The theory (fact) of evolution
- Thread starter Apachegunface
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If people are so adamant on evolution, then I guess they believe in cause and effect? We are here because we are an effect of a cause i.e. our parents? and they are here due theirs....and so on etc. This can go on and on with everything, world being created, big bang etc etc BUT what was the first cause and how did that come about?
Don't know. Sure I would like to know but it isn't really impacting my life not knowing. What do you believe was the first cause as it were?
Soldato
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42.
Not really, Evolution is just how the diversity came about god could have created the planet or even the first organism
Evolution does not deal with how life started.
Is it, we have seen some forms of evolution. I do not believe we have seen a new creature though. Number of chromosomes and the like. I think the only alteration of chromosomes we have seen is in genetic disorders. Where the child is extremely ill and dies well before age of reproduction. Until we see all forms of evolution it is hardly repeatable. However saying that I think evolution is more or less correct like most scientific theoreys, which will just need tweaking.
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Soldato
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.....Bacteria.....
Heh, can we get a WHOOSH for table 3
SO, this God character got it wrong the first time? Bit un-god like, eh?
have we actually seen new bacteria though? or just alterations of existing ones. As I asked this before and the only thing anyone gave was genetic disorders.
Is a horse a new animal or just an alteration of a zebra? Hard to say really but would you consider it a completely new bacteria if it no longer had one of the defining features of its parent species?
Hard to say I suppose, almost every month we find a new creature/plant which was previously undiscovered, one could argue that maybe they were previously undiscovered because up until recently they didnt exist in that form.
/shrug
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
Is a good read, the Ecoli developed whole new genes and started doing things no other e.coli was capable of doing (and the inability to do so was one of it's defining characteristics that separated it from other bacteria)
Not natural but we have observed changes in the number of chromosomes in agriculture for a long time through inducing polyploidy etc.
Isn't that the key behind evolution though?
Nothing is "new" it's just an alteration of an existing thing.
After how many alterations does something become "new" ?
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But I can gurantee a single piece of evidence will not come out tomorrow and disprove it. Evolution is a fact! As dawkins rightly says, a good theory is one that presents many opportunities to be disproven but never is. Evolution by natural selection is a perfect example of this. There are a million ways that it could be disproven eg. an intermediate fossil dated from the wrong era appearing in the fossil record! But none have ever been found - they all occur exactly when they should and none will ever be found!
The evidence for it is overwhelming - it has occured, it is being observed occuring now and it will carry on being observed. You dont need to go back in time to observe it - you can observe it now, google the experiment that shows bacteria evolving by natural selection over many thousand of generations. The big bang is different, it cannot be observed because it's a one off event that occured 13 billion years ago - if it occurs again we won't be around to see it. Evolution by natural selection can be seen happening now, in the present!
The evidence for evolution is much more overwhelming than that of the big bang 'theory'. I dont think people in this thread grasp how much evidence there is for the fact of evolution by natural selection!
The reason I said 99.9% is because, Yes, you're right, nothing can ever be 100% factual but that's a philosophical approach to the matter. We all might be a computer program like in the matrix but as far as we can see, we are here and for all intents and purposes our existance is a fact, just like evolution is a fact!
I strongly recommend you read the book I mentioned above, this non-sense about things not been a fact is explained very well!
Oh and.... Intelligent design is the dumbest thing ever - if you look at organisms they are in no way intelligently designed - if they were designed the designer would be an absolute idiot ie. our retina is actually upside down, why would a designer do this. The mistakes we see in biology are further evidence that supports things developing slowly and been tweaked by natrual selection making small improvements gradually.
Yes and no.
It's a good theory and one I expect will be observable at some point. But until then going by your post we have not observed it and as such has not been repeated. Where other parts of evolution have been observed and repeated.
Take aids, it has evolved loads, but is it a new virus, not yet.
And as I said as far as I'm aware (and I'm no expert and have done little reading) change in number of chromosomes has never been observed. Until then you can't really say the whole of evolution is observable or repeatable. It may just be new species only come out of 1 in 10 trillion mutations. In which case it might mean we just have not studied it for long enough.
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Caporegime
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No, it's not a fact. What is a fact is that it's still a theory.