Rewinding evolution: Scientists alter chicken DNA to create embryo with 'alligator-like' snout

Daily Mail ^ | August 18, 2011 | Daily Mail Reporter

[Guardian Sebastian]

Oh, I stand corrected if the great Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould says it is fact!

I didn’t evolve from a monkey sir, you can believe it if you want. I’m not impressed.

[Guardian Sebastian]

Oh, I stand corrected if the great Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould says it is fact!

I didn’t evolve from a monkey sir, you can believe it if you want. I’m not impressed.

[BroJoeK]

Guardian Sebastian: "Oh, I stand corrected if the great Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould says it is fact!
I didn’t evolve from a monkey sir, you can believe it if you want. I’m not impressed."

There are many different quotes available, all to the same effect as Gould's.
One of those is the National Academy of Science quote above.
And I chose that quote from (the late) Gould because it is pithy, and because Gould is well known.
I could as easily have selected others, if you have a personal problem with Gould.

As I said above, the fact of evolution consists of two confirmed observations -- 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.

The theory of evolution projects these facts back to the beginnings of time on Earth, and proposes that all life descended from common ancestors.
This theory is confirmed in many, many ways including DNA analysis showing the similarities of genetic materials among all life forms, and most especially among species which have only recently separated -- various great apes, for example.

On the question of your personal evolution, sir, I agree you are certainly not evolved from a monkey.
It's obvious to any idiot that no evolution whatsoever has ever occurred in your family tree, and that you remain identical to your most ancient ancestors, all scientific evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

;-)

[headsonpikes]

I didn’t evolve from a monkey sir, you can believe it if you want. I’m not impressed.

Yes. Your tarsier backgound is obviously dominant, with possibly a smidgeon of orangutang. Press on, regardless.

[colorado tanker]

The possibilities are endless, like creating the Mutant Girls Squad.

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2765940/posts?page=10#10

[fabian]

More scientists playing God...never was macro evolution...that is easily proven and has been for years. Only the die hard darwinists stand by it.

[1010RD]

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Take a look here: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-simplest-organism-known.htm

That simplest living organism is incredibly complex. Was it simpler at some earlier period of earth’s history. I’m not bothered by the Theory of Evolution on a religious basis, but a scientific one.

How do you falsify the Theory of Evolution? What would definitively prove it wrong?

[BroJoeK]

101ORD: "That simplest living organism is incredibly complex."

The key word in your sentence above is "living".
For any organism to be scientifically classified as "living", it must necessarily be "incredibly complex."

But there are many chemical compounds and organic molecules which are not classified as "living" and are much simpler than living organisms, but which have some of the characteristics of living cells.

The question is whether any of these organic chemistries could have, over billions of years, evolved into organisms with enough characteristics of life for scientists today to classify they as "living"?

But, before we get too deep into the weeds here, it's important to note first that the Theory of Evolution itself says nothing about the origins of life from non-life.
Evolution itself only says that over time -- millions and billions of years -- life descends with modifications, and natural selection chooses which modifications are best fit for survival.
How life got started here in the first place, Evolution doesn't say -- though it's pretty easy for scientists to speculate that the first primitive organisms very likely evolved from even more primitive "non-life".

1010RD: "How do you falsify the Theory of Evolution? What would definitively prove it wrong?"

Remember, the two basics of evolution -- descent with modifications and natural selection -- are both confirmed observations, meaning in other words, they are facts.
They have been observed and confirmed so many different ways that you are simply not going to disprove them, short of some discovery no one now imagines.

As far as the grand theory -- what anti-evolutionists like to call "macro-evolution" -- it is in fact nothing more than the extension of "micro-evolution" over millions and billions of years.
Projecting "micro-evolution" back so far in time leads to the scientific hypothesis that all life may have evolved from common ancestors.

That hypothesis is confirmed, making it a theory, by the fossil record, by DNA analysis, and by inputs from virtually every other field of science.

So, to disprove it would require, first, a scientifically recognized mass of evidence which is not explained by evolution, and second, an alternate scientific hypothesis / theory which better explains all the data -- both data supporting evolution and that alleged to contradict it.

So far, despite some claims to the contrary, I've seen no evidence of either of the above.