evolution stuff

some problems i have with theories associated with evolution

natural selection - I think natural selection is the means by which something is selected out of existance or over some other ...etc
all that does is widdle down info
not add to it

so then how can we go from one to many?

carbon 14 dating -

The first problem is seen in the very approach in the presumption that must be made in the level of Carbon 14 the organism had while living.

Here we have a critical calculation that is based upon an assumption that an organism which lived thousands of years previous, of which there are no modern species to compare, developed a specific level of Carbon 14 from an environment we know nothing about.
If for example, the presumption is inaccurate by only 10%, considering that it is the rate of decay that forms the mathematical constant, the inaccuracy of the calculation of age at the upper limit would be tens of thousands of years.
The very basis for the assumption above is another problem, and is perhaps the most embarrassing for the proponents of radiocarbon dating.
To assume a particular level of Carbon 14 in an organism requires a precise determination of environmental (atmospheric) levels of the same. That is, to presume a particular level in a living thing requires a precise knowledge of the ambient amount of Carbon 14 in the air and environment.
Scientists performing radiocarbon dating assume that the amount in the environment has not changed. This is compelling for several reasons, not the least of which is the convenience with which “science” apparently operates; we hear of massive changes in the earth, ice ages, catastrophic events that killed the dinosaurs, etc., but the environment never changed according to the same scientists.
Not only does the requisite level of assumption and presumption all but invalidate the accuracy of the claims of very old dating, but were an example of an environmental phenomenon that affected the level of ambient Carbon 14, the results could be skewed exponentially.
In fact, several such phenomena did indeed exist, proven by the same science that supports old-age radiocarbon dating! It would seem quite clear that some predisposition or predilection for particular findings in terms of dating artifacts is at work in this case.

 

Natural selection occurs when the environment of a species changes in a way that promotes the survivability of individuals with specific traits, which are inevitably passed through genetics to offspring of these well-endowed (tee hee) individuals. Speciation occurs in a few different ways, really. A population can be separated into different niches by a geological barrier such as a body of water, mountain range, etc, and develop different traits over time. Also, speciation can be due to physical inability to breed with differently shaped individuals of the opposite sex. There are more ways, but you get the picture. I hope. Natural selection basically makes the helpful traits more prevalent in a population, eventually changing it on a large scale to be classified as a different species. It's all about adapting to change in the environment.

sexual/asexual reproduction and randomly or not so randomly passing down traits? You know.. women prefer taller guys, so there's a likelyhood of short people going out of existence after a while kinda like that. Male peacocks only get laid if they're really pretty, therefore limiting the number of shitty looking peacocks and boosting the good looks trait among offspring.

Ok. Firstly, I notice that you've copied/pasted this whole fucking thing. good job. :applause:

Second, I hope you understand it (the terms, processes mentioned, semantics, what it's trying to say) if you're looking for a response.

Third: yeah. Carbon dating may not be the most accurate process in the world, but it's infinitely more advantageous than a blind guess.

Fourth: For some odd reason, I feel that those who understand the nature of chemistry, biology, and carbon 14 itself--those people should be the ones coming up with theories of how carbon 14 amounts affect creatures like dinos, how it could change with environmental events, etc. Also, we can really infer a lot about what was going on back then from the earth in the same layer as the bones.

While I'm not completely jumping on the carbon dating train, I see no reason to nitpick just for the sake of ambushing the process. I mean, yeah. It's kinda iffy. But assuming that at least some of the samples have accurate amounts of carbon 14, we're still geting a few accurate readings--all of which point to an extremely old planet Earth. Besides, it takes an incredible amount of time for that much earth to accumulate over top of everything.


Best thing you can do is go take a college bio course to clear up some misconceptions about speciation, evolution, the effects of human intervention on ecosystems, all that good stuff. I believe that it's important stuff--necessary for a healthy society.

 

here are some links that might help:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/radiometric_dating.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating ;
http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/programs/html/school/moviepage/09.01.30.html

 

Here are some links that might help on radiometric dating:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/radiometric_dating.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating ;
http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/programs/html/school/moviepage/09.01.30.html

Taking some college courses is a great idea, but will you believe the profs.?
During the fuss over teaching evolution in the schools, 68 science academies presented their take on the state of scientific consensus: that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, that life appeared on it at least 2.5 billion years ago, and that the genetic code of all organisms living today, including us, clearly shows their common ancestry. Furthermore, such reputable, devout Christian scientists as Dr. Francis Collins (Evangelical) and Dr. Kenneth Miller (Catholic) agree with the consensus. And Dr. Michael Behe, one of their leading opponents, who champions Intelligent Design against Darwin, concedes the likelihood of common descent. Against this is a minority of Young Earth Creationists, accounting for about 5% of scientists polled in 1997, who obviously oppose radiometric dating because it conflicts with their misrading of the Book of Genesis. I guess I'm willing to go with the flow and put my faith in the great majority, on the assumption that they can't all be dupes of Satan.

 

n

 

and.....why exactly are you being an asshole? your skeptical of my beliefs b/c there is no proof, so im trying to clear up some skepticism that i have of your beliefs jackass. grow up.

i am in a college bio course okie, and some of the shit they say in there is pretty retarded. the other day we were comparing mitochondrion to the typical bacteria cell, because they have so much in common. the theory is that long ago, they were a bacteria cell that merged with a eukaryotic cell for who knows why, and the eukaryotic cell didn't die or destroy it for who knows why, and then all of a sudden our DNA knows how to replicate a foreign bacteria that we all have today, for who knows why.

yes it is copied and pasted. does that matter? i didn't claim to have written it. i read it on the web and it brought up good questions. wanted to see what you guys thought.

 

How does one organism absorb another and pass on a common DNA? Anybody?

 

Here's the problem:
1. You are not an expert in biology.
2. Did they say "this is definitely how it happened?" I've never heard that said as more than "some people think this, here are the merits."
3. Just because you don't think it could happen, just because you think you know what's right, this theory is "retarted?" Come on. That's not retarted, dismissing it as retarted is. Is there an actual logical complaint you have with your biology class other than you disagree with it?

Also, natural selection is the weeding out of inferior genes, yes. Mutation is the creation of new ones. Those combined form evolution. When a beneficial mutation comes along, what was normal becomes inferior. The old morphology is out-competed by the new. Simple. Elegant.

Evolution.

 

I'm a bit rusty on this in particular concept, but the bacteria has a plasmid for DNA. It is a ring. It contains part of the bacteria genome. Some bacteria assume the DNA of other bacteria/virii they come in contact with. Sometimes bacteria exchange DNA, sort of like sexual reproduction. But different. I think the ones that assume the DNA of others do so in the situation of viral attack. In response, they release restriction enzymes, which cut the injected viral DNA into pieces. Sometimes those pieces become part of the plasmid, and the bacteria then has slightly different qualities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid

I believe the plasmid can be incorporated into the rest of the genome as well.

 

Thanks. I also found these on endosymbiosis that seems to get at the process.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/E/Endosymbiosis.html
http://www.msu.edu/course/lbs/145/luckie/margulis.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis
http://www.isepp.org/Pages/San%20Jose%2004-05/MargulisSaganSJ.html

In sum (San Jose Science, Technology & Society Lectures), above:
"Along these lines Margulis has argued that bacteria have the ability to exchange genes very easily and quickly, even between different species, by conjugation or through plasmids. For these reasons, the genetic material of bacteria is much more versatile than that of the eukaryote (see Primary nutritional groups for more on the extent of bacterial ability in terms of nutrition). Margulis claims that versatility is the process which enabled life to evolve so quickly, as bacteria were able to adapt to initial conditions of environment and to new changes by other bacteria."

 

I bet I could give you some theories from geologists that you wouldn't understand. Would that make them unlikely? No, it would just mean that you are not familiar w/ the theories and the processes behind the theory. Instead of dismissing something b/c you don't understand it, why don't you try to learn more about what you don't understand?

Ideas about evolution are not pulled from thin air and a bunch of people say "Yeah! That explains everything!" These hypothesis are tested in experiments and observations by many, many people. To be science, results must be reproducible. I heard about a scientist who thought he created life from some really odd method and published a paper on it before he tested his hypothesis. Other people read about it and tried his experiment for themselves and no one was able to reproduce his results. It turned out pre-existing bacteria was growing in his "sterile" environment, which he interpreted as life being "created." Needless to say, his name and work is not widely respected anymore b/c this was a big mistake. It's like attaching your name to a perpetual motion machine, promoting it in all the major journals, and then trying to make it work in front of the top scientists and the machine failing miserably, when you never tested it to see if it worked in the first place. It destroys any credibility you had.

If ideas are being taught in a textbook, it doesn't necessarily mean the theories are 100% correct, but it does mean that this theory does work in experiments, there is evidence for the theory, and it has been tested thoroughly. Is it absolute? Not necessarily, but that is the brilliance behind science, theories are tested over and over and refined by results. Science is ever changing.

Peace and love

 

An interesting thing about the theory of endosymbiosis that I discussed in my previous post is that it's a naturalistic supplement to classical natural selection in accounting for speciation. Classical Darwinism emphasized competition, but Margulis' theory emphasizes co-operation. Her work has won acceptance even by Richard Dawkins, Darwin's pitbull. Evolutionary theory has cautiously moved beyond classical Dawinism in allowing for other mechanisms than pure natural selection to explain the evolutionary process, principally the "genetic drift" theory http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIDGeneticdrift.shtml;
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genetic-drift.html ;
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_24
and migration http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/tutorials/The_theory_of_natural_selection__part_2_18.asp ,
but now, at least in a limited context, endosymbiosis. Many evolutionists (not Dawkins) are also willing to accept Stephen J. Gould's "punctuated equilibrium".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium;
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_comes-of-age.html which posits lulls and spurts instead of the gradualism emphasized by classical Darwinists. These theories are all compatible scientific explanations of the mechanisms for the phenomenon that all of the investigators agree is a fact: human evolution.

 

but you see, they DO present it like that.
they say, "this is how this happened" and then they present absolutely no evidence for it, and you feel to intimidated to ask why? or how?.

i think they should present both sides of the story. or at least accept another theory as acceptable.

i have another question that isn't really related to evolution, but i like the answers you guys give.
if like charges repel each other, then why do protons stick together in the nucleus of an atom?

 

Maybe you should ask "why" or "how" b/c if you don't understand something, there are probably other people who also don't understand. If you feel intimidating to ask a question during lecture, why don't you email your professor, a TA, or ask a classmate? If you want to learn something, there will be people to help you if you ask.

In a biology class, there is no place for intelligent design b/c it is not science. If you want to learn more about that, join a religion class. Also, if intelligent design is taught, then other creation stories must be given equal time, for there is as much scientific evidence for a "God" creator as there is for a flying spaghetti monster and other creation myths.

According to one site, there are two forces involved, the electrical force which involves positive and negative charges. This causes the repulsion of protons as you mentioned. There is another force at work called "the strong force" b/c it takes a strong force to hold protons and neutrons together. Not well named, but scientists tend to be rather uncreative w/ names, normally naming discoveries after themselves. The "strong force" also is responsible for holding the quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons.

Here's a link: http://my.morningside.edu/slaven/Physics/micro/micro1.html

Hopefully this website will be more helpful.

Peace and love

 

Don't feel intimidated, just ask. Other students usually appreciate the one kid that gets something cleared up. Or go to office hours and ask then. Stuff like that is actually much easier one-on-one.

Presenting both sides of a story isn't necessary if one side just makes more sense than the other. And this particular story is often only told in passing. It doesn't make a difference to most people where the mitochondria came from, so the most plausible explanation may just be the most acceptable.

I dunno about the protons. Something about Strong Forces and Weak Forces, I think.

 

Haha, nice.

 

still doesn't seem right that they present it as the absolute truth.

 

Did they though? Did they actually go out of the way to say "this is the truth," or did they just not use any qualifiers like "we think" or "to the best of our knowledge?"

 

I think we also need to keep in mind that this is an intro class. I think it's impressive they're teaching this at all, and that Neodude is asking good questions about it. I think serious critiques of Darwin, such as ID raises, would be valuable as part of a good eduction, and I suspect that, unfortunately, these ideas will probably not be presented at secular universities because they've become a touchy subject. If these views are presented, the criticisms of ID should also be included. As for "science", I think it would be inappropriate to present ID or creationism as an alternative scientific theories, because they have little in the way of empirically verifiable, refutable theories and hypotheses--only criticisms of Darwin and some dubious conclusions about probabilites and flood geology. Including other creation stories besides Genesis would be inappropriate because none of them is science, and the ID proponents deny that they're saying the Intelligent Designer is necessarily God (it could be aliens).

 

i think the collective faith of billions of ppl should certainly be viewed as empirical evidence.

i realize this could be misconstrued as an argument ad popularum, but that isn't the point im trying to make. it isn't like all of those ppl are stupid, or that they are sheep, or that they just dont realize there are alternatives. i think the number of people that belief in a God is definatly a testament of proof.