Posted on 11/02/2005 10:54:52 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Ask any jury about evidence. We are well past the point of any informed, reasonable person having reasonable doubt about the evidence for evolution.
You surely aren't saying scientists always agree with the evidence, are you?
I don't know what that means. Scientists don't "agree" or "disagree" with evidence -- evidence is evidence, it is not an argument, it simply exists.
I know you can't. Some people are just born stupid. You should really take it up with your father, wherever he is.
And I enjoy imaging the veins popping out of your neck every time you reply to me.
Really, you flatter yourself.
Inherited disease is not one of Lamark's ideas, iirc, any more than congenital syphilis.
My point, for clarification, is that is more likely that exposure to a pathogen would be an environmental pressure that selected genetic mutations that favored survivability rather than a direct instigator of the genetic change itself.
Kinda just borrowing your Occam's Razor to split hairs, so to speak.
You are a little off regarding inherited diseases, however. Something such as congenital syphilis is not genetically inherited. Rather, it is a result of the child being directly infected in utero. Remove the pathogen and future progeny won't be infected. Other heritable maladies, such as sickle cell anemia, actually are a genetic predisposition that is passed on to future generations. These, however, are genetic defects, not pathogenic infections.
You flatter yourself if you think you are so brilliant. You aren't. And my dad died when I was five.
That's one of the funniest things I have ever read.
Compared to what? Next to you, a mound of manure would shine, and I'd like to think I'm at least a few IQ points ahead of manure.
And my dad died when I was five.
OK.
All scientists in the field, yes, because that's what 100% of the available evidence indicates. No evidence -- geological, historical, genetic, morphological, fossil, dendochronological (and I could go on with adjectives) suggests otherwise. Until you find some, you just look silly.
Looks like Abe Vigoda.
It gets quite comic at times. You are like one of the characters in a Smullyan logical puzzle who only entertains false beliefs. This matter is 100% scientific. Religious folks of all political persuasions attack evolution because they think (perhaps correctly though many Christians say not) that it attacks the basis of their faith. The characteristic the evolution nay-sayers tend to share is a total lack of interest in the evidence, and a pretence that they are interested in science.
Seconded, what made it so brilliant is that the first few questions in it were totally believable and probably exist on a creationist website somewhere. That is the problem with trying to parody creationism; half the time it is a parody of itself. No anti-evolution view is so ignorant and bigoted that it cannot be put forward in all seriousness.
Out of interest, how many diseases must the passengers on the ark have been carrying? Given that we are supposedly all descended from them, and that those who believe in the ark tend to deny large-scale evolution... ;)
I generally tend to steer clear of theological or philosophical musing on science threads, but as long as you brought it up to me....
Extending your implication that the flood did occur, and there was an ark, what makes you discount that the ancestors to today's diseases couldn't have been waterborne, or at least hitched rides on aquatic hosts?
Mark Twain had some fun comments on this, but bugs are often quite resistant and long lived, so it might not be necessary for all of Noah's family to be a walking petri dish.
Just 8000 years ago these animals were... frogs.
And now, after a mere 8000 years they have evolved into... frogs.
Amazing.
I guess this puts the final nail into the old creationist coffin, eh?
No, that happened decades ago.
This is just another molehill on the mountain of evidence that already supports the evolution of life on earth.
I won't add much to what Antonello said, other than you seem to be ignoring my statements that since the problem occurs with in vitro frogs, it's not an ecological factor, but rather a heritable one.
The developmental problems in the offspring between the northern and southern strains are based on genomic incompatibilities, not ecological factors. As Antonello said, a pathogen could easily be the driving force (in just a few generations, by your own words) to create genomic divergence.
Do you have reason to doubt this? Have you read the research article in enough depth to criticize their methodology and see evidence for your competing hypothesis?
I believe you are mistaking me for a creationist. The inconsistency is not mine, but creationists who have different standards for the fossil record and extant species.
My description of the fossil record meshes quite well with the tiny steps we see in extant species. Each of the fossils in a sequence are hundreds of thousands of years apart if not more. It is similar to viewing single frames of a movie and limiting the frames viewed to be thousands of frames apart.
Actually you have absolutely NO evidence that supports the "evolution of life" on earth. None. I've challenged you guys a thousand times on these threads and the stock answer is that the question is irrelevant.
The evidence that you point to is not evidence of the "evolution of life", but evidence of the evolutionary adaptability that was designed into the creation.
In this case you have a frog evolving over a period of 8000 years into a frog. Well, you multiply that change by 8000 and you've chewed up 64 million years and you still have a frog.
All you have shown is that evolutionary characteristics of survival have been designed into the creation. You have not provided a single shred of evidence for the "evolution of life", you have only provided evidence for the inherent design of the adaptability of the creation.
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