The Central Flaw of Evolution

The only way to disprove evolution as we understand it is to follow several dozen species over say a million years to see if any did evolve into a new species this can include humans, which we can't realistically do at this time, unless they invent a time machine and can go forward in time a million years in baby steps doing the needed examinations. Until then we need to be content it did happen, can work to narrow down to when and maybe how, and that evolutionary advancements say to our species from a common ancestor is a happy coincidence and we are lucky it did happen to our species on this planet. How is not likely to be easy to pin down if we ever will.

 

Your claim is totally false especially when you look at the canine family of so many breeds of dogs that allowed massive changes in appearance from a wolf to a teacup size dog. It doesn't matter that we classify them all under canine. What matters is the visual observation of the appearance of so many canines is that changes happened rapidly in this group.

 

I would say that this is the only way you can PROVE evolution. But actually, if you can define & demonstrate the mechanism that CAUSES the alleged changes, THEN you would have a valid theory. But the problem is that no mechanism has been observed. It is speculation.

Your 'baby steps' is the CENTRAL ASSUMPTION of evolution, & it flies in the face of observable, testable science. We do not observe incremental, cumulative steps of increased complexity, or adding of genomes, or created traits in living things. We OBSERVE the opposite. DNA proves the opposite. It is a hard wired blueprint that does NOT allow straying from the foundational structure. You can have a few cosmetic changes, but they do not accumulate, they merely vary. So it is merely faith & and wishful thinking that we should be 'content it did happen'. That is merely a religious opinion, with no basis in science.

It is easy to provide opinions, but the challenge of this thread is to answer this very basic flaw in this 'opinion'. It seems to be impossible, so how does it happen? We cannot observe it, or repeat it, so what other 'methods' do we have to determine the validity of this claim?

 

How we define and separate species is on those cosmetic changes you mentioned above.

 

What claim is false? Be specific, & prove by evidence & reason that this is true. Otherwise, all you have is prejudicial dismissal.

Your canine illustration only supports the points i have made, that of DECREASING variability as the child branches of the family become isolated. You can presume evolution when explaining canine diversity, but you do not demonstrate HOW this diversity came to pass, or why there have been lost traits, & decreasing diversity. The only thing we can scientifically deduce is that genetic variability is lost as the child branches of the tree extend. How can you assume 'created' traits, when none seem to be created at all? They are lost, not gained.

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yes, that is the 'looks like', subjective version of evolution. But now we have genetics, that provides SCIENTIFIC evidence. Cosmetic changes do not change the basic genetic structure of an organism. It goes much deeper than that.

 

Basically all species have the same genetic toolbox, it is the rearranging of the DNA recipe that produces all of those traits that we classify as "species' families" etc. If a individual gains a new trait, they also lost a trait. There is no individual on earth that can run the fastest, have the biggest brain, can fly, can live under water, etc in one life form. All species is limited to the energy required to survive and are not given any more then that is needed to require all of these traits.

 

C'mon, Lynn.. that is not true. It is impossible. We do not all draw from the same gene pool, from the same genetic toolbox, but a very specific set of options within our dna. It is FIXED, not open to anything. Now, there are millions of possibilities in the 'pool' of options, but that is it. That is why we do not randomly sprout wings, or add traits to our gene pool. They actually deplete, as we branch out in child isolation societies. They do not 'gain' new traits, unless you introduce them in via reproduction. If they cannot reproduce, you cannot get the traits. Traits go one way, they are depleted. They are not created.

If you isolate an organism, you can narrow the options to a very few traits. There might be a few bits of old information, but it is drowned by the number of possibilities that the repeated isolation 'selects'. That is how the dna works. It does not 'create' traits. Some get lost in the sheer number of possibilities, but if it is not introduced, or is dormant in a low odds possibility, it does not appear.

 

Not true, the beaks of birds on a Island have changed among the same specie of birds to so they can consume nutrients that were otherwise not able to before.

 

The genetic code is like a recipe, if you change some of the ingredients by adding less or more, you can get a different outcome. Bone material, tissue, hair, lungs, gills is all made of the same ingredients of the genetic code. How they are expressed is a different story. The history of canines and how multiple breeds came into being is a perfect example of massive changes to the recipe of canines in their genetic code.

 

If we no longer could control the temperature in our environment and had to revert back to living in nature, over time, we would grow bodily hair all over our bodies in colder environments.

 

That could just as well be a gene already existing being pronounced.

 

In spite of you disputing what is obviously true, your assertion about bird beaks is pure speculation. There might be some 'natural selection' going on with slight variations in bird beaks, but you cannot prove that any major differences in different bird species have any relationship of descendancy. This is nothing but the horizontal movement, based on inherent variability, not from allegedly newly created genes.

Lynn, that is crazy! DNA can't be tweaked like a recipe, it is a blueprint. You can have *some* possibilities of traits, but it does not extend to anything. The sky is not the limit. DNA makes strict rules about the limits.

It is more like a slot machine. But each time you pull the handle on 2 machines simultaneously, they produce a child slot machine. This child has the combined odds of the parents. If you continue this process, without adding new parent slot machines, the available traits within the children becomes depleted & certain traits become dominant. Hair, eyes, & other traits, both physical & mental become dominant, pushing the lessor used traits further back into the dna. Some of those parent traits are still there, but they are dormant, or relegated to obscurity because of the odds of them coming up again. THAT is how natural selection works. It is the same as breeding. You don't have an infinite choice of traits every time you reproduce. The 'selection' process slowly eliminates them from the gene pool.

Yes, that is the assertion, but it is not observed. You do not see humans having a correlation between body hair & climate. Eskimos & others in cold climates are very skimpy with the body hair, while some mediterranean people groups in warm climates are covered. Compare your typical sicilian with natives in the Andes. Body hair in humans is completely unrelated to environment, & not just because they can 'manipulate their environment'. It is a genetic variable, & it got isolated in these example people groups. This was not an environmentally caused trait, but merely something handed down from parent to child for generations.

It is like the pictures on the alleged sequence of human evolution.

For one thing, there are no 'intermediates' in the family tree. Missing links abound, & are pure speculation. You can IMAGINE such a scenario, but that is not science. You cannot tell from a fossil how much hair an organism had, so much 'artistic license' is taken in these kinds of drawings. they are cute pictures, for the provocative stimulation of philosophy, but they are not science.

Your statement is an assertion, with no scientific backing. This is merely your belief. You have no empirical evidence that this did happen, or can happen. Hair on humans is merely genetic variation. IF you breed a smooth tibetan with a hairy sicilian, you might get either or a blend in the child. Environmental issues do not have anything to do with the options within the dna. They are either there, to select from, or they are not. There is no mechanism for creating genetic options, especially that add genomes or chromosomes to the organism. That is merely assumed. It is the basic flaw of evolution, & the entire theory is based on a flawed assumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes. But we do not observe that. We cannot repeat it. It is a false conclusion, based on inaccurate assumptions. Science will correct this, eventually, but for now, we seem to be stuck with an ideologically based theory, with pseudo science & jargon substituting for empirical evidence.

 

As an aside, note this famous sequence:


The last few guys could be walking the street anywhere in a suit & would be merely variations of humans. The only implication of this graphic is that dark, hairy humans are lower on the evolutionary scale than light skinned, fair haired humans. Is this not a racist meme? Is this not what has been indoctrinated into our citizenry for generations, now, & is a clear factor in poor race relations? Instead of the Enlightenment values of Human Equality, where these kinds of things are mere cosmetic differences, the evolutionists have turned it into an indicator of advancement & superiority.. the very things the nazis, the eugenicists, & many other evolution based ideologies that have sprung up in the last 100 yrs or so have promoted. But this is making a false assumption, based only on visuals. the DNA in either the dark skinned or light skinned person is the same.. other than the cosmetic difference. It is not 'evolving' into a more advance, superior organism.

Humans are all related. There is the mother's mitochondrial gene that is transferred between mother & daughter, & which PROVES the descendancy (and brotherhood) of man. We all descended from the same mother, thousands of years ago. This proves that environmental evolution does not apply, at least with humans. Our differences are very slight, do to isolation by geography, & we can easily stir the variability pot back by intermarrying of the races. No reproductive isolation has taken place, among humans, & no new species have been formed. We are the same, for thousands of years, & for as long as we have been humans with this genetic sequence of 46 chromosomes. There is NO evidence or no mechanism that can demonstrate how an evolutionary step from fewer (or greater) chromosomes could possibly happen. It is scientifically impossible, yet that is the exact thing that is asserted to have happened.

 

I think too many people are invested ideologically in evolution. It *seems* to be the only alternative for all the 'God did it!' creationist view of origins. But if we approach it purely scientifically, without the added burden of trying to prop up an entire worldview, & instead critique it for its scientific validity, it would be much easier. IF evolution is proven to be impossible, which i think the evidence points to, this does not mean that the ONLY option is to become a rabid christian, singing in the choir & annoying your co-workers. There could be other options, that we just don't know of. I am not, nor have i promoted creationism in my evolution threads. I do not see any empirical scientific evidence that support it, either. All we have is the visible, observable universe. We can speculate about how & why, but making any definitive conclusions seems far fetched. Opinions on origins are just that: Opinions.

I would challenge my atheist friends to examine the evidence, & consider the arguments i have given based solely on the science, & not any fear of implications that you will have to abandon atheism if evolution is debunked. IMO, your atheism can remain intact, as the origin of the universe & the complexity of life remain mysterious unknowns. We know a lot about life & the universe, but we also have a lot of speculation. True science has to leave the mysterious as it is. It cannot guess to fill in the gaps of knowledge. There may yet be more scientific explanations. No one has to cling to a flawed assumption, but should be open minded in their quest for truth & reality.

It is a fine line between the philosophical part of our minds, & the empirical. Many people blend them completely, & see no distinction. What they 'feel' is absolute truth. But this is an important distinction for any pursuit of truth & the scientific method. We must be able to remove our philosophical beliefs from the worries about the implications of scientific discovery. Humans are not good at this. Those in authority try to keep their power structure intact, & sometimes scientific truth threatens their turf. Most people have a worldview that is a blend of their perceptions, their knowledge base (or what they believe to be credible facts), the groupthink factor of their peers, & their upbringing. Very few of these things are rooted in actual discovery BY the individual. They are learned, believed, indoctrinated, & absorbed. Very little of what we believe to be 'facts' have we proven empirically to ourselves. We extrapolate, surmise, & conclude, based on the assumptions & premises we believe to be true.

 

I am open minded enough to consider other possibilities to how life emerged but religion is not one of them.

 

I suppose you could call the definition of a species "arbitrary" but it is agreed upon. Sure there are weird ones that stump scientists, but for the most part they are able to classify based on if the two can not only breed, but produce fertile offspring. Ability to breed doesn't just refer to physiological compatibility, but also to proximity and breeding seasons. Two birds could be extremely similar in appearance and genome, maybe even physically able to reproduce. However let's say one's breeding season is in May, while the other is in November. Two different species because they cannot breed due to timing. Humans are all able to breed with one another so yes, we are just one species. Same with dogs.

When I have a little more time today I will go into my evolution course platform and pull some papers to post here that show adaptation. Adaptation is what scientists watch for as indications of evolution. The only reason we "cannot see" it is because it takes millions of years in most cases. Humans 1) haven't been alive long enough to personally observe it 2) individuals studying it will never live log enough to see it through. That however does not make it true. The earth being flat was a good example you gave. It was a theory based on observation and common sense until humans could actually look down upon the planet from above. That didn't make it untrue just because they couldn't see it.

 

It's called chromosome fusion.

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

 

The most prominent example Chromosome fusion can be found in the domestic horse, whose chromosome 5 is the result of the fusion of chromosomes 23 and 24 in Przewalski's horse, its immediate ancestor.
Horse Domestication and Conservation Genetics of Przewalski's Horse Inferred from Sex Chromosomal and Autosomal Sequences.
Equids of all sorts (donkeys, zebras, horses) have a number of examples of fusions, fissions, and inversions of chromosomes, remaining somewhat interfertile but often producing infertile offspring.
There are other examples observed in domesticated animals (cows, sheep) and in laboratory mice. Those happen to be the ones with the most closely observed chromosomes.

Plus, of course, the fruit fly, which has some really wild fusions between autosomes and allosomes.

 

things that are wrong:
1) Moths changing colour - terrible example on the education systems part because a moth can change colour as much as it likes and not become some other species.
2) the bible is just as true
3)its taught as a fact
solution:
1) in reality, Moths changing colour is an event of natural selection on the population. which in turn becomes evolution. a better example is say an organism in a population (i emphasise population) which has a characteristic such as slightly higher stance being more likely to breed or survive. (thats a very brief explanation). another helpful realisation is that species are simply in the old definition tow organisms that cannot breed together to create fertile offspring. the explanation is that population A and population B are separated by a genetic barrier that barrier divides a population from interbreeding with the other population. as the conditions on one side change natural selection dictates that certain organisms with favourable genes will pass on those genes (each organism is favourable to its environment either side of the generic barrier). after some time the organisms have been isolated for so long and undergone such lengths of micro-evolution that when the generic barrier is removed they are too generically unalike to breed with one another and are hence separate species at this point in time. this does take an extremely long time but we actually can observe stages of it in bacteria which reproduce extremely quickly
2) there is nothing empirical or factual about any religious ideology- although i respect your religion- if you read your religious text back to front you would probably leave it, i have.
3) its taught not as a fact but as a display of evidence which you have interoperated as fact because its so undeniable- bring up 'just theory' in a quantum mechanics debate or something more theoretical, because evolution is off that stage already in most societies

I am not a biologist, so im sure someone can explain better

 

Thank you for articulating what I was trying to say so well! All excellent points!

Faith and fact contradict each other. To require fact is to deny faith. Science on the other hand requires fact. "Believing" scientific theory doesn't make sense. One cannot have faith in or no faith in science.

 

Unless you have objective, scientific standards, you are left with visual, subjective ones, which can only be called 'arbitrary.' Fortunately, now we have genetic science to help us in classifications, which has a lot of presupposition of evolution built in. It is circular reasoning, for the most part, to 'assume' descendancy from organisms that 'look' similar, but have no other connection. DNA removes any speculation or flawed taxonomy. And, of course, the ability to breed is the central trait in concluding 'species'. But even where reproductive isolation has taken place, such as with the aforementioned cats & horse families, dna shows actual descendancy. And the human genes have been cleared up a lot.. evolutionists used to think humans evolved separately, from different parent species. Euros came through neanderthal, chinese came through Sinanthropus, & other such lineages. Now, we KNOW through DNA that all living humans are descended from a single human.. extrapolated to be from africa, & presumed to be under 100,000 yrs.. even less, by some models. The mitochondrial gene, which mothers pass down to their daughters, shows a direct descendancy in the human animal, so what was once accepted as common knowledge, has been refuted.. and this was in 1987 or so.

Here's an interesting point from an article on the mitochondrial gene & especially the dating assumptions:

IOW, the dna calculated ages conflict with the strata based ones. These are evolutionists, not wild eyed creationists thumping their bibles. Here is another interesting perception from Ann Gibbons from a paper in 1998.

Of course, this is immediately rejected as flawed, since they already 'know' the dates to be in the millions from the strata. But no one questions the assumptions in the strata, or has a problem with the conflicts, but continue with the ASSUMPTIONS of ancient date evolution & conflicting dating methods. Any outliers from the assumptions are dismissed.. not because of any science, but because they do not fit the philosophical assumptions of ancient dates.

I am making no argument against adaptation. That is plainly observable, repeatable, & is a proven concept by the scientific method. The issue at hand is CUMULATIVE changes, or major jumps in the genetic structure.. adding chromosomes, genome pairs, etc. That is merely assumed & extrapolated from assumptions, which have not been validated as even being possible, & which we have proven over & over to be IMPOSSIBLE.

I addressed this earlier in the thread. Merely asserting that this is what happened does not make it so. There is not any valid science behind the mechanism, only wishful thinking & conjecture.

Anyone who has attended public schools knows the early story in the evolutionary dogma about light & dark moths on trees in industrial england. This is heralded as 'Proof of Evolution!' in probably every text book or nature documentary where it appears. It has a dual purpose. It can claim proof of evolution, & it can take a shot at the evil industrialists, who darken our world with their machinations. Is this a flawed perception of reality? IMO, yes. But i am not the one making the claims that moth variation proves the ability of vertical changes in evolution. That is what the evolutionists claim, so you are refuting their claims, not mine.

This is an irrelevant deflection. I have made no reference to any religious texts.. unless you are referring to the 'bible' of evolution, 'The Origin of Species'.

Evolution IS taught as fact. Many people on this thread, already reassert that evolution is a proven fact, when it is not. It is ASSUMED to be so, or is the only plausible theory that we have that does not include a pesky god. That is a philosophical or religious reason to embrace a view, not a scientific one.

1. Yes, this is what is ASSERTED, but it has no scientific proof, or even possibility. Genetics screams, 'NO!! This cannot happen!'
2. Irrelevant. No religious text arguments are being made, here.
3. You confirm my point, as you yourself believe it to be a 'fact'. Why even bring this up?

 

You'll notice that Creationists don't discuss or defend THEIR theories....


just try to poke holes in Evolution science.


And I think we all know why.

 

Skepticism is the bread and butter of science and if a scientist came out today with new evidence that evolution was wrong, then that scientist would be famous overnight as well as on his way to winning a Nobel Prize. It amazes me anytime a group doesn't like something scientists are publishing, then it is automatically a conspiracy. Science is one of the most open, transparent institutions on the world. The World Wide Web was invented to help facilitate openness between scientists (though then the corporations got it a put a lid on that for the sake of profits). What few conspiracies there have been in science, have all been discovered by other scientists, not amateurs or governments with ideological biases, or corporations with profit motivation.

Evolution is not perfect but it is the best theory we have for the diversity observed in life. It has made predictions and answered questions. All of modern biology is based on it. You may not like it, but biologists are not going to suddenly drop it because a few laymen have a problem with it.

One more thing, science only cares about the how. The why it leaves for religion.

 

I really love this quote!

 

To be truthful, I've heard something similar to this somewhere before, I just don't remember where.