Does evolution prove there is no God?

the hive queen · Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2004 3:37 pm Post subject: Re: in reply

Evolution indicates that living organisms change through time based on natural selection. I think theists could believe that "natural selection" was part of God's great plan.

My issue with this line of reasoning: there is still no proof that God has anything to do with natural selection.

It always seems to come down to that same basic issue of evidence. I have never seen a speck of proof that God exists. Yet, I see evidence of evolution of every hike I go on.

Science can only measure evidence. The belief in God is subjective and apparently, NOT based on empirical evidence.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2004 7:16 am Post subject: Re: Evolution and God

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Waiting for mr. pess's response

I'm coming. VERY hectic week at work...that always bites into my goof-off time!

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2004 8:25 am Post subject: Re: in reply

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"The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't."

That last sentance gets me. I just cannot see simple reproduction causing such big change, it had to have been a series of mutations or that a group of genes started to express themselves in order to create a new trait.

Not reproduction, reproductive isolation. Which means that after species X separated (for whatever reason) and became isolated, X1 & X2 went about their lives doing what they do: reproducing and living in their new environment. Millennia pass and after some mutation and environmental change, X1 gradually changes to Y. Now, simple mutations may not be THE agent of speciation (but it could if the change is extreme enough), but the changed environment, along with mutation can cause such change.

In evolution, it is the individual that is the subject of natural selection, not the gene. The genotype is the base, the starting point for the individual. As the fertilized ovum develops, the environment takes a starring role and the phenotype starts on it’s road to survival, if it exhibits traits that can handle the environment or to death if not. The interaction of the genotype with the environment, producing a phenotype is called the ‘norm of reaction’.

So, you can see that with X1 & X2 isolated and still reproducing, this can, and does, enable speciation to occur.

But that is strictly allopatric speciation. Sympatric speciation has also been suggested:

quartz.ucdavis.edu/~GEL3/...ation.html

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But certainly we can see the common ancestry, I mean most animals have 5 fingers (sort of).
But I don't buy the idea that macro and micro are very close.

Chimp DNA is about 98.5% identical to humans. If 1.5% can produce such a difference between the two species…

And you hit it on the head…the common ancestry is too common not to be related, thus Macro.

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First of all, we are almost certain that micro evolution occurs via natural selection. One example can be blood type, if say the hospitals run out of type-O blood and everyone with type-O eventually dies because for some reason they can't give tranfusions between each other, this happens to all blood types and in the end only people with blood type AB survive. This I can buy...
Now to believe that subtle changes to the gene pool like this can create a new species takes some faith.

This example is not really natural selection. And changes of this small a scale would probably not cause a speciation event…but that does not mean that other, more pronounced changes would NOT produce a new species. It is not an either/or scenario here.

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See the people with AB blood are the same as normal humans only they all have certain genes responsible for making AB blood expressed. Lets say something keeps happening to this sorry population and they all end up getting the charateristics of Richard Simmons, hair, complexion, everything. These Richard Simmon wannabes can still mate with normal humans, maybe even R.S. himself.

Natural selection played a role in all of this.
All these different types of genes being expressed got filtered via enviroment to make everyone look like R.S. Now, how can natural selection have any further responsibility? say if the earth slowly started to flood.

??! I cannot even answer that one seriously!

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The only way a further change can happen is if a group of genes suddenly decides to express itself, creating say, type-C blood (which might carry some mutant hemoglobin that can automantically obtain and transport oxygen from water without gills or whatever).

Genes do not ‘decide’ to do anything. Mutation is not a pre-determined thing…it’s a, well, mutation!

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So to me, it takes faith to say that just before a dramatic change in climate, the right gene just happened to express itself in order to create a new species. The species would at most change what features it already has to be optimal with that enviroment, but it would not gain some totaly new feature and be a new species.

It would take faith to say that, which is why it would be (is) wrong! It is not like the genes are just waiting to change into something! The individuals in the population would be selected that have favorable survival characteristics for the environment they are in. Those that do survive, those that do do not. The survivors pass their ‘more adaptive’ genes on the the next generation and so on. Now back to X1 & X2, if they are in two separate environments, the changes would be different. Now add in mutation along the way and you are on your way to evolutionary changes in the species. This will not take 100’s of years, but 1000’s or 1000000’s.

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I really don't know if theres any other evolutionary factors discovered right now. I know you might be thinking about reproduction, but they only express genes based on what was already expressed by the parents when they unify. No type-c here, sorry.

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"genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change. "
I can understand perhaps a more positive response to gene mutation by the body, but I hope you don't mean that DNA looked different?

Looked different? I dunno. But MAYBE, just maybe…

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In the early 1980s Tom Cech, then a young biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, uncovered evidence that RNA does more than simply relay messages from DNA to proteins. In an experiment that earned him a Nobel Prize, he found that a single-celled creature named Tetrahymena possessed some RNA molecules that could act like simple enzymes. These molecules, which came to be known as ribozymes, twisted into a complicated snarl that allowed them to hack themselves apart. In other words, RNA could carry information like DNA and carry out biochemistry the way proteins do.

Before DNA

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Bottom line (incase you just scrolled down): Natural selection can not cause certain groups of genes to express themselves to make a NEW trait, that force would be mutation or something. Natural selection does change the amount of indivuals with certain traits, and I think it takes a bit of faith to say this can make a new species.

The genotype is not, from what I have read and how I understand it, the object of selection, it is the individual in the population.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

RickU · Junior Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 316 Gender:

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The genotype is not, from what I have read and how I understand it, the object of selection, it is the individual in the population.

An excellent illustration of this idea was in a Discovery Channel program that was quite good called "Walking with Cavemen". Of course, it's all conjecture based on the fossil record. It shows that as Africa changed so too did certain species. The females of a pack chose mates that walked upright...a positive evolutionary trait for the environment, as it allowed them to see over the grass. As they bred this new trait into the species over time, they became a new species altogether.

Mr. Pessimistic

Wlaking upright also opens up many more 'options' in regard to sexual reproduction...but that's all positional!

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

RickU · Junior Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 316 Gender:

That was a terrible pun...and for it, you will be PUNished.

CranialVault · Newbie Joined: 11 Jul 2004 Posts: 3 Gender:

scrumfish: you are not "totally clueless" at all, keep up the good work.

mr. pess:
-What I meant was that because the individuals change, obviously the gene pool changes too but I thought I would just say it directly.

-Even over the course of a million years with reproductive isolation, the population cannot (in my opinion) drastically change simply from hybrid traits. A homozygous Black haired person marries a homozygous blonde person, you will have all black haired kids. The kids will have hybrid genes, but if they marry individuals with the same hybrid genes they still get kids with only black or blonde hair. Ofcourse if blonde is codominant its still the same story just with 3 varieties ("dirty" blonde).
There is no purple, orange, or half black & half blonde heads, UNLESS some silly group of genes decided to express themselves. NOTHING causes genes to express themselves, its random! Natural selection only controls the amount of individuals with certain genes. Reproduction only makes hybrids and hybrids of hybrids which end up with the same traits and same results. The same genes are still expressing themselves.

RickU: I don't disagree, all lifeforms are dynamic and we do have the capacity to change be it in small periods of time, large periods of time, drastic or minor.

Jeremy1952

misterpessimistic

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In evolution, it is the individual that is the subject of natural selection, not the gene.

Individuals live or die, along with their complement of genes, but ultimately it is the genes which are selected. One can't really understand evolution without reading (or at least understanding the material in) Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (short, not very technical) and/or The Extended Phenotype (longer, more technical, much more complete). I'd be happy to take a crack at explaining but after all, a much better writer than I devoted entire books to the topic.

CranialVault

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say if the earth slowly started to flood.

The earth IS slowly starting to flood… global warming threatens to inundate most human habitation on this planet, but an SUV now is more important to most Americans than solid land for our grandchildren.

If evolution could be counted on to respond to any specific threat then our disregard for environmental destruction and future asteroid impacts would be less frightening. But in fact, it's a crapshoot. Sixty-seven million years ago an entire clade, which had dominated the planet for two orders of magnitude longer than humans have been on earth, was wiped out because a climate change occurred to which they could not adapt.

When change is very, very slow, the odds are good that a random mutation to help with the new circumstances will occur and be selected. But it is important not to overlook the fact that initial variation is always random. If the variant able to survive the new conditions is not there, natural selection cannot select it. This is why each of the five great extinction events we know about wiped out the majority of life on earth; and the last one, that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, was far from the worst. The worst mass extinction we know of killed 95% of all life on Earth.

If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

CranialVault · Newbie Joined: 11 Jul 2004 Posts: 3 Gender:

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"When change is very, very slow, the odds are good that a random mutation to help with the new circumstances will occur and be selected. But it is important not to overlook the fact that initial variation is always random. If the variant able to survive the new conditions is not there, natural selection cannot select it. "

BAM thats what I was trying to say with my poor language skills *sigh*. You still need that for natural selection to happen. The odds being good or not is debatable but it doesn't matter since somebody understands! Natural selection cannot be the sole mechanism for evolution...

Instead of just digging up fossils, we need to calculate the chance of a positive mutation. It is not impossible, take beaches for example.

We know where sand comes from, but were are not there watching stones turn in to sand. If somebody asks us for proof, we can show them an "aged stone." We can take a normal stone, and hit it with high pressure water that will be the same force a stone faces over 500,000 years or whatever it takes. Even if the stone did not completely become sand we can show what the stone will become as time goes on. This is very good proof, and the same concept was used to create the first stealth bomber via computers, I believe its called inductive reasoning.

Doc Tiessen · Intern Joined: 27 Sep 2004 Posts: 161 Gender:

The earth has passed through several periods of mass extinction. You mentioned that the meteorite 65 million years ago was not the worst. You are right. Possibly, and most sadly, the greatest of all mass extinctions we are currently living right now. Not oxygen nor a meteorite but human beings are the protagonist of such a tragedy. I do not know for the others, but this makes me feel very sad and powerless indeed.

Diversity is Good!

Edited by: Doc Tiessen at: 11/13/04 12:39 am


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