Evolution Bashing Thread

Anything you want to quote here is game if it gives them something to swing at and try and bash.

Your webproxys appear to be blocked.
 
certainly have

"saint peter (at gates of heaven): did you believe in dinosaurs?
- well yeah there were fossils everywhe.... *whoomp*

saint peter (calling down) : 100 foot lizards? you're a moron. enjoy the lake of fire!
- it seemed so plausible - aaaaaah!"

although you kinda have to be there
 
I'm kinda glad this thread was started. I was disappointed when the dino thread was locked.

Creationist theory has a few basic problems. Probably the biggest problem is the way creationists with a very very poor understanding of science try to turn scientific theory and fact on it's head with ridiculous claims that conveniently ignore related facts. An example of this is the "Flat Earth" theory. People who believe this conveniently forget that gravity doesn't pull down. It pulls to the center.

Moving away from science Flat Earth believers also conveniently for get that we can circum navigate the globe. So we can travel in a straight line from our starting point back to our starting point without doubling back.

Poorly formulated arguments do nothing to further the creationist case.
The creation storey it's self is inconsistent. Even in the Christian Bible there are two versions of the storey. In one version God creates man and woman equal. In the other God creates man first then creates woman from man. Which does seem a little strange since women bear children and not men.

However the problems with the creation storey do not end there. In other related religions there are further versions of the creation storey. Islam has at least one version that is slightly divergent from the Christian traditions and Judaism has several versions that not only conflict with the Christian versions but also with each other.
Creationism also states that the earth was created exactly as it is today. This would seem to suggest the tectonic processes that cause earthquakes and volcanic events don't take place despite clear evidence that they do.

It would also suggest that climate change doesn't take place. This would contradict all of the confirmed theories about past ice ages. When there is significant climate change life must adapt or perish. This adaptation is by definition evolution.

The earth is not the stagnant unchanging object creationists would have us believe it is. Instead it is clearly dynamic and constantly changing.
A further problem with creationist theory is that most of the "evidence" is in reality religious dogma. The book of Genesis for example doesn't prove anything. It simply states a belief.
It's also worth noting that many of the arguments pro-creationism and anti-evolution quote outdated theories and data. Even most of the web sites posted in this thread were severely dated.
The existence of evolution does not contradict the existence of God or for that matter that God created life.

The attempts of creationists to try to dismiss current well formulated scientific theory seems to serve the purpose of retaining control over peoples lives and beliefs more than to properly determine the truth. It is in effect the same hysterical reaction that lead to witch burnings and the inquisitions.

Since posting links is counted as evidence in this thread here's my contrabution. It is of course in support of evolutionary theory.

http://www.becominghuman.org/
 
LOL, I will say one thing to this, if I were to see bees today, and 30 years from now notice that bees evolved into another form....I'd be a complete believer....same for humans

Anyhoo, what is the response to science disagreeing with evolution???
I think I missed it
I will say this much though, that evolution is not a science, it is more of a form of religion that more or less tries to prove themself thru science yet scinece can not agree(hmmm wonder why) And with that ofcourse I'll add some links to do my arguing
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/ruse.asp
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/21soc04.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/299/5612/1523.pdf
(all three interesting links)
Ahhh what the heck, even more
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=evolution+is+a+religion&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=
So what do ya think
I don't think evolution can be proved, I really don't and as we all know it is just a theory. And coming from the pro evolutionist here, I see that the same is said about creation. So then what if they are both wrong???? Or what if they are both right and go hand in hand??? hmmm, just a wonder

Anyway, I'm sticking to my belief in creation, I guess there are just somethings that are, that can't be proven to some people, they just are
and in the end, everyone is going to take with them their own beliefs, be it right or wrong
 
Very selective quoting in those sites. The middle one in particular seems more than happy to overlook the fact that only a small handful (maybe 3 or 4) of them came from anywhere inside the last 20 years. Biology as a science has greatly improved since then, but then very few creationists seem willing to accept the evidence shown to them by scientists, so I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run
 
you need to study evolution before you discredit it. This is why i get angry at many people who talk about how evil religion is even though they have never been to a church or read any form of holy text. You can't argue about something if you don't even understand it.
 
if a creator created everything than who is this creator and who created him. according to your theory everything is created, so who created him, and who created the person who created him and so on and so fourth. it's an endless cycle.
 
the reason why humans are one of the if not the only animals that does not have fully developed brains at birth is that a smaller brain earlier on actually insures more brain growth through age. what i find intresting is the new theory that the mutation of a decreased jaw bone caused our brains to increase in size. this new theory states that a smaller jaw gave more room for the brain to grow. it's also kinda cool that were one of the if not only animal whos skull can actually expand . it's amazing the mutations that have come about to make us so adapt to our environment, and i would like to say that if there was a creator (which i myself do not believe there was) he did a pretty good job. you say these things but really when you look at them closer they are advantages for us. if they weren't advantages we wouldn't have them. well at least the majority of us wouldn't have them.
 
Hmm ok then what was the point of starting this thread? It should also be pointed out that the existance of God has never been proven. In fact it still hasn't been conclusivley proven that most of the key events in the Bible actually happened or that Jesus ever existed for that matter.

On the point that your links raise about evolution being a religeon. Although it's not a religeon even if it was then so what? Who gave Christians the right to dictate which beleifes people are aloud to hold?

Should we go burn all the science books and live in the dark ages again? Should we go around perscuting Jews and Muslims and anybody of a non-christian faith?
 
Evolutionary biology addresses fundamental questions about the living world: Where do living things come from? Why are there so many different kinds of organisms? How have they come to be so well fitted to their environments?
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who devoted his life to answering these questions, working to solve what he called the “mystery of mysteries.” Darwin began to study biology seriously as a college student in the early 1820s. At that time, the leading explanation in Europe for the origin of species was the Theory of Special Creation. This theory held that all organisms were created by God during the six days of creation described in Genesis 1-2:4. The ideal types formed by this special process, including Adam and Eve, were the progenitors of all individuals living today. The theory stated that the types were unchanged since their creation, or immutable, and that variation within each type was strictly limited. The creation event was also believed to be recent: In 1664 Archbishop James Ussher of the Irish Protestant Church used Old Testament genealogies to calculate that the Earth was precisely 5668 years old. He wrote that “Heaven and Earth, Centre and substance were made in the same instant of time and clouds full of water and man were created by the Trinity on the 26th of October 4004 B.C. at 9:00 in the Morning.”
By the time Darwin began working on the problem in the 1830s, however, dissatisfaction with the Theory of Special Creation had already begun to grow. Research in the biological and geological sciences was advancing rapidly, and that data clashed with creationism’s central tenets and predictions.

The Fact of Evolution

Evidence from biology and geology was contradictory to creationism because it showed that species had changed through time and descended with modification from common ancestors, instead of each remaining unchanged since a special and independent origin. We review these three types of data. Taken together they were convincing enough to shake many scientists’ belief in the Theory of Special Creation.

Relatedness of Life Forms

Homology- literally the study of likeness- was a key concept in the new field of comparative anatomy. For example, the naturalist Louis Agassiz was among many who observed that the embryos of vertebrates ranging from fish to humans are strikingly similar, especially early in development (see figure below).


Richard Owen, Britain’s leading anatomist, and Baron Georges Cuvier of Paris, the founder of comparative anatomy, described homologies among vertebrate skeletons. Darwin (1859) cited their work when he wrote, “What could be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions?" Darwin (1862) himself researched the anatomy of orchid flowers, and showed that they are actually constructed from the same suite of component pieces, though they are wildly diverse in shape.
What causes homology? Agassiz, Owen, Curvier, and other early workers recognized that homologous structures in adults develop from the same groups of cells in embryos. As a consequence, homology was defined similarity due to shared developmental pathways. But why should some organisms share developmental pathways? Darwin argued that descent from a common ancestor was the most logical and parsimonious explanation. He contended that the embryos in the figure above are similar because all vertebrates evolved from the same common ancestor, and because early developmental stages have remained unchanged as fish, maofftopicls, amphibians, and reptiles diversified.
Darwin's recognition of relationship through shared descent was an authentic conceptual breakthrough, and extended to phenomena other than homology. Darwin's trip to the Galapagos Islands had a strong influence on his thinking. While he was aboard the H.M.S. Beagle during a five-year mapping and exploratory mission, Darwin collected and catalogued the flora and fauna encountered during the voyage. He was especially impressed by the mockingbirds during his work in the Galapagos, because each island had a distinct population. Although they were similar in color, size, and shape and thus clearly related to one another, each mockingbird population seemed distinct enough to be classified as a separate species. This was confirmed later, by Darwin's taxonomist colleagues back in England. Darwin and others followed up on this result with studies showing the same pattern in Galapagos tortoises and finches: The various islands hosted different, but closely related, species.
Like structural homologies, this radiation of related forms across island chains was a logical outcome of modification with descent. In contrast, both patterns were inconsistent with special creation, which predicted that organisms were created independently. Under special creation, no particular patterns are expected in the morphological or geographic relationships of organisms.

Change Through Time

One of the central tenets of the Theory of Special Creation was that species, once created, were immutable. Four lines of evidence challenged this claim.
An early eighteen-century paleontologist named William Clift was the first to publish an observation later confirmed and expanded upon by Darwin (Eisely 1958). Fossil and living maofftopicls in the same geographic region are related to each other, and distinctly different from faunas of other areas. Clift worked on the extinct marsupial fauna of Australia and noted its close relationship to forms alive today; Darwin analyzed the armadillos of Argentina and their relationship to the fossil glyptodonts he excavated there. This general result, termed the law of succession, provided strong documentation for evolution.
Darwin added another piece of evidence for change through time: the presence of vestigial structures, or rudimentary organs, in a wide variety of organisms. Some blind, cave-dwelling fish have eye sockets but no eyes, flightless birds and insects have reduced wings; some snakes have tiny hips and rear legs; humans have a nonfunctional appendix and reduced tailbone. We also have muscles that make our body hair stand on end when we get cold or excited. Erectile fur is found in many maofftopicls, including our close relatives the primates, and is important in signaling alarm or aggressive intent. In humans, it results in goose bumps.
All of the vestigial structures we have listed are useless homologs of functioning structures in closely related species. Again, Darwin argued that their existence is inexplicable under special creation. But they are readily interpretable as a result of modification with descent.
Baron Georges Cuiver's confirmation of the fact of extinction delivered the same message: Earth's flora and fauna have changed through time. The recognition of marine fossils in contemporary nonmarine environments like the Andes in South America and the Grand Canyon in America's arid southwest argued that the Earth is not static, either. Habitats and landforms are being continuously generated and modified, just as species are.

The Age of the Earth

By the time Darwin had first began working on "the species problem", data from the young science of geology had challenged a linchpin in the Theory of Special Creation: that the Earth was only about 6,000 years old. Evidence was mounting that the Earth was ancient.
James Hutton was the first to articulate a principle called uniformitarianism: Geological processes taking place now operated similarly in the past. This assumption lead Hutton, and later Charles Lylell, to infer that the geological time scale was unimaginably long in human terms. This conclusion was driven by data: Given the measurements these early geologists made of ongoing rock-forming processes like deposition at beaches and river deltas and the accumulation of marine shells (the precursors of limestone), it was clear that vast stretched of time were required to produce the immense rock formations they were studying.
When Darwin began his work, Hutton and followers were already in the midst of a 50-year effort to put the major rock formations and fossil-bearing strata of Europe in a younger-to-older sequence. Their technique, called relative dating, was an exercise in logic based on the following assumptions:Younger rocks are deposited on top of older rocks (this is called the priciple of superposition).Lavas and sedimentary rocks like sandstones, limestones, and mudstones were originally laid down in a horizontal position, so that any tipping or bending events occurred after deposition (principle of original horizontality).Rocks that intrude into seams or as dikes are younger than their host rocks (principle of cross-cutting relationships).Boulders, cobbles, or other fragments found in a body of rock are older than their host rock (principle of inclusions).Earlier fossil life forms are simpler than more recent forms, and more recent forms are most similar to existing forms (principle of faunal succession).Using these rules, geologists established the chronology know as the geologic time scale and created the concept of the geologic column. This is a history of the Earth based on a composite, older-to-younger sequence of rock strata. Taken together with the principle of uniformitarianism, the geologic time scale and geologic column furnished impressive evidence for an ancient Earth. Geologists began working in time scales of tens of millions of years, instead of a few thousand years, long before Darwin published his ideas on the origin of species.
Ironically, most of the data we have reviewed here, which Darwin used as evidence for the fact of evolution, were gathered by ardent creationists like Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen. As persuasive as the evidence is, though, it is important to note that there was no one grand experiment that swept aside belief in the Theory of Special Creation and opened the way for a new theory. Observations like structural and developmental homologies did not falsify special creation outright. Rather, evolution was simply much more powerful in explaining the data. Instead of collapsing dramatically, the Theory of Special Creation began to creak and groan under the weight of the evidence, which accumulated steadily over the first half of the 19th century. Eventually it gave way.

Natural Selection: Darwin's Four Postulates

Because homologies, extinction, and the law of succession were widely recognized in Western Europe, the idea of evolution had been in the air long before Darwin began his work on the problem. Several writers, including Charles' grandfather Erasmus Darwin, had proposed that existing species are the modified descendents of forms that existed previously. But no one had yet proposed a satisfactory mechanism for how a population of organisms could change through time. Understanding the mechanism that produces the phenomena we observe is the heart and soul of a scientific explanation. Put another way, the early evolutionists had discovered an important pattern. A growing body of facts indicated that fossil and living organisms had descended from common ancestors. But what process could produce this pattern?
Darwin's solution is the theory of evolution by natural selection. It can be stated concisely, as the logical outcome of the following four postulates:

1. Individuals within species are variable
2. Some of these variations are passed on to offspring
3. In every generation, more offspring are produced than can survive
4. Survival and reproduction are not random: The individuals that survive and go on to reproduce, or who reproduce the most, are those with the most favorable variations. They are naturally selected.

Darwin laid out these four postulates in his introduction to On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859, and considered the rest of the book "one long argument" in their support.
Evolutionary change is an outcome of the process described by Darwin, which he called natural selection. The logic is clear: If there is variation among individuals in a population that can be passed on to offspring, and if there is differential success among those individuals in surviving and/or reproducing and thus in passing on those variations, then the characteristics of the population will change slightly with each succeeding generation. This is Darwinian evolution: gradual change in populations over time. Changes in populations are an inevitable part of natural selection on individuals.
Darwin referred to the individuals who win this competition (it is rarely an actual head-to-head contest), and whose offspring make up a greater percentage of the population in the next generation, as more fit. In doing so he gave the everyday English words fit and fitness a new meaning. Darwinian fitness is the ability of an individual to survive and reproduce in its environment. An important aspect of fitness is its relative nature. It refers to how well an individual survives and how many offspring it produces compared to other individuals of its species. We use the word adaptation to refer to traits or characteristics of organisms, like a modified form of reverse transcriptase in the HIV virus, that increase their fitness relative to individuals without the traits.
The same theory had, incidentally, been developed independently by a colleague of Darwin named Alfred Russel Wallace. Though trained in England, Wallace had been making his living in Malaysia by selling natural history specimens to private collectors. While recuperating from a bout with malaria in 1858, he wrote a manuscript explaining natural selection and sent it to Darwin. Darwin, who had written his first draft on the subject in 1842 but never published it, immediately realized that he and Wallace had formulated the same theory independently. The two agreed to have their papers read together before the Royal Society of London, and Darwin then rushed On the Origin of Species into publication (17 years after he had written the first draft). Today Darwin's name is more prominently associated with the theory of evolution by natural selection for two reasons: he had clearly thought of is first, and On the Origin of Species provided a full exposition of the idea, along with massive documentation.



One of the most attractive aspects of the Darwin-Wallace theory is that we can varify each of the four postulates and the logical consequence independently. That is, the theory is testable. There are no hidden assumptions, and nothing that we have to accept uncritically. In the next section we examine each of the four assertations by reviewing an ongoing study of finches in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Can natural selection lead to evolutionary change?

The Evolution of Beak Shape in Galapagos Finches

Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant and their colleagues have been studying several species of Galapagos finches continuously and on various islands in the Galapagos archipelago since 1973 (Grant 1986; Grant and Grant 1989). The 13 finch species found on the islands are similar in size and coloration, ranging from three to six inches in length and from brown to black in color. Two traits do show remarkable variation among species, however: the size and shape of the finches' beaks. The beak is the primary tool used by birds in feeding, and the enormous range of beak morphologies in the Galapagos finches (see figure below) reflects the diversity of foods they eat.
The warbler finch (Cactospiza olivacea) feeds on small anthropods and nectar; woodpecker and mangrove finches (C. pallida and C. heliobates) use twigs or cactus spines as tools to pry insect larvae or termites from dead wood; several ground finches in the genus Geospoza pluck ticks from iguanas and tortoises in addition to eating seeds; the vegetarian finch (Platyspiza crassirostris) eats leaves and fruit (Grant 1981a, 1986).
To test the theory of evolution by natural selection, we will focus on data Grant and Grant and colleagues have gathered on the medium ground finch, Geospiza fortis, on Isla Daphne Major.
Daphne Major's size and location make it a superb natural laboratory. The island is tiny. It is just under 40 hectares (about 80 football fields) in extent, with a maximum elevation of 120 meters. Like all of the islands in the Galapagos, it is the top of a volcano. The climate is seasonal even though the location is equatorial. A warmer, wetter season from January through May alternates with a cooler, drier season from June through December. The vegetation consists of dry forest and scrub, with various species of cactus.
The Geospiza fortis on Daphne Major make an ideal study population because few finches migrate onto or off of the island (Boag and Grant 1981; Grant 1991), and the population is small enough to be studied exhaustively. In an average year there are about 1,200 individuals on the island. By 1977 Grant and Grant's team had captured and marked over half of the individuals present; since 1980 virtually 100% of the population has been marked (Grant 1991).
The medium ground finch is primarily a seed eater. The birds crack seeds by grasping them at the base of the bill and then applying force. Grant and Grant and their colleagues have shown that both within and across finch species, beak size is correlated with the size of seeds harvested: In general, birds with bigger beaks eat larger seeds, and birds with smaller beaks eat smaller seeds. This is because birds with different beak sizes are able to handle different sizes of seeds more effectively (Bowman 1961; Grant et al. 1976; Abbot et al. 1977; Grant 1981b)

Testing Postulate 1: Are Populations Variable?

Grant and Grant mark every finch they catch by placing colored aluminum bands around each of its legs. This allows the researchers to identify individual birds in the field. The scientists also weigh each finch and measure its wing length, tail length, beak width, beak depth, and beak length. All of the traits they have investigated are variable. When Grant and Grant plotted measurements of beak depth in the Isla Daphne Major population of G. fortis, for example, the data formed a bell-shaped curve. All of the finch characteristics they have measured clearly conform to Darwin's first postulate. Variation among individuals is virtually universal.

Testing Postulate 2: Is Some of the Variation Among Individuals Heritable?

Finches could vary in beak depth because of differences in their environments or their genetic heritage, or both. A bird's environment could affect beak dimensions through abrasion against hard seeds or rocks for example. Variation in the amount of food that individuals happened to have received as chicks can also lead to variation among adults. To determine whether at least part of the variability among finch beaks is genetically based, and thus capable of being passed from parents to offspring, a colleague of Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant's named Peter Boag estimated a quantity known as heritability.
In the broad sense, heritability is the proportion of the total variation observed in a population that is due to the effect of genes. In the narrow sense, heritability is the proportion of the total variation observed in a population that is due to the additive effects of genes. Additive genetic effects include all of the effects a gene has except those due to gene interactions, like dominance or interaction with other loci. Because it is a proportion, heritability varies between 0 and 1. It is usually estimated by measuring the similarity between pairs of relatives. This is because similarities between relatives are caused, at least in part, by the genes they share. Data are usually collected from siblings, or from parents and offspring.
Boag compared the beak depth of G. fortis young after they had attained adult size to the average bill depth of their mother and father. Boag found a strong correspondence between relatives. Parents with deep beaks tended to have offspring with deep beaks, and parents with shallow beaks tended to have chicks with shallow beaks. This is evidence that a large proportion of the observed variation in beak depth is genetic, and can be transmitted to offspring (Boag and Grant 1978; Boag 1983)

Testing Postulate 3: Is There an Excess of Offspring, So That Only Some Individuals Live to Reproduce?

Because they routinely censused the ground finch population over several years, the researchers were able to observe a dramatic event. In 1977 there was a very severe drought at their study area. Instead of the normal 130 mm of rainfall during the wet season, only 24 mm fell. Over the course of 20 months, 84% of the Darwin's medium ground finch population disappeared. The team inferred that most died of starvation: there was a strong correspondence with seed availability. 38 emaciated birds were actually found dead, and none of the missing birds reappeared the following year (Boag and Grant, 1981; Grant 1991). It is clear that only a fraction of the population survived to reproduce. This sort of morality is not that unusual: Rosemary Grant has shown that 89% of Geospiza conirostris individuals die before they breed (Grant 1995), and Trevor Price et al. (1984) determined that an additional 19% and 25% of the G. fortis on Daphne Major died during subsequent drought events in 1980 and 1982.
In every natural population studied, more offspring are produced than will survive to breed. If a population in not increasing in size, each parent will, in the course of its lifetime, leave an average of one offspring that survives to breed. But the reproductive capacity (or biotic potential) of organisms is astonishing.
Similarly, data show that in most populations some individuals are more successful at mating and producing offspring than others. This variation in reproductive success represents an opportunity for selection, too.

Testing Postulate 4: Is Survival and Reproduction Nonrandom?

Darwin's fourth claim was that the individuals who survive and go on to reproduce, or who reproduce the most, are those with the most favorable variations. Did a nonrandom, or selected, subset of the ground finch population survive the 1977 drought? By measuring the same traits they had measured in 1976 on a large and random sample of surviving birds early in 1978, the Grant team found that a distinct subset of the population had survived: those with the deepest beaks. Because the average survivor had a deeper beak than the average nonsurvivor, the average bill size of the population changed.
But in what way were deep beaks favorable? Can we link ecological cause with evolutionary effect? The answer is yes: not only the number, but the types of seeds available during the 1977 drought changed dramatically. Specifically, the large, hard fruits of an annual plant called Tribulus cistoides became a key food item. These seeds are ignored in normal years, but during the drought the supply of small, soft seeds quickly became exhausted (Boag and Grant 1981). Only large birds with deep, narrow beaks can crack and eat Tribulus seeds fruits successfully (Price et al. 1984). In addition, large birds defend food sources more successfully during conflicts (Grant 1991). Because large size and deep beaks are positively correlated (Boag 1983), the two traits responed to selection together (Grant 1991).
There is an interesting twist to the story, however. Boag and Grant's analysis showed that individuals with relatively narrow beaks also survived better. The finches push down and to either side when cracking the Tribulus fruits, and narrower beaks concentrate these forces more effectively. But beak width is positively correlated with beak depth and large size, meaning that birds with deep beaks, which are good for applying downward force, tend also to have wider beaks, which are less effective at applying the twisting force. Presumably this correlation exists because the same genes affect beak depth and width and overall body size, making all three traits larger or smaller together. The upshot is that selection for larger size and deeper beaks resulted in wider beaks even when narrower beaks should have been favored. This is an important point: Because of the genetic correlations among characters, natural selection could not neccessarily optimize all of the traits involved.
The 1977-1978 selection event, as dramatic as it was, was not an isolated occurrence. In 1980 and 1982 there were similar droughts, and selection again favored individuals with large body size nad deep, narrow beaks (Price et al. 1984) But then in 1983 an influx of warm surface water off the South American coast, called an El Nino event, created a wet season with 1359 mm of rain on Daphne Major. This dramatic environmental change (almost 57 times as much rain as in 1977) led to a superabundence of small, soft seeds and strong selection for smaller body size (Gibbs and Grant 1987). Larger birds were favored in drought conditions, and smaller birds in wet years. Natural selection is dynamic.

Did Evolution Occur?

The changes observed in finch beaks are examples of directional selection. This term is appropriate because natural selection pushed the distribution of traits in one direction (and then back again, in this case). But we said earlier that evolution was a response to selection. These data show selection, but not evolution. Selection produces a distinct change in trait distributions within a generation, while evolution is a change in trait distributions between generations. Did evolution occur in the Galapagos finches? the answer is yes: The offspring of birds surviving the 1977 drought were significantly larger, on average, than the population that existed before the drought.


Citations:

Abbot, I., L.K. Abbot, and P.R. Grant. 1977. Comparative ecology of Galapagos finches (Geospiza Gould): Evaluation of the importance of floristic diversity and interspecific competition. Ecological Monographs 47:151-184.

Boag, P.T. 1983. The heritability of external morphology in Darin's ground finches (Geospiza) on Isla Daphne Major, Galapagos. Evolution 37:877-894.

Boag, P.T., and P.R. Grant. 1978. Heritability of external morphology in Darwin's finches. Nature 274:793-794.

Boag, P.T., and P.R. Grant. 1981. Intense natural selection in a population of Darwin's finches (Geospizinae) in the Galapagos. Science 214:82-85.

Bowman, R.I. 1961. Morphological differentiation and adaptation in the Galapagos finches. University of California Publications in Zoology 58:1-302.

Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London: John Murray).

Darwin, C. 1862. The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects (London: John Murray).

Eisley, L. 1958. Darwin's Century (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books).

Gibbs, H.L., and P.R. Grant. 1987. Oscillating selection on Darwin's Finches. Nature 327:511-513.

Grant, B.R. 1985. Selection on bill characters in a population of Darwin's finches: Geospiza conirostris on Isla Genovesa, Galapagos. Evolution 39:523-532.

Grant, B.R., and P.R. Grant. 1989. Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Population (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Grant, P.R. 1981a. Speciation and adaptive radiation on Darwin's finches. American Scientist 69:653-663.

Grant, P.R. 1981b. The feeding of Darwin's finches on Tribulus cistoides (L.) seeds. Animal Behavior 29:785-793.

Grant, P.R. 1986. Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Grant, P.R. 1991. Natural selection and Darwin's finches. Scientific American October:82-87.

Grant, P.R., B.R. Grant, J.N.M. Smith, I.J. Abbot, and L.K. Abbot. 1976. Darwin's finches: Population variation and natural selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 73:257-261.

Price, T.D., P.R. Grant, H.L. Gibbs, and P.T. Boag. 1984. Recurrent patterns of natural selection in a population of Darwin's finches. Nature 309:787-789.

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Excerpt from "Evolutionary Analysis" by Scott Freeman and Jon C. Herron. 1998. Prentice-Hall, Inc: Upper Saddle River, N.J.
 
K_Coffin: I guess I did over simplify evolution, and even if YODA did state research that does show energy transfer occurs naturally. I guess what I was trying to say was,"Even though things may occur naturally, in no way does organic life just happen." intelligent life at that. As you said pal, "Evolution has no end" well it has a beginning and even now I've not been present with recent evidence of life appearing from a mix of dirt and water. Secondly, since you can't really answer it yourself mate or explain to me "how organic life, occurs naturally," I guess I'll wait until my every own pet grows in my background from nature. I do find it funny you said," a peanut could grow into an eye."

It is as simple as that right? And I'll wouldn't be surprise if you were able to explain it. I "dumb down" this whole passage for you.

And kimpatsu:

Even if a HIGHER BEING WAS PROVEN TO BE DIMANSIONALLY IMPOSSIBLE, then explain to me about parallel universes, I'm really interested in that. I've watched "Stargate: SG1" when the crew stumbled upon a stone that took them to multi-dimesional universes (that really has nothing to do with reality of the subject. Just thought I'd bring it to your attention). As where I was thinking, that the HIGHER BEINGS live in a invisible realm parallel to ours. There is such research to suggestion a parallel universe. Maybe it is all my imagination, or I'm just drunk. Look at this:

http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6754

After all, it is dimensionally possible to vist our infinite selves. Which

If you have any questions or comments, please give them. (Actually, I don't know if you believe that I just skimmed through your posts and notice you said,"God has been proven to be dimansionally impossible". Same for K_Coffin I just skimmed through your post as well.)
 
I think you should read up on how carbon dating works before you use it as evidence that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old. It should also be noted that dinosaur bones are actually mineralised rock and contain very very very little in the way of original organic material.

Carbon 14 dating just isn't a suitable dating dinosaur bones.

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/carbon.html
 
Of course it has a beginning. First there was no life, then there was, and then it began evolving. I think the purpose of this thread is to debate whether or not evolution actually happens, not to argue about the beginning and origin of life. As has been said before, there are plenty of people who believe in both creation and evolution.

You'll have to wait a very long time, probably something on the order of several hundred million years. Statements like this one suggest to me that you don't have a basic understanding of the mechanics of evolution. Read my last post!

I don't recall hearing anyone say that. A peanut could not grow into an eye. Eyes are specialized organs that evolved from simpler designs in organisms billions of years ago. A peanut is a specialized plant, and while it shares a common ancestor with the organisms that first developed eyes, that ancestor is almost unimaginabley far in the past; the two would have branched onto different evolutionary pathways billions and billions of years ago.
 
If anyone is interested on how eyes formed through evolution, hit me up on msn. It just so happens that I had a lecture today on this very subject in my developmental biology unit at university I will send you the powerpoint presentation that he used to give the lecture which is pretty self-explanatory.
Explains proposed sequences of evolution, the VERY logical theory behind it and the questions such as "what use is half an eye?" referring to what use would the eye be halfway through development.
People should do research before just instantly knocking something. Some people devote their careers to researching stuff like this.
 
...and other people devote lots of time to typing out really long excerps from biology textbooks and then posting them on this site for people to read!
 
Omicron: Ok, I'm on the part of rather evolution reason for life. Look, what I'm saying is if evolution has "no end" and "has a beginning" get the gist? Well, how the first basic life form "evolved" should repeat itself. Even now you should be able to go outside and observe a 1.0 million year old creature in the middle of the process of evolving as Aikimac stated.
 
Omicron: Ok, I'm on the part of rather evolution reason for life. Look, what I'm saying is if evolution has "no end" and "has a beginning" get the gist? Well, how the first basic life form "evolved" should repeat itself. Even now you should be able to go outside and observe a 1.0 million year old creature in the middle of the process of evolving.
 
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