Be afraid, long post is long.
First off, let me excuse myself if I get too technical, it tends to happen when I talk about biological/scientific stuff.
Secondly, if I ever sound rude/condescending or somehow offensive, it might be because English isn't really my first language, so bear with me
I'll just pick some quotes I find interesting and use them to illustrate my view of evolution (well actually the way I learned it in school + some)
Grega said:
Thats an easy one. Evolution takes time. Lots of it. Yet the transitional forms are nowhere to be found. What happened to them in the past that they went missing. We find fosils of Specias X and its evolved state specias Y. But evolving on a micro scale would mean that hundreds of years have passed. So where the hell are the transition forms betwean X and Y. Thats the main problem in evolution.
Well IMO, that's mostly due to how we look into the past. Most of the time we use fossils, which is pretty inaccurate. Fossils are pretty scarce, and just a snapshot.
It's like trying to get the story of a movie by looking at every millionth frame.
Grega pretty much tapped into my problem with evolution. I do have a grasp on how its supposed to go. I have problems with the process by which it happens. Lets assert that it does happen, and it takes several thousands, if not millions of years for something to happen. Fish growing legs and becoming amphibians, for example. Lungs are an easy enough development to drag along in the water, its an internal change. It changes the creatures mode of living. Born from a clutch where many of its siblings won't have it's mutant DNA, and its parents certainly did not, the now lung equipped amphibian can live out of water. That's not enough though, it needs locomotion for land, so it has a mutuation for legs too. These vestigal leg fins let it slopplily move on land. What happens when it starts losing fins in succeeding generations? It can't swim as well, but its still born to waterborne parents? And what of the first generation that loses its gills, and has only lungs? Seperated from its parents, having instincts wired for the completely wrong creature, this animal has a really poor shot at becoming a viable species.
To me it seems like you think evolution has a purpose, a direction, a goal
esp:
DiebytheSword said:
Again, if the lungfish is a transitory animal, why is it on the fossil record for millions of years with little change? If its shifting, sounds like the poor animal can't find the next gear.
Evolution has no goal. It just happens. Beneficial changes are kept via survival, bad changes are eliminated by failure to mate or death.
Speciation (or macro-evolution) happens when populations of a species get isolated and conditions for both populations differ.
By natural selection both populations will slowly drift away from each other, because different traits may be beneficial to either population.
After enough time so many changes have accumulated taht even if two members of the populations would meet, they could not mate anymore.
Species are created through long-term isolation, not spontaneus freak mutation within a single population (as your lung-leg fish example assumes)
Once the genetic drift becomes great enough, it might not even be able to mate with the old species to produce more of its own. Lets also not forget that species that reproduce sexually need a minimum breeding number or they begin to suffer serious reproductive problems.
Isolated populations drift away. New (beneficial) traits spread over time in a population (that's why it takes so frigging long).
Once enough small changes accumulate, it might happen that the population becomes incompatible with the mother species, thus forming it's own.
If evolution does indeed happen as such, why are no transitional forms in exsistance today? Why aren't their balding apes that are approaching thier more advanced cousins?
First off, we're not observing stuff long enough to notice any significant changes. Secondly, evolution is not linear.
The goal of primate evolution was not to bring forth intelligent humans. It just happened.
We might see (far far far far future) primates (or other animal species) changing if global warming continues (if, big IF since I don't give much credit to man-made GW) and rain forests go poof in africa due to desertification.
That is if we don't make them go poof faster (to fast for any species to adapt)
There are two main reason why we don't see the kind of evolution that already happened today:
1.scale
such large scale changes take way longer than we can record knowledge.
2.evolutionary pressure
There currently is no pressure for apes to become more "advanced" (which is wrong in itself, current apes have evolved as much as we did compared to our ancestors..... err messy wording, I'll rephrase it if it's confusing).
Besides, becoming intelligent was merely a byproduct of our evolution.
DiebytheSword said:
Humans have a very unique trick in their DNA that makes them utterly confusing, our DNA produces more than one protein per base pair, something which no other animal on earth does, why are there no primates with this ability?
From your vague description I assume that you mean the ability for a gene to code for more than one protein?
Not unique to humans "Alternative splicing occurs as a normal phenomenon in [eukaryote]]s, where it greatly increases the diversity of proteins that can be encoded by the genome"->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_splicing
DiebytheSword said:
Further, if a mutation is beneficial within a certain environ, why doesn't every creature have it?
Again, Evolution isn't directional, and many paths lead to a common goal. For evolution, the common goal (goal as in succesful path) is always survival, and thus reproduction.
In a new hostile enviroment, on species might evolve to be stealthier, harder to notice etc. Another might evolve to become a better predator, thus eliminating natural enemies.
It's just chance and random. If you're out of luck, you population goes poof.
(I'm pretty bad at giving examples, and any nearly accurate outline of speciation takes half a page >.<)
DiebytheSword said:
If it is reasonable and observable it is true, if it is supported and reasonable but not observable it is a theory. Theory is not truth, theory is a well thought out and supported hypothesis. When you start subsitituting fact with theory, you are running on faith rather than science.
This part is mostly semantics. Theory is theory is theory is theory. A scientific theory is backed by facts and observations by it's very own definition.
You put it like evolution is dogmatized. While some people certainly do this, the scientific community does not. There are constantly parts which are corrected, or new findings added.
The current model of evolution (the modern synthesis) is the most accurate scientific description we have today.
Until facts and observations prove otherwise, this is the model scientists will work with.
DiebytheSword said:
I reject the idea that evolution happens as stated, I assert that you cannot have genentic drift which changes the fundamental makeup of the creature.
Who says you cannot have fundamental change?
Edit: Feel free to dissect my post, I haven't had a friendly debate in a long time
