[RD]

I did not say that species whose form has remained the same for millions of years proves evolution, I said this constancy does not disprove evolution, it is entirely consistent with species having adapted to a niche which has remained constant for millions of years.

My reference to the immune systems was to point out that evolution has not stopped in these "living fossils". The immune systems of all animals are subject to evolutionary pressure by the emergence of new pathogens: those whose immune system can defeat the new virus/bacteria will survive and can have progeny who inherit this immunity, those whose immune system cannot defeat the new pathogen will perish and become an evolutionary dead-end.

You have acknowledged the existence of genes in similar threads Asyncritus.
If you acknowledge that members of a species are not genetically identical, and environmental conditions will favour the survival of those who posses certain genes over those whose do not, (like the immunity example I have given above), then you acknowledge evolution.

PS
      I missed your comment on the appearance of new pathogens, (e.g. new viruses such as H571, SARS, AIDS).

PPS

perhaps, in many cases, the intermediates never existed.

Atavism proves that intermediates did exist and that modern creatures are descended from them.
The DNA of the intermediate must be carried by modern members of the species who exhibit atavistic traits.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]

      http://www.anatomyatlases.org/AnatomicVariants/SkeletalSystem/Images/19.shtml

[Asyncritus]

Just because the form of some creatures has remained the essentially the same for millions of years does not disprove evolution: they have adapted to an environmental niche which has not changed, so their form has not changed, although their immune systems will have evolved in response to appearance new diseases. [You're now going to tell us that there are no new pathogens, because that would require evolution].

This is pure nonsense. The coelacanths appeared 418mya. They've remained unchanged till today. You seriously mean to say that in 418my no environmental changes took place?

Those fossil pics above are from various times between 100 and 50 mya. No environmental changes? Tripe.

Evidence of the evolution of one species into another is sufficient to disprove creationism "intelligent design", the horse for example...

And what does evidence of no evolution prove?

Fossil Evidence for Evolution – Transitional Fossils
The second line of fossil evidence for evolution concerns transitional fossils. Transitional fossils are fossils which are thought to document the evolutionary change, or transition, of one species into another. The orohippus, mesohippus, miohippus, merychippus, and pleshippus are all thought to be transitional fossils, documenting the evolution of the hyracotherium into the modern horse. http://www.allaboutcreation.org/fossil-evidence-for-evolution-faq.htm

These transitional fossils along with rare atavisms* in modern horses are convincing evidence for evolution,
(to those who are susceptible to reason).

* Probably the most well-known atavism is polydactyly of modern horses ... This condition is similar to the extra toes found in many of the three-toed fossil horses including Archaeohippus, Parahippus, Merychippus and Neohipparion.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/ponyexpress/pony11_1/Pe111.html#Atavisms
[/quote]

Are you going to force me to find Eldredge's quote where he said he shoved that display downstairs in his museum? You ever heard of Eldredge, and know who he is? Try google.

[RD]

This is pure nonsense. The coelacanths appeared 418mya. They've remained unchanged till today.

It is often claimed that the coelacanth has remained unchanged for millions of years, but, in fact, the living species and even genus are unknown from the fossil record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth

[Asyncritus]

 
The name 'coelacanth'is the name of a group. It is known from fossils.

"Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if striken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was true Coelacanth."

Unless, of course this guy knew nothing about it.

The nasty fact remains that they are not really different from their 410 myo ancestors. THEY ARE RECOGNISABLE. SO ALL THE WRIGGLING WILL DO YOU NO GOOD AT ALL.

Here are two pictures which demonstrate that:





"A second coelacanth was found in later years. However, the fish died soon after being removed from the deep waters in which it lived and brought to the warm, shallow surface waters. Nonetheless it was still possible to examine its internal organs. The reality encountered by the investigating team, led by Dr. Jacques Millot, was very different to that which had been expected. Contrary to expectations, the fish's internal organs had no primitive features at all, and it bore no features of being an intermediate form, nor of a supposedly primitive ancestor. It had no primitive lung, as evolutionists had been claiming. The structure that evolutionist investigators imagined to be a primitive lung was actually a fat-filled swimbladder."http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_05.php

[RD]

The nasty fact remains that they are not really different from their 410 myo ancestors. THEY ARE RECOGNISABLE.

I agree with you Asyncritus: modern coelacanths are very similar to the fossils…

the form of some creatures has remained the essentially the same for millions of years

It is often claimed that the coelacanth has remained unchanged for millions of years but in fact the living species and even genus are unknown from the fossil record. However, some of the extinct species, particularly those of the last known fossil coelacanth, the Cretaceous genus Macropoma, closely resemble the living species.

http://www.lakestluciavillas.com/coelacanth.html

But "recognisable", "very similar", "essentially the same" and "closely resemble", are not sufficient for creationism:
If creatures were designed then modern species and fossils would be identical.
If the modern species has even slight changes from the fossil then it was not "designed", it has mutated, it has evolved.

Coelacanths and you and I are decendents of mutants who were better adapted to their environment than their contemporaries.

[_Stefan_]

It's amusing that you're using the Harunyahya book as a reference. It's so poorly written, and its contents grossly misrepresent the science it's attacking. Not only that, but the photos they've used aren't even accurate: http://richarddawkins.net/article,2833,UPDATED-Venomous-Snakes-Slippery-Eels-and-Harun-Yahya,Richard-Dawkins


You seem to think that every species must constantly be evolving no matter what in order for the theory to be correct. As other members have explained to you, species will only evolve significantly (i.e. aside from genetic drift) when the environmental pressures (natural selection) change to a certain extent in ways that act on the variation (due to mutation and recombination) in the population.

You also seem to think that the result of evolution must express itself in the species' external morphology. This is not necessarily the case. Most evolution occurs on the internal environment of the organism, and species can appear superficially unchanged, while their DNA has evolved dramatically. Take the Tuatara for example: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/cp-ttf032008.php
 
In case you're the kind of person who thinks that evolution is false because you can't see it happen before your eyes, there are many examples of that. This is just one off the top of my head: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

That evidence ALONE falsifies creationism.

Unfortunately, you ignore and reject the evidence that doesn't confirm your irrational ideologies. The only reason I can see for rebutting your nonsense is to prevent innocent readers looking for real science from being brainwashed by you. http://www.talkorigins.org/ is a great place to start.

[Asyncritus]

But "recognisable", "very similar", "essentially the same" and "closely resemble", are not sufficient for creationism:
If creatures were designed then modern species and fossils would be identical.
If the modern species has even slight changes from the fossil then it was not "designed", it has mutated, it has evolved.

My dear fellow, if we lived 410mya, we would probably see these very organisms swimming around. It's called variation. There are several genera in most families, and this is all you're describing. Variation.

So what happened to the coelacanth being the ancestors, so confidently proclaimed, of the tetrapods and us? That theory has been properly stuffed and mounted.

Coelacanths and you and I are decendents of mutants who were better adapted to their environment than their contemporaries.

Your faith is very touching. I'm saddened to see it. Because you really haven't thought it through.

Let's take hypothetical organism A in the preCambrian layers, which was the common ancestor of everything. It's functioning perfectly and doing well. Let's not bother too much about where it came from just yet.

It mutates. Now, do you know what a mutation is? Here's a definition from google:

"a mistake in the cell's DNA, produced by miscopying during cell reproduction, radiation damage, or environmental factors. ..."

Which is absolutely correct.

So we have perfect specimen A, with perfect genes, producing a damaged, miscopied, mistaken set of genes in its offspring B.

Is that E-volution, or DE-volution?

Do you seriously mean to tell me, that that represents progress? And for the next n generations the process is repeated. What would you expect after the nth generation? I personally would expect damage and destruction, and the possible extinction of the species.

But that's not what we find. We find, in the Cambrian stratum, about 100 new PHYLA - not species (they're unable to count those). That is a gigantic amount of improvement. So where did it come from?

What is worse from your POV, is that all these fossils are HARD-SKELETONed animals. Now they've no idea where all these have come from, and much scratching round in the preCambrian hasn't found anything much except cyanobacteria and other microbes.

So assuming  microbial first organism, how did all these things arise, and from what?

Yahya documents 83 pages of fossils whose descendants haven't changed much since they were deposited. That's a lot of species. I listed above the 'living fossils' given by wiki.
Have a look, and let me know why you're sneering at the facts.
http://www.fossil-museum.com/

Now as a fairminded person, you've established a theory which says that organisms will change/ evolve over long periods of time. How many exceptions to that rule do you have to have before you discard the theory? 10? 20? 100? Yahya has got 83 PAGES full of them in the fossil-museum. Why haven't you discarded the theory yet?

So you've got a situation where:

1 Acquired characters can't be inherited. ie if fish C walks out on land, he can't pass those characters on to his offspring! They're stuck in the water.

2 Mutations are generally neutral or destructive. I read a JSTOR article which said that about 66 advantageous mutations occur in about 10,000 generations.

So if we say a human reproduces at 20 years, and that's a generation, then that's 66 beneficials in 200,000 years.Or so.
We aren't going to become supermen anytime soon, that's for sure.

So what have you got? You have a theory that can't work.

I see that the tuatara is being touted as an example of rapid DNA evolution. I don't know what he's on about, but I do know that it is one of the 'living fossils' listed by wiki. Hasn't changed for 230 million years! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil 

It hasn't changed any since and is one of the species that forced Niles Eldredge to say:

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history"
Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, [1995], phoenix: London, 1996

I'm amazed to see you quoting that stupid experiment by Lemski. There is a metabolic change in the organism over 40,000 generations while it was stuck in a refrigerator. Fantastic proof of evolution occurring! Now if it had evolved and changed into a shrimp or something (as they obviously needed to have done to account for the Cambrian explosion), I might have listened. I wonder who's paying the electricity bill for this guy to waste time so uselessly.

I see you are attributing unpleasant motives to me. Dawkins, of course does nothing of the sort! He's as pure as the driven snow. Please let's keep personalities out of this.

But here's a video you might not like:

http://www.harunyahya.com/new_releases/news/dawkins_challenge.php

[RD]

My dear fellow, if we lived 410mya, we would probably see these very organisms swimming around.

No fossil evidence to prove this Asyncritus,
the modern coelacanth are very similar, (but not identical), to cretaceous fossils, ~100 myr old.

It's called variation. There are several genera in most families, and this is all you're describing. Variation.

Yes, the kind of variation that would arise from evolution: variations on a theme: similar creatures evolved from a common ancestor.

Mutations are generally neutral or destructive.

True, but on rare occasions a mutation will be advantageous. Evolution is a slow accumulation of these beneficial mutations.

[atrox]

wow, you still just don´t understand...

again, to understand what your adversaries believe in, doesn´t mean that you have to believe in it yourself. So why are you afraid of even try to understand what we think is a possible explanation of the diversity of species? Because if you would understand, you wouldn´t have to ask questions on general basics of evolution. But in fact, to convince someone of the opposition or even discuss the matter propperly you should understand the train of thoughts.
thats not an attack, just a suggestion to make a scientific discussions work...


I wont explain detailed, because I´m getting really tired of the way you use to respond without seeming to remember what any of us did try to explain.. so I would just give you a hint on mutations:

Take a look into sickle cell anaemia for example, how it is an adverse mutation at first sight, but how it make its way, when conditions change...for example when malaria appears...

Or, i think we agree, that there are a lot of neutral mutations, yes?
That doesn´t mean, that they are useless after all...that also depents on the environment. Lets take lactose tolerance...definitive not "normal" for humans(or in fact any other adult animal) as the common reaction of members of certain peoples, which didn´t cultivate milkproducing animals in their history before the globalisation, shows. Its a mutation, neutral, as long as you don´t need it. It wouldn´t affect you or your behaviour or your evolution until you try to drink milk. So if you have this mutation, you can drink milk (and when its invented all the products from milk), you can use the milk as an energy ressource, which is an advantage, so you are more likely to reproduce. Therefore, most indivuals of populations which use milk in any way, are tolerant against lactose, but only a small part of the individuals of nations which didn´t use milk the longest part of their history are.. like the asian nations...but some asian people are able to tolerate lactose as well...because it´s a sleeping mutation which just spread, when it´s an advantage in some environments..
I think most of the mutations had an effect through scenarios like this...


ok...I just wrote mor than I wanted to...take it or leave it, hmmm...I wonder if I bet right on what you will do.--.  []

[Asyncritus]

Hi Atrox

Thought you had disappeared.

Here, prove that you're listening to what I say. Comment on this:

Let's take hypothetical organism A in the preCambrian layers, which was the common ancestor of everything. It's functioning perfectly and doing well. Let's not bother too much about where it came from just yet.

It mutates. Now, do you know what a mutation is? Here's a definition from google:

"a mistake in the cell's DNA, produced by miscopying during cell reproduction, radiation damage, or environmental factors. ..."

Which is absolutely correct.

So we have perfect specimen A, with perfect genes, producing a damaged, miscopied, mistaken set of genes in its offspring B.

Is that E-volution, or DE-volution?

Do you seriously mean to tell me, that that represents progress? And for the next n generations the process is repeated. What would you expect after the nth generation? I personally would expect damage and destruction, and the possible extinction of the species.

True or false.

If false, why?

If true, isn't that the ruin of your nice theory?

[atrox]

again yóu don´t seem to have read what I just explained...

I explained how mutations (even mutations that seem to be disadvantageous in first place, like the sickle cell anemia or neutral) can become advantageous... I gave you some examples, which would fit into the (our) theorie of evolution... so why do you again ask the same thing?

at your quote:
a big missunderstanding is, that no species is perfect. Thats just not possible...a species is adapted to its environment. Either its perfectly adapted to its very own environment...that means, that every change would be a big desaster to the species because the adaptations only work if nothing changes a lot (you can find species like this a lot on islands for example). Or the species is an all-rounder... could work with very different environments (like humans, foxes, rats, crows.... all the animals which live in the surroundings of humans for example). But than there is allways a possibility to be better adapted... and if an generalist would end up in an limited area, with an environment, that wouldn´t change a lot for a long time (say on an island), it is very likely that it would evolve to a species of the first kind over the time... so your scenario would just not work....
so it (the perfect species...the first kind of species I mentioned) would not de-evolve, it would evolve, when environment changes and the species wouldn´t be perfect anymore...

[Asyncritus]

I'm asking the same thing because you haven't read the quote I gave. Here it is again:

 
"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history"
Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, , phoenix: London, 1996

Mutations can't account for it, although you make a good case for sickle cell anaemia. However, that does not produce a new species of human being: only one that is more resistant to sickle cell disease.

So if mutations can't do it, what does?

Remember, it's all those thousands and thousands of species in the Cambrian that you're trying to explain.

[cheryl j]

Believing that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that fossils aren't real is silly. I also wince when people call Evolution just a theory, simply because no one was around to witness it. Many of the ideas we accept with reasonable certainty in chemistry, physics, astronomy etc.  can't be directly observed, so if evolution is a theory, than so is every explanation, even the engineering principles that hold up bridges and buildings.  And actually, you can observe natural selection taking place with living things, like drug resistant bacteria.

On the other hand, I wouldn't dismiss anyone who uses the word intelligence as a nut, or even a believer in creationism. There is some interesting work in physics about intelligence and the universe. Check out Seth Llloyd, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. This is a quote from him:

"OK, so life is the big one, the mother of all information processing revolutions. But what revolution occurred that allowed life to exist? I would claim that, in fact, all information processing revolutions have their origin in the intrinsic computational nature of the universe. The first information processing revolution was the Big Bang. Information processing revolutions come into existence because at some level the universe is constructed of information. It is made out of bits.
Of course, the universe is also made out of elementary particles, unknown dark energy, and lots of other things. I'm not advocating that we junk our normal picture of the universe as being constructed out of quarks, electrons, and protons. But in fact it's been known, ever since the latter part of the 19th century, that every elementary particle, every photon, every electron, registers a certain number of bits of information. Whenever two elementary particles bounce off of each other, those bits flip. The universe computes."

Of course believing that intelligence is woven into the fabric of the universe is not the same as believing in a creator, or that universe was designed specifically to generate you and me. It would seem like an awful lot of time and trouble just for us, not to mention the wasted space.
 

[Geezer]

"Whenever two elementary particles bounce off of each other, those bits flip."
 

He should stick to Mechanical Engineering.

Contrary to popular belief, real computers are not binary. They are probabilistic.

[Titanscape]

They are Bible literalists who say the earth is six thousand years old, but the first verses of Genesis can be taken to mean the earth was already there before the six thousand years one counts in life times were. It was in chaos, covered in water, the plot is missed deliberately.

I did in my misfortune as a child amidst divorce, need more than I got, and thinking I was going to die, and a little belief in Jesus, and I turned around my life for justice and honour. I appreciated the highs it gave me, and the wisdom, to commit and correct myself from time to time. So I am not in prison like some others with little fathering.

[wolfekeeper]

I just think that the best argument against intelligent design is how unintelligent the decisions it actually makes are. Neil Degrass Tyson at his oh so very awesome sums it up oh so very well:

Also if somebody wants to see evolution actually working (in a flash simulation):

http://boxcar2d.com/

And yeah, as you can see most mutations are pretty harmful, it's very true  (lol).