Re: Why Should Evolution be Taught as Science in Schools?

On Mar 22, 2:56 am, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 21, 8:03 pm, "sss1000" <ssha...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





-- [snip]

Thanks for your responses. I am apparently outnumbered by about 10 to
1, so hopefully you can understand that replying to everyone is
difficult. I intended to reply to everyone, but am starting to fall
asleep, so the responses are incomplete. I apologize for that, but
plan to respond to everyone who takes a legitimate shot at answering
the "final question" at the end of this message. Plan to make my last
response at that time.

sss1000

FOLLOW-UPS TO PREVIOUS RESPONSES

Steven J:
...Some people want to
understand how the facts of nature fit together, how humans came to
be and how we fit into the universe. Evolutionary biology is *useful*
to such people, whether it helps provide faster internet service or
not.

Sss1000 follow-up:
Steven presented some sentences before the quoted sentence above
dealing with "Free Lunch's" response and the question of how versus
why. Steven: Didn't understand your argument. Regarding Steven's
above quote: "Some people want to understand how the facts of nature
fit together, how humans came to be and how we fit in the universe"...
Hmm: Isn't this exactly the purpose of religion?

First, different experts (and different religions) differ on the
purpose of religion. Depending on whom you ask, the purpose of
religion is social cohesion, or a source and/or ground for morality,
or a way of salvation (from what, exactly, differs from one religion
to another), or something else.

Second, to say that two things share the same purpose does not mean
that they are equally effective. Applying leeches and giving
antibiotics may share the purpose of curing an infection, but I doubt
they will work equally well. That some religions have ideas about
human prehistory and the origin of species does not mean that those
ideas fit the evidence as well as those of evolutionary biology.


The problem is that so many accept evolutionary theory as 100% fact.
This despite the facts that life from inanimate matter has never been
observed and speciation has never been observed.



Steven J:
[in response to the question: "Give one example where Darwinian (or
Macro) evolution has been tested, and of course validated. Details
please; not general comments from scientists or a long list of article
titles."]
I rather like human chromosome 2, with its vestigial telomere and
centromere embedded in the chromosome; its banding precisely matches
up with two different chimpanzee chromosomes, as though the homologs
to these chromosomes had fused together in some evolutionary
precursor
of _Homo sapiens_. Even more striking is the correspondence among
GULO pseudogenes in humans and other old-world primates; identically-
disabled nonfunctional genes (which explains why none of us, unlike
most mammals, can make vitamin C, which is why we get scurvy if we
don't eat enough fruit), with the minor sequence differences in the
pseudogenes smallest between species believed (on independent
grounds)
to be most closely related (e.g. the human version is closest to the
chimp version, slightly more unlike the gorilla version, more unlike
the orangutan version, and still more different from the macaque
version). Of course, others will prefer to list the fossils of
_Tiktaalik roseae_, an intermediate between primitive lobe-finned
fish
and primitive tetrapods, found in strata laid down when, on the basis
of common descent, such an intermediate was thought to have lived.

Sss1000 follow-up:
Very impressive Steven, and I think the best attempt yet to answer the
question. You do give specifics (of course for the moment I'll have
to take your word for it.). From what I can understand, your first
two examples show similarities between human and primate genes. You
state the second as being more striking; I believe because the
smallest differences between humans and primates occur for primates
believed (on independent grounds) to be most related to humans: from
closest to farthest being chimp, gorilla, orangutan, macaque. This is
impressive, but could that have not been predicted from observation.
Don't we know from basic observation that humans most resemble chimps,
gorillas, orangutans, macaques? Don't most people deduce by pure
observation that humans resemble primates more than other animals?
Aren't their hands, feet, and face (not a fllaterring statement) most
closely resemble humans. Given that these similarities, isn't it
logical that humans genetics would also most closely match primates.

Why should it? Note that I was talking about nonfunctional features
of the genome. There is no logical reason, aside from inheritance
from an ancestor in which the gene was functional, that we should even
*have* a GULO pseudogene. There is no reason (given that it does not
affect facial features, hand, feet, or, _inter alia_, vermiform
appendix) that the GULO pseudogene of humans should resemble that of
chimps more than it does that of orangutans. Again, the distribution
of differences and similarities makes no sense on the assumption of
common design for common function, nor on the assumption of purely
random distribution of nonfunctional features; it makes sense only on
the assumption of inheritance from a series of more or less remote
common ancestors.

A side note: the genetic code is degenerate (I don't mean it attends
crack-fueled orgies; I mean that it has multiple codons for each amino
acid), and apparently arbitrary (i.e. any codon could in principle
stand for any amino acid). Therefore it is not strictly necessary for
similar phenotypes to be produced by similar genotypes. In principle,
we could be just as similar in anatomy and biochemistry to chimps even
with only about a 35% sequence similarity in our DNA (assuming we kept
the same genetic code), or (assuming we used a different genetic code
-- the same nucleotides and codons, but with different
correspondences) even zero percent sequence similarity. Also, there
is no one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype: large
changes in one don't necessarily correspond to similarly dramatic
changes in the other.

Another side note: there used to be an insect subclass known as the
Apterogotes: primitive, wingless insects including silverfish (which
all of them resemble). It was discovered, through genetic testing and
comparison, that they fell into three widely (and presumably
anciently) separated groups, with one more closely related to winged
insects than the others. This is very strange, going strictly by
anatomical resemblence, but, again, easy enough to explain on macro-
evolutionary grounds: populations don't *have* to undergo drastic
morphological changes over time, so there can be widely-separated
anatomically primitive groups, all of which have evolved greatly at
the genetic level but not so much at the phenotypic level (a similar
point applies to lungfish and coelancanths). Of course, part of a
clade can evolve more phenotypically, which is why we sometimes have
primitive forms grouped genetically with more advanced forms rather
than with other primitive forms.

Your two primate examples show observations that are consistent with
the theory of Darwinian evolution. However, this was really not a
test of Darwinian Evolution but a finding that is favorable to the
theory. These were observations made in a laboratory. The scientist
did not PREDICT this outcome and then perform the experiment to
VALIDATE his prediction. Event if he had predicted it, couldn't
another scientist have predicted it based on the similarities in the
species established "on independent grounds" (are these independentt
grounds possibly visual observations of features?; What other non-
evolutionary grounds could there be.)

Are you quite sure that no one predicted this outcome? I'm pretty
sure that the scientists who performed the tests had a pretty good
idea of what would come out, and why.

Doubt if they predicted this exact outcome. Anyone know?

The fish argument is not as strong. In the future scientists will
likely discover bones of some previously undiscovered life-form. This
life-form will undoubtedly share characteristics with more than one
species. Everyday experience on earth tells us that most creatures
share characteristics with more than one species, so both
evolutionists and non-evolutionists would predict this outcome. Just
think of a biologist in the deep of the Amazon that discovers a new
type of lizard. Undoubtedly it will share characteristics with
several known lizard species. This is predicted without the need for
Darwinian Evolution. Everyday experience teaches us this.

I think you miss the point of the fish being intermediate between two
specified groups, and being found in strata of a specified age. That
rather raises the odds against it turning up the way it did unless
common descent is correct.

But these steps are always in jumps; not gradual. This is hard to
explain by random mutations:

"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed.
Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not
all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we
see them, well-defined species?"-*Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch,
Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 139.

To really test evolution, one should predict with detail the
morphology and date of existence of several yet unknown species, and
then discover those species and date them to that time period.

You mean, like fossil intermediates between modern whales and Eocene
terrestrial hoofed animals? Or would you prefer a Cretaceous
intermediate between ants and wasps?

-- [snip]

-- Steven J.- Hide quoted text -

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