Sci/Tech Why everything you've been told about evolution is wrong

The Helper

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The story, still sometimes repeated in creationist circles, goes like this: it is the 1960s, at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, and a team of astronomers is using cutting-edge computers to recreate the orbits of the planets, thousands of years in the past. Suddenly, an error message flashes up. There's a problem: way back in history, one whole day appears to be missing.

The scientists are baffled, until a Christian member of the team dimly recalls something and rushes to fetch a Bible. He thumbs through it until he reaches the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in which Joshua asks God to stop the world for . . . "about a full day!" Uproar in the computer lab. The astronomers have happened upon proof that God controls the universe on a day-to-day basis, that the Bible is literally true, and that by extension the "myth" of creation is, in fact, a reality. Darwin was wrong – according to another creationist rumour, he'd recanted on his deathbed, anyway – and here, at last, is scientific evidence!

Inevitably, those of us who aren't professional scientists have to take a lot of science on trust. And one of the things that makes it so easy to trust the standard view of evolution, in particular, is amply illustrated by the legend of the Nasa astronomers: the doubters are so deluded or dishonest that one needn't waste time with them. Unfortunately, that also makes it embarrassingly awkward to ask a question that seems, in the light of recent studies and several popular books, to be growing ever more pertinent. What if Darwin's theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin's theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate?

Such talk, naturally, is liable to drive evolutionary biologists into a rage, or, in the case of Richard Dawkins, into even more of a rage than usual. They have a point: nobody wants to provide ammunition to the proponents of creationism or "intelligent design", and it's true that few of the studies now coming to public prominence are all that revolutionary to the experts. But in the culture at large, we may be on the brink of a major shift in perspective, with enormous implications for how most of us think about how life came to be the way it is. As the science writer David Shenk puts it in his new book, The Genius in All of Us, "This is big, big stuff – perhaps the most important [discoveries] in the science of heredity since the gene."


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Its a long article and it takes a while to make it point but its actually very interesting.
 
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SerraAvenger

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That article was nonsense.
I still don't, or rather can't, believe that evolution is the reason we're looking the way we are.

As a matter of fact, I believe that while selection does happen, I don't believe this can be applied to mutation of a whole species.

Just take, for example, a lung or legs or wings.
Such things wouldn't add any particular bonus to the creature while not being completely developed; Some might even be a handicap!
I mean, it's not like one tiny genetic mutation happens and arms turn into wings or anything. It is a gradient change that takes millenia to finish, and isn't supported at all by natural selection.
Genetical data like immunities or cell coloring, however, might be a short term support or a handicap - and hence natural selection can be easily applied here.
 

phyrex1an

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The rebuttal is correct. This is irresponsible journalism. All these "Darwin was wrong" articles are saying the same thing: That our understanding of evolution has progressed since Darwin to recognize new mechanisms of inheritance and evolutionary change.
I don't really think it is irresponsible. They say pretty much straight out that we know more today. However, the article is kinda ridiculous in the sense that it argues about nothing. The only reason it was written is because some people like to read about how wrong Darwin was. Imagine the likelihood for a similar book/article to be written about Principia, which is also wrong and still being taught in all undergraduate schools...
"Newton was wrong" doesn't bear the same controversy as "Darwin was wrong", and that is not the fault of biologists or physicists.
 

Samael88

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Nuke them so that we all can have cupcakes afterward.

Edit: It is pretty funny how they don't even consider the possibilities that this stop could be caused by a miss calculation due to some tiny error in the mathematical formulas used. I am not a bit surprised that they went to the bible for explanation when a logical one was missing. I actually think that it is how the damn thing was created in the first place^^
 

perkeyone

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Just take, for example, a lung or legs or wings.
Such things wouldn't add any particular bonus to the creature while not being completely developed; Some might even be a handicap!
I mean, it's not like one tiny genetic mutation happens and arms turn into wings or anything. It is a gradient change that takes millenia to finish, and isn't supported at all by natural selection.

yeah the development of organs is kind of a tough pill to swallow, but i think if you look at it from a different perspective you might feel better about it.

consider your own body.
you probably dont have any organs which you would consider to be "not completely developed".
but if several thousand generations into the future some organs in the human body become much better at what they do
then retrospectively your body's organs would seem "not completely developed"
despite the fact that your organs all seem extremely useful to you.
additionally, some of your organs might have become less important or even vestigial in future generations.
 

Ozzdog

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yeah the development of organs is kind of a tough pill to swallow, but i think if you look at it from a different perspective you might feel better about it.

consider your own body.
you probably dont have any organs which you would consider to be "not completely developed".
but if several thousand generations into the future some organs in the human body become much better at what they do
then retrospectively your body's organs would seem "not completely developed"
despite the fact that your organs all seem extremely useful to you.
additionally, some of your organs might have become less important or even vestigial in future generations.
Please take a real biology course before spewing out stuff like that.
 

perkeyone

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Please take a real biology course before spewing out stuff like that.

you dont even know what courses ive taken...
and i didnt use any technical biological terms so i dont know why you are being so mean.

i happen to know a decent amount about evolution and biology.
if you think what ive said is incorrect in any way please point out my error instead of simply dismissing what ive said without specifying any reason.
 

Ozzdog

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perkeyone said:
Ozzdog said:
Please take a real biology course before spewing out stuff like that.
you dont even know what courses ive taken...
and i didnt use any technical biological terms so i dont know why you are being so mean.

i happen to know a decent amount about evolution and biology.
if you think what ive said is incorrect in any way please point out my error instead of simply dismissing what ive said without specifying any reason.

perkeyone said:
yeah the development of organs is kind of a tough pill to swallow

Maybe you've taken some courses, but you obviously didn't retain much information from them, or they had nothing to do with genetics then... Human organs have been proved to develop a long time ago.
 

perkeyone

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Human organs have been proved to develop a long time ago.
i dont see how anything i said contradicts what you said.
what are you even disagreeing with?
this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by perkeyone
yeah the development of organs is kind of a tough pill to swallow
if this is what you are disagreeing with then id like to clarify,
its a tough pill to swallow for some people, but not me.
i support evolution completely.
i only made that post to try to give an alternative perspective on the development of organs, and i used a simplified hypothetical example.

youre really confusing me because youre telling me that i lack an understanding of biology and genetics,
yet i support evolution which is intrinsically linked to biology and genetics.
 

perkeyone

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that may be true but i still dont see what it was that i said to provoke all this.

as for knowing things about what i support,
i could spout off a lot of reasons for supporting evolution:

the identical ERV's in the human and simian genomes,
the fusion of 2 simian chromosomes into the 2nd human chromosome,
the differences in mitochondrial DNA between humans and neanderthals,
the congruence of phylogenetic trees derived from genetics, embryology, comparative anatomy, etc,
the existence of transitional fossils such as the famous archeopteryx,
the development of a cecal valve in italian wall lizards in croatia,
the bacteria nylonase which can metabolize nylon,
the deactivation of the ccr5 gene which provides AIDs immunity
 

Durandal

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Please take a real biology course before spewing out stuff like that.

Sheesh, what is this? Hive?, wc3c.net? No need to get so tetchy.

Nothing perkeyone was incorrect, merely your understanding of it.

The wording was awkward, but it goes something like this.

perkeyone was saying that potentially, in the future human organs and body parts may evolve even more, becoming so advanced that they may look back and say that "They were underdeveloped," he was not saying that our organs are underdeveloped, merely that in comparison they may appear to be like that in the future.
 

bumbaclo

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Interesting read. I'm studying for a specialist in human biology so if no one minds I'll give my 2 cents into this article. While in my opinion evolution does have flaws in it that cannot be reconciled, I don't think this article provides a very good argument. While I didn't read all of it, they claim that "we may be on the brink of a major shift in perspective", which if its true I've never seen any signs of. They also use epigenetics as an argument against evolution, which is strange because its been known it can be inherited for about 20 years now, and actually doesn't challenge darwin's theory of natural selection. And then I stopped reading after it started saying stuff like Darwin was stupid. Point is, I would say this is an opinion piece, so treat it as such.

@perkeyone:
the identical ERV's in the human and simian genomes,
the fusion of 2 simian chromosomes into the 2nd human chromosome,
the differences in mitochondrial DNA between humans and neanderthals,
this is very tempting evidence, but unfortunately can no longer use it as such because of other ways of gene transfer that could also result in this (e.g. retrovirus cross-species contamination).

the congruence of phylogenetic trees derived from genetics, embryology, comparative anatomy, etc,
the existence of transitional fossils such as the famous archeopteryx,
this is a very debated topic, and i wont get into this, except to say that whether or not it is "true" depends on the paper you read ^^

the development of a cecal valve in italian wall lizards in croatia,
the bacteria nylonase which can metabolize nylon,
not sure why this would support evolution

the deactivation of the ccr5 gene which provides AIDs immunity
does it really provide immunity? that would be news for me. could you point me to the article for this?
 

perkeyone

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Sheesh, what is this? Hive?, wc3c.net? No need to get so tetchy.

Nothing perkeyone was incorrect, merely your understanding of it.

The wording was awkward, but it goes something like this.

perkeyone was saying that potentially, in the future human organs and body parts may evolve even more, becoming so advanced that they may look back and say that "They were underdeveloped," he was not saying that our organs are underdeveloped, merely that in comparison they may appear to be like that in the future.

thanks durandal,
thats exactly what i meant.
another example is the evolution of the eye,
to us some organism has a primitive eye
but to the organism its a crucial light sensitive spot.

not sure why this would support evolution
http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=90546 (article on italian wall lizards)
does it really provide immunity? that would be news for me. could you point me to the article for this?
http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=146088 (article on ccr5 mutation)
(i should also point out that i incorrectly said it was deactivated, really there was a deletion mutation, i was typing from memory and got it mixed up)

those links are not intended to be rebuttals, they are just for information. i thought it would be nice to post the links here since i first learned about those topics by going to the news page on thehelper. the way you responded makes me think that you are only talking about the last point of each sub-quote. im not sure though so i wont respond directly to the first two parts yet.

i brought up nylonase, and the italian wall lizards in croatia as support for evolution because they are modern examples of organisms undergoing the process of evolution.

nylon has only been around for a few decades, so the genes to metabolize nylon most likely came into existence recently since they would not be useful any other time.

the italian wall lizards developed a structure in their digestive tract which helps them digest the cellulose in plant mater after only a few decades. that in not only provides an example of evolution in modern times but it also give us an idea of how rapidly evolution can occur given the right conditions.

the ccr5 gene thing is not directly related to evolution, i must have made the connection in my head and forgot to explain it. hiv has only been around for a little over 100 years, and as youve probably heard it is believed to have come from siv (simian immunodeficiency virus). the zoonosis of siv and the emergence of a mutation which provides defense against hiv seemed to me to be evidence of evolution, but after a little more research i found out that the allele has been around for much longer than hiv has.
 
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