Complexity is a Red Herring. We cannot tell if for example, The Elephant is the result of a Specified Design by looking at it. Was the Elephant the Intended result of a designer, or one of many possible results of evolution?

So where's the proof of God's existence? In accordance with our familiar axiom and in light of the tremendous advances we've made in molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics and information theory, the proof of God is all around us!

Such fields have instead taken much out of the mystery of Life which used to be included under theology. Just as we now understand where lightning comes from (not Zeus) we also now understand much more about where babies come from.

When we apply the general principles of detecting specified complexity to biologic systems (living creatures), we find it reasonable to infer the presence intelligent design. Take, for example, the bacterial flagellum's stator, rotor, drive-shaft, U-joint, and propeller. It is not convenient that we've given these parts these names - that's truly their function. If you were to find a stator, rotor, drive-shaft, U-joint, or propeller in any vehicle, machine, toy or model, you would recognize them as the product of an intelligent source. No one would expect an outboard motor -- much less one as incredible as the flagellar motor -- to be the product of a chance assemblage of parts. Motors are the product of intelligent design.

We are not talking about a"chance assembly of parts," we are talking about evolution, which means Selection.

Furthermore, the E. coli bacterial flagellum simply could not have evolved gradually over time. The bacterial flagellum is an "irreducibly complex" system. An irreducibly complex system is one composed of multiple parts, all of which are necessary for the system to function. If you remove any one part, the entire system will fail to function. Every individual part is integral. There is absolutely no naturalistic, gradual, evolutionary explanation for the bacterial flagellum. (Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, 1996.)

Strange then that neither Behe nor any other IDer has been able to show that any Specific flagellum is, indeed, I.C. Behe only talks about these devices in general terms, yet his whole point is supposed to be about how these things are IC at the molecular level of detail. Anything that is IC can be explained by evolutionary exaption, in any case. The IC argument assumes that parts remain the same over time and never change their function. It also assumes that parts were not lost (as in scaffolding). This is not how evolution is believed to work.

The bacterial flagellum (not to mention the irreducibly complex molecular machines responsible for the flagellum's assembly) is just one example of the specified complexity that pervades the microscopic biological world. Molecular biologist Michael Denton wrote, "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." (Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1986, p. 250.)

Denton now thinks that evolution is responsible for all this, but was guided by an unfolding plan from God. See: Nature's Destiny (1998)

[MrMistery]

A question i always like to ask to mess with ID proponents is this: if you have a designer that is smart enough to design everything, wouldn't this designer be irreducibly complex? How on earth did the designer appear? was there some designer of the designer?

[llewop]

A question i always like to ask to mess with ID proponents is this: if you have a designer that is smart enough to design everything, wouldn't this designer be irreducibly complex? How on earth did the designer appear? was there some designer of the designer?

There are some things that cannot be explained by man. We would just be arrogant to think that we could possibly have all the answers. From a common sense standpoint, intelligent design makes sense. I'm typing this using a computer that isn't all too complex, but certainly I must assume from opening the case (voiding my warranty) and looking at the parts that somebody purposefully built it. The parts don't work together by chance. We look at complex systems in the world, much more complex than a pc, yet conclude that somehow it all came together by chance in the beginning of time? Seems doubtful. Any theory of origins must be accepted by faith, and, in truth, you must accept both creation and Biblical Christianity by faith. By the way, this is a pivotal point of Biblical Christianity.

Science cannot explain the origins of man, because the scientific process demands observation. Even if we could observe some sort of evolution (which I do not concede), how could we be sure it was the same process under the same conditions as existed in the beginning of time? You would be trying to prove an historical fact through science, like trying to prove the landing of the Mayflower through soil samples.

I think an interesting question could be put to you. If ID is not true, then from where did the original elements originate? If you believed in big bang, where did the explosion originate? If you believe in some kind of ooze pool, from where did the ooze come?

Finally, how can science prove something that scientists were not there to observe? Now if you do believe the Bible, then you have a documented account. If you don't believe the Bible, then you are stuck.

[llewop]

So, what about Lucy?

From a much earlier posting.

Maybe this wasn't out at the time, but check out this story.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/icon-of-evolution-lucy-bites-the-dust/

[florinmoc]

My response to “Five Proofs of Evolution”, available from http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/fi ... -evolution
1. The universal genetic code. All cells on Earth, from our white blood cells, to simple bacteria, to cells in the leaves of trees, are capable of reading any piece of DNA from any life form on Earth. This is very strong evidence for a common ancestor from which all life descended.

Or, this can be very strong evidence for a common creator. My Ford Mondeo shows many, many similarities with Ford Focus, which is smaller. Should I say that my Mondeo evolved from Focus? Or is it the other way round? Do you think that if I wait long enough my Mondeo will evolve in something better? The only evolution here is in the mind of the CREATOR who thought “Oh, what if I modify this and that and make such and such a car?”

2. The fossil record. The fossil record shows that the simplest fossils will be found in the oldest rocks, and it can also show a smooth and gradual transition from one form of life to another.
Wow, we have to be careful what we call “oldest rocks”. If we have ‘old rocks’ and ‘new rocks’, where did the new rocks come from? Meteors? It’s better to say “simplest fossils are at the bottom layers of sediment”. But then you have places on the globe of ‘unconforming strata’, namely layers where the strata does not conform to the pattern, or even strata that is at different angles of other strata, as if the initial strata was eroded and new strata was added.

The explanation o the strata could be the Flood. Obviously, the simple organisms were buried first, since they cannot run as fast as the more complex ones. Snails were buried first, horses a bit latter. It looks like horses run a bit faster than snails, so they reached higher grounds, while the snails had already been buried.
As for the ‘smooth and gradual transition’, there should be millions of intermediary ‘links’. Well, the strata is still stubborn, and doesn’t want to give us such evidence (not the counterfeited ones, that so many people are not aware of!). If we don’t have evidence, we don’t have a case. (You need a dead body in order to have a murder case, right?)
By the time we have solid evidence, this is just guesswork. If anyone wants to believe this, they have this right. Just don’t call it science!!!

3. Genetic commonalities. Human beings have approximately 96% of genes in common with chimpanzees, about 90% of genes in common with cats (source), 80% with cows (source), 75% with mice (source), and so on. This does not prove that we evolved from chimpanzees or cats, though, only that we shared a common ancestor in the past. And the amount of difference between our genomes corresponds to how long ago our genetic lines diverged.

Those who study literature know that the books of a certain author have ‘genetic commonalities’. That means they somehow resemble in style, words used, subject maybe etc. I have some books in my library that resemble a lot. Have they evolved from each other? Should I wait a few ‘billions of years’ for them to produce another ‘genetically modified’ book?

4. Common traits in embryos. Humans, dogs, snakes, fish, monkeys, eels (and many more life forms) are all considered "chordates" because we belong to the phylum Chordata. One of the features of this phylum is that, as embryos, all these life forms have gill slits, tails, and specific anatomical structures involving the spine. For humans (and other non-fish) the gill slits reform into the bones of the ear and jaw at a later stage in development. But, initially, all chordate embryos strongly resemble each other.

To me, this is plain silly. There’s actually no ‘proof’ here. Think of it: fish embryos have gill slits that become ... gills, when the fish is adult. Fair enough! Humans have ‘gill slits’ that become ... ears and jaws. If I said, “Birds have these very, very long ears, with feathers on them ... and they use them for flying.” You’d probably say, “Hey, dummy, those are wings, not ears!” And you’d be right. But when someone says that human embryos have gill slits that become ears and jaws we call them ... well, scientists...
Human embryos DO NOT have gill slits, it’s just the way ears and jaws look like at that age. You may have a dog that looks like a cat and vice versa. Proving? Sugar looks very much like salt. Try and substitute one for another in your coffee (or tea if you like!) and you’ll see the difference.

5. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Bacteria colonies can only build up a resistance to antibiotics through evolution. It is important to note that in every colony of bacteria, there are a tiny few individuals which are naturally resistant to certain antibiotics. This is because of the random nature of mutations.
When an antibiotic is applied, the initial innoculation will kill most bacteria, leaving behind only those few cells which happen to have the mutations necessary to resist the antibiotics. In subsequent generations, the resistant bacteria reproduce, forming a new colony where every member is resistant to the antibiotic. This is natural selection in action. The antibiotic is "selecting" for organisms which are resistant, and killing any that are not.

My brother and I are quite different. He’s very resistant to cold; I’m not. If an ‘ice age’ appears out of the blue, I die, he survives. That’s “natural selection” right? And his children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be ‘better adapted’ right? Question: are they still humans, or are they sort of monsters? (Hey, I was gentle enough to have my brother survive in the story, so I have the right to call him a monster, right?)
So, the resistant bacteria survives antibiotics and becomes ... pigs? No! Flying pigs? No. It becomes nothing, it stays a poor bacteria waiting for a stronger antibiotic to be invented.
If these are the best five proofs for evolution, it’s quite a flimsy theory.

How about the opposite: God creating everything in 6 literal days? I have a problem with that too. My wonder is: why did it take him so long? I guess I’ll ask him when we meet!

[newscctv]

I wonder what exactly you consider to be a "kind." To me, it sounds like an all-too-easy fall-back argument. There was a time when anti-evolutionists used very similar arguments to deny any sort of speciation; now that overwhelming evidence of speciation has been found, they have altered their argument to deny the development of new genera and families. Perhaps once further evidence is discovered,they will change the definition of "kind" to mean orders, classes, and phyla. My point is that it's all to easy, once it has been established that one organism evolved into another, to say "Well they're both the same 'kind,' so that still doesn't prove anything." That's why the "kind" argument really doesn't seem valid to me.Generally speaking, the more people talk about "being saved," the further away they actually are from true salvation.

[JackBean]

My response to “Five Proofs of Evolution”, available from http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/fi ... -evolution
1. The universal genetic code. All cells on Earth, from our white blood cells, to simple bacteria, to cells in the leaves of trees, are capable of reading any piece of DNA from any life form on Earth. This is very strong evidence for a common ancestor from which all life descended.

Or, this can be very strong evidence for a common creator. My Ford Mondeo shows many, many similarities with Ford Focus, which is smaller. Should I say that my Mondeo evolved from Focus? Or is it the other way round? Do you think that if I wait long enough my Mondeo will evolve in something better? The only evolution here is in the mind of the CREATOR who thought “Oh, what if I modify this and that and make such and such a car?”

Yeah, but your Ford probably isn't so much similar to Skoda, is it? Or to radio or anything like that, right? Because we're talking about all humans, not only like vertebrates

2. The fossil record. The fossil record shows that the simplest fossils will be found in the oldest rocks, and it can also show a smooth and gradual transition from one form of life to another.
Wow, we have to be careful what we call “oldest rocks”. If we have ‘old rocks’ and ‘new rocks’, where did the new rocks come from? Meteors? It’s better to say “simplest fossils are at the bottom layers of sediment”. But then you have places on the globe of ‘unconforming strata’, namely layers where the strata does not conform to the pattern, or even strata that is at different angles of other strata, as if the initial strata was eroded and new strata was added.

The explanation o the strata could be the Flood. Obviously, the simple organisms were buried first, since they cannot run as fast as the more complex ones. Snails were buried first, horses a bit latter. It looks like horses run a bit faster than snails, so they reached higher grounds, while the snails had already been buried.
As for the ‘smooth and gradual transition’, there should be millions of intermediary ‘links’. Well, the strata is still stubborn, and doesn’t want to give us such evidence (not the counterfeited ones, that so many people are not aware of!). If we don’t have evidence, we don’t have a case. (You need a dead body in order to have a murder case, right?)
By the time we have solid evidence, this is just guesswork. If anyone wants to believe this, they have this right. Just don’t call it science!!!

Fortunatelly, you don't have to. But it is Because these "rocks" can be also dated, said how old are they... And you think that some flood took like billion of years to reach the maximum?
Regarding unsmooth transition, the fossils are not made of all the material, but only small fraction is saved. Also,not all fossils has been found yet. The research continues all the time and new fossils and new species are being found...

3. Genetic commonalities. Human beings have approximately 96% of genes in common with chimpanzees, about 90% of genes in common with cats (source), 80% with cows (source), 75% with mice (source), and so on. This does not prove that we evolved from chimpanzees or cats, though, only that we shared a common ancestor in the past. And the amount of difference between our genomes corresponds to how long ago our genetic lines diverged.

Those who study literature know that the books of a certain author have ‘genetic commonalities’. That means they somehow resemble in style, words used, subject maybe etc. I have some books in my library that resemble a lot. Have they evolved from each other? Should I wait a few ‘billions of years’ for them to produce another ‘genetically modified’ book?

You probably do not get, what "96% of common genetic information" means, do you? That doesn't mean it's only similar, but it's basically identical. So, if you like the books, it's like taking e.g. Bible, which was written by people in churches in past in accordance to previous version, but they made some mistakes or differences in accordance to what they liked. If you compared those Bibles, you could make some "tree of evolution" for them too

4. Common traits in embryos. Humans, dogs, snakes, fish, monkeys, eels (and many more life forms) are all considered "chordates" because we belong to the phylum Chordata. One of the features of this phylum is that, as embryos, all these life forms have gill slits, tails, and specific anatomical structures involving the spine. For humans (and other non-fish) the gill slits reform into the bones of the ear and jaw at a later stage in development. But, initially, all chordate embryos strongly resemble each other.

To me, this is plain silly. There’s actually no ‘proof’ here. Think of it: fish embryos have gill slits that become ... gills, when the fish is adult. Fair enough! Humans have ‘gill slits’ that become ... ears and jaws. If I said, “Birds have these very, very long ears, with feathers on them ... and they use them for flying.” You’d probably say, “Hey, dummy, those are wings, not ears!” And you’d be right. But when someone says that human embryos have gill slits that become ears and jaws we call them ... well, scientists...
Human embryos DO NOT have gill slits, it’s just the way ears and jaws look like at that age. You may have a dog that looks like a cat and vice versa. Proving? Sugar looks very much like salt. Try and substitute one for another in your coffee (or tea if you like!) and you’ll see the difference.

This isn't much and just about how it looks, but from and into what it really evolves (during the embryogenesis)

5. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Bacteria colonies can only build up a resistance to antibiotics through evolution. It is important to note that in every colony of bacteria, there are a tiny few individuals which are naturally resistant to certain antibiotics. This is because of the random nature of mutations.
When an antibiotic is applied, the initial innoculation will kill most bacteria, leaving behind only those few cells which happen to have the mutations necessary to resist the antibiotics. In subsequent generations, the resistant bacteria reproduce, forming a new colony where every member is resistant to the antibiotic. This is natural selection in action. The antibiotic is "selecting" for organisms which are resistant, and killing any that are not.

My brother and I are quite different. He’s very resistant to cold; I’m not. If an ‘ice age’ appears out of the blue, I die, he survives. That’s “natural selection” right? And his children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be ‘better adapted’ right? Question: are they still humans, or are they sort of monsters? (Hey, I was gentle enough to have my brother survive in the story, so I have the right to call him a monster, right?)
So, the resistant bacteria survives antibiotics and becomes ... pigs? No! Flying pigs? No. It becomes nothing, it stays a poor bacteria waiting for a stronger antibiotic to be invented.

You really think that evolution (or better said speciation, or even in this case like geniation or familiation) takes just one antibiotic pressure and like 1 year?

[RichardDawkins]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_lo ... experiment

In the early years of the experiment, there were several common evolutionary developments shared by the populations. The mean fitness of each population, as measured against the ancestor strain, increased—rapidly at first, but leveling off after close to 20,000 generations (at which point they grew about 70% faster than the ancestor strain). All populations evolved larger cell volumes and lower maximum population densities, and all became specialized for living on glucose (with declines in fitness relative to the ancestor strain when grown in dissimilar nutrients). 4 of the 12 populations developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains. Although the bacteria in each population are thought to have generated hundreds of millions of mutations over the first 20,000 generations, Lenski has estimated that only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with less than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population.[2]

Creationists got owned, again,,, what a surprise

[BDDVM]

The process of evolution is the cornerstone of the study of life. Those attempting to put forth other explainations of life need to expect that their will be serious scepticism. That's called science. You can't just whine that you don't like or don't understand evolution. You have to come up with something that makes better sense.
Intelligent design is simple and easy to understand but if you look closely at the designs you must see intelligence in every design. As someone working in the medical world, I can assure you that no omniscient being would be such a poor designer.
A few examples.
In mammals the path of air into the lungs crosses the path for food into the stomache. This causes choking, aspiration pnumonia and just the annoying and uncomfortable getting food down the wrong tube. Poor design. The system in birds is far superior.
Speaking of birds, they also have a lung and airsac system that pushes air through thier lungs in only one direction. We mammals breath in and out which mixes old air with new air. Poor design.
The intelligent design theory must also explain why sex is so much more exciting with strangers? Why are men so much more likely to kill thier step children than thier biological children? The entire Chiropractic industry in based on the poor design of the spine that evolution stuck us with.
If the designer is intelligent he obviously does't like humanity as much as he likes birds.

[BDDVM]

Richard Dawkins ? Are you actually Richard Dawkins or are you just using that name in this forum?

[canalon]

Ardent fan probably.