My journey into atheism and theories on life

[SNESFAN]

Did you watch the debate? This Ken ham isn't arguing evolution as in change and survival of the fittest, he is arguing how a dog and fish could have come from the same animal. (Macro vs micro evolution) In his crazy mind there are branches of life divinely placed and modern species evolved from there. That is what I meant about early life. Creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence but they interpret it differently.

So evolution as in change is a theory, observable quantifiable and repeatable to some degree (cross breeding). Evolution as it pertains to our origins early or beginning of life is also a theory in which tons of people buy into. But it has weak evidence (compared to other non-origin of life theories) other than interpretation.

That is what I'm pointing out in saying there isn't a defining term that's taught in grade school to show some separation between the two. Theories are taught, but not to what degree they should be trusted as fact.

 

[WizardStan]

how do you separate a highly supported theory to one that only has a small amount of support.

There is no separation. If it only has a small amount of support, not a lot of evidence that it is true and there's reasonable doubt that it could be false then it isn't a theory, it's still an unproven hypothesis. It doesn't become a scientific theory until after it has been put through a battery of tests and all known doubts in the hypothesis have been eliminated.

 

[hailrazer]

The thing that always bothered me about evolution is the implausibility of it.

example:

A fish grows lungs then decides to walk out of the water and breathe.

So a fish "decides" at some point it needs to breathe in the air. Of course it can't , so it dies.

So now I'm asked to believe that somehow a nearly brainless animal has figured out that in the future it will need lungs because that's the better more advanced way. Or does it's cells figure this out? 

So it has a baby that decides to take it a step farther and what ...... start growing a lung by growing the first lung cell?  Then it's kid grows another and so on and on.

Because we're taught it happens over thousands or even millions of years. So every subsequent generation "decides" to grow more lung cells, until one is actually born with lungs?

And this is an advanced theory that explains things in an intelligent manner? 

Or did I miss the more logical explanation on the Discovery Channel ?

Heck maybe it happened that way, but I have never seen any scientific explanation of evolution that made any sense. But I'll keep an open mind  

 

[SNESFAN]

The one thing about evolution is change, not specifically for the better. They arent necessarily working towards a bigger picture. The change from fish to frog was probably an animal that could breath oxygen from water and air and when the ability to breath water wasn't as beneficial it was breaded out in favor of a more efficient air only breathing lung. The initial change probably started off as a freak mutation that happened to work better for its survival than the frog fish with 5 legs or a arm wing. If those first generations of crappy air breathing frogs had offspring that were better at it they would have produced more than the ones that sucked at it. The shitty ones probably died off or went back to the water to reproduce and make more water breathers. The ones on land were safe from preditors... Well untill other animals were able to do the same thing so they could eat those land walkers. I hear we have more in common with a fish's dna than the parts we don't.

 

[hailrazer]

That's not evolution, that is more like adaptation.  Two different things.  

Adaptation takes a couple of generations and does not make new species, just different variations of the same species. , Evolution is supposed to be a process that takes thousands to millions of years and allows new species to come into existence.  

Adaptation is easily explainable and very scientific.  Evolution is not very scientific and requires giant leaps of faith IMO.  

And I'm not debating evolution vs creationism, just pointing out why I view Evolution as a very unscientific theory. And it's just my opinion and as such is about as worthless as any other  

 

[SNESFAN]

I'm authentically intrigued though. If through adaption to your environment you eventually (many generations/mutations) change every or most characteristics about you that you are no longer recognized as the creature your lineage is from and your dna over the generations has changed so much you are no longer able to breed back into your original species from which you branched off. Aren't you then a new species? The branches would have to have separated and continue to separate for many many generations for that to be possible though. If you ever mixed back with the origin you would be reversing that separation. But if you had no "re-base" with the origin you would through normal mutation become something completely different than the original group if you didn't intermingle. And take that thought process back to an era were life wasn't as plentiful and population might have been more scarce or spread out you could have very drastic changes from your origin (different kinds) just look at cultures and languages it follows the same pattern.

 

[hailrazer]

But is your dna "changed" 

A bird is still a bird, a fish is still a fish.  The species does not change.

I'd be more inclined to accept Evolution if man could use Dna manipulation to cross breed / or combine species.

If everything came from one single cell organism, it seems that cross breeding or combining species should be not only possible but a necessity.

IMO the most fundamental flaw of Evolution theory.

 

[vcoleiro1]

Looking at wiki, it seems to attribute everything discussed + as the building blocks of evolution.  

ie adaption, mutation, interbreeding and several other things. 

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

 

[SNESFAN]

I'm certain that will someday be possible. And about the dna branching, its observable in certain breeds within the same kind. Horse and donkey makes a stereil mule because those dna changes are similar enough to breed, but not enough to the offspring to be able to reproduce. There are several species of birds (don't have the specific breeds in front of me) that are just not able to breed back into another branch of the same family. This breed broke off into 2 branches then one of those branches broke off into 2 more branches. Both are able to breed with the origin branch but not with each other.

 

[hailrazer]

Someday pigs may fly out of my butt, but right now I choose to believe it's not possible   

I still think future generations will look back and laugh at us for a lot of the "Theories" we have.  Just like we look back and laugh at the so called enlightened minds of the past. 

Human fallacy, thinking we of the current generation are oh-so-intelligent , know almost everything, and are right, 

 

[SNESFAN]

We don't have all the answers, probably not even most of the answers. But we have more than we used to historically speaking even within my short lifetime and I can only hope that future generations will find out more. But I just can't seem to sway the irony in that each generation does think that they have figured things out that generations before them couldn't wrap their minds around, but at the same time get to a point looking forward that new ideas couldn't possibly be right even though they had disproven the false ideas from times before. Understanding and knowledge seems to grow exponentially, why is it so hard to let go of old ideas. (I'm guilty of this myself as I've noted at the beginning) it takes a lot of effort to look at things with an open mind.

 

[Klumpen]

The thing that always bothered me about evolution is the implausibility of it.

example:

A fish grows lungs then decides to walk out of the water and breathe.

So a fish "decides" at some point it needs to breathe in the air. Of course it can't , so it dies.

So now I'm asked to believe that somehow a nearly brainless animal has figured out that in the future it will need lungs because that's the better more advanced way. Or does it's cells figure this out?

Oh please... do you ignore all the steps in between out of purpose?

It's a very slow change.

Maybe the fish starts gathering some food near the shore some day, many generations later a bit further, many many generations later he gets amphibious characteristics to get on shore just long enough to gather another kind of food, later an gets to be a real amphibian and so on. There are organisms existent that happen to be in between the definitions, that's why biologists try to define species in a way, that you can gather a bit more than just one kind per term.

Even your DNA is changing a bit in your own life over some time because of your environment, so the changes do not even happen only between generations, although a lot more in semen/egg and the mothers womb of course. Imagine what big changes are possible in millions of years in countless generations. Fast breeding species evolve a lot faster than others of course.

Arguments of creationists often come down to: "I don't see the snail move, so it doesn't move at all, don't tell me that it does!"

If you rely on your perception of everything including speed/time/change, etc... you will miss a bloody lot of understanding.

Don't be so hasty. ^^

The definition of species is man made.

If you define "birds" more after their ability to fly and "fish" after their ability to swim,

a flying fish is more of a bird than a penguin and the penguin is rather a fish than a bird.

Nature does not care about those narrow minded human terms.

If the athmosphere becomes more toxic longterm, I am sure that whales and dolphins would develop their breathing system even further into a more "fish" (human term) like if they do not succeed in developing enough internal filter for that bad air and I am sure they don't care whether they are called mammals or fish because of their breeding methods.

If you are trying to counter with genetical compatibilities, you will get problems with the most common ones like cats and horses.

Try combining a lion with a house cat. A mule has two parents that do not even have the same number of chromosomes.

It's all chaos and it doesn't matter how humans try to order it in some drawers.

 

[klapse]

Of course, God could be out there and invisibly guiding evolution, while laughing at both Darwinists and Creationists.

 

[WizardStan]

A bird is still a bird, a fish is still a fish.  The species does not change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_speciesDoes not completely answer your questions but it does serve to demonstrate how minor specieation occurs. If this can happen over a few hundred generations why is it so hard to think that more extreme changes can't take place over thousands and millions?

So a fish "decides" at some point it needs to breathe in the air.

So every subsequent generation "decides" to grow more lung cells, until one is actually born with lungs?

There is no "decide" for evolution. That isn't how evolution works at all. It's a combination of natural selection and random mutation.The fish doesn't decide it needs to breath air, lungs appear as a product of the environment. There's a few hypotheses on how fish developed lungs, you should check them out. For example, imagine we have a lake full of fish and every summer this lake loses a lot of water, food and oxygen become scarce, and a lot of the fish die, but then winter comes and it fills back in and they repopulate so no problem. After thousands of generations of this something happens: one fish develops a clump of cells on the back of its throat, blood vessels slightly closer to the surface than others: it doesn't know that they're there, has no idea what they do, but these cells allow it to get some oxygen from the air when it rises to the surface, enough that it survives the year and procreates. And then it can do it again. And again. And even as it is getting older it is still getting just barely enough oxygen from the air to keep surviving, but because it did it was able to live 5 times as long and have 5 times as many children, 10% of which now also carry this mutation. While over half of the 90% "normal" children die out, all 10% of the mutated fish survive year after year to spread the mutation. Over time, these stronger "air" fish start to overtake the "normal" fish: further small changes occur on both sides, hundreds of generations until "oops", air fish and normal fish can no longer interbreed, their DNA is too different. But that's ok, the air fish are getting most of their oxygen from the air leaving plenty of oxygen in the water for the normal fish. And thousands of generations later that small pack of cells grows larger, fits more into the chest cavity, expands into a bladder, not through decision but because one fish happens to have this particular trait and it lets them live just a little bit longer, stronger, and have more children.

This is just a hypothesis, an example to demonstrate how easy it actually could be to develop lungs, I don't know exactly how it went down. I'm told biologists have a very good idea of the course of evolution so you'd have to take it up with them.

There are things still to learn about evolution, what prompted certain changes and things like that, those things may have many hypotheses and we may never know the answers, but not knowing all of the whys doesn't mean we don't know the what. Evolution is the what, it happens, it has been proven in labs and over time, fossils and modern creatures have been studied and tested, they know that it happens, they know how it happens, in most cases they know when it happened, but the why for many changes still requires investigation.

 

[WizardStan]

Of course, God could be out there and invisibly guiding evolution, while laughing at both Darwinists and Creationists.

This would mean that God were guiding evolution down a path which scientifically matched natural selection, probably little nudges here and there, dry up the water a little bit and trigger this mutation so they develop lungs, kill off most of the food supply so that they're forced to leave the water more, etc...If God exists and is guiding evolution and he's the type of being that actually cares about the growth of the human species then I'm pretty sure he'd be proud of the Darwinists for how much they've figured out of the process.

 

[hailrazer]

Conjecture and guessing.

Scientists have not "proven" that any of this has happened. it is a lot of theory and hypothesis.  And it has not been duplicated in real life lab tests.

I'm not saying it didn't or doesn't happen that way. I'm just saying it's laughable to claim it as fact. 

 

[WizardStan]

Wow. Ok then. Bill Nye had this argument and he's hundreds of times more qualified than I am and if you still don't get it then there's nothing I can possibly say, so I am backing way the hell out before my head implodes. Have fun.

 

[hailrazer]

It's called a discussion for me not an argument.  

An argument would imply I care, which I really don't. The most I care about it, is that I can't sleep so I need something to pass the time.

Evolution, creation, mutation, spontaneous adaptation......... In the end I'll be dead long before it matters.

 

[TrashyMG]

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/ubercool-mexican-walking-fish-nearing-extinction.html

 

[Granitehead]

If you are going to argue with historical arguments...

The church has been proven wrong many, many times. Science was just improved, from simple models to more accurate and complicated ones.

So you accept adaptation. Then I frankly don't get what problem you have understanding evolution. Evolution is just adaptation over a long period of time. Anything can happen given enough time.

Edit: I decided to answer long before actually doing it, so I missed some discussion in between.

Just a few other things:

-Small changes haven been documented (birds which develop bigger beaks because their favourite kind of small fish becomes rare, for example)

-It can be proven without a doubt that it's possible for evolution to happen

-there are fossils of many intermediary forms

Edit:

So, based on this, it's just the most plausible explanation.

Obviously it would be possible for an all mighty god to just create the Earth some 6000 years ago. But then it {the god} would have created stuff to hide it's work. It would have created fossil records and other evidence suggesting a way older Earth+universe.

For example plate tectonics and geomagnetic eversals. Radiation reaching the Earth (radiation reaching the Earth from very far away is basically a record of historical radiation). etc.