[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daphne64', 'M')y big question with evolution is the jump from homo erectus to Homo sapiens.

[Sixstrings]

Evidence of evolution in your own body (vestigial organs):

Appendix
Paranasal Sinuses
Vomeronasal Organ
Coccyx (AKA: The Tail Bone)
Extrinsic Ear Muscles
Toes (only big toe is necessary.. pinky toe is evolving away)
Neck Rib
Darwin’s Point (a point some people have on their ear)
Third Eyelid (vestigial)
Palmaris Muscle
Subclavius Muscle
Male Nipples
Wisdom Teeth
Erector Pili (ie. Goosebumps)
Body Hair
Thirteenth Rib
Male Uterus
Female Vas Deferens
http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/07/09/what-evolution-left-behind-on-humans/

It's just common sense.. look at the tail bone.. that's clearly a vestigial tail:

[SeaGypsy]

And on down the rabbit warren we all go.
Anti religionists are in their comfort zone debating evolution, I don't debate evolution.
They are not so comfortable debating the chicken/egg conundrum. A classic example of the frailty of human thought.
We think we are supreme, the world revolves around us, but we don't know where life came from.

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '
')They are not so comfortable debating the chicken/egg conundrum. A classic example of the frailty of human thought.

[SeaGypsy]

GODALMIGHTY Where did the 1st flagellating amoeba come from?
You clearly do not comprehend the depth of the conundrum.

[sparky]

.
the flagellates were already quite sophisticated ,
I suppose your point is
what made a soup of chemical into a self replicating device
give that to God , the rest is sheer mechanics

as for an all knowing , all powerful , all compassionate being ....?
that's a bit like squaring the circle , I can conceive of any two of the above
either
not omnipotent ..........can't do nothing , caught in it's own laws
not omniscient ...........can't see us little moldy things on a speck of dust
not compassionate.......enjoy seeing us squirm

the 13th century heretics called Cathars believed the world was ruled by the Devil
at least it made some kind of sense
for educational purpose , the northern French unleashed a crusade against them
famous words at the taking of the town of Beziers, from a knight
"how do we know which ones are heretics and which ones are good Christians ?"
the papal legate answers " kill them all , let God sort them out "

after a long bit of killing and raping , they tortured the rest and burned them at the stake
to better teach them the goodness of God .

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daphne64', '
')The population levels might have been about one million. So we went from homo erectus to homo sapiens with 4 billion individuals?

Human beings have about 3 billion base pairs of DNA. Supposedly we have 97% of them in common with chimps, so that's about 90 million base pairs difference. Lets say homo erectus shared about 99% of DNA in common with modern man, so that's still about 30 million base pairs difference.

If most random mutations are deleterious, how in world could we make that big a jump without some kind of "engineering" hand?

[vision-master]

The ancient Greeks warning!

Posted here once before.....


O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety. And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and of worship. And so religion, the greatest of all blessings, for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever shall be, that can be deemed a greater boon, will be threatened with destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it. They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that which be has made, ungrudgingly favouring man’s welfare, this combination and accumulation of all the manifold things that can call forth the veneration, praise, and love of the beholder.

Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven ; the pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good. As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you, all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.

And so the gods will depart from mankind, a grievous thing!, and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches by main force into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul. Then will the earth no longer stand unshaken, and the sea will bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, nor will the stars pursue their constant course in heaven; all voices of the gods will of necessity be silenced and dumb; the fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken in sullen stagnation. After this manner will old age come upon the world. Religion will be no more; all things will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear.

But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of his will, which is the good. He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the world from evil, now washing it away with water-floods, now burning it out with fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence. And thus he will bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Kosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing.

Such is the new birth of the Kosmos; it is a making again of all things good, a holy and awe-striking restoration of all nature; and it is wrought in the process of time by the eternal will of God. For Gods will has no beginning; it is ever the same, and as it now is, even so it has ever been, without beginning. For it is the very being of God to purpose good.

[Daphne64]

Remember, I am coming at this from an agnostic point of view.

I was hoping someone could come with a study or realistic theory of how so many base pairs could change in such a relatively small number of individual-generations.

Even if you reduce the number of base pairs needing to be changed by a factor of ten, or multiply estimates of population by ten, I still don't think we are anywhere near the number of individuals needed to make the historical amount of change sound plausible.

It's not like you can change a single base pair and have a different protein be activated that somehow increases the size of the brain without any bad side effects - I think the changes have to made to quite a few base pairs in tandem. Think about someone looking at a computer and saying, "I wonder if we solder a connection between (picks two spots at random) these two points?" That would be the equivalent of several coordinated base pair substitutions. A single base pair substitution would be more like hitting a motherboard with a hammer.

How often do you think the computer would get BETTER as a result of either procedure? I am guessing way less than one in a million times.

The kind of changes that make a computer better - shrinking the die and putting just as many connections on it, increasing the speed of the signals, increasing the density of the hard drive, putting multiple cores on a processor - those are the equivalent of THOUSANDS of coordinated base pair changes - if not millions.

And yet, by my estimates, we only had about 4 billion individuals to work with for ALL the changes between modern man and it's immediately prior ancestor. (I tried to look it up, but couldn't find a definitive answer - I think it's Homo Erectus though).

I realize that if you have God (which could include a massively more advanced creature subject to our own physical laws or someone outside those laws) you have the question of how an even more advanced being came into being, but still... as a person with a masters in math and one course in college genetics, the idea of random point mutations just doesn't work, and I don't think we have any other ideas presently.

It becomes more striking when you compare with the speed of some other big changes in life. It took several hundred million years for ANYTHING to evolve beyond blue-green algae (which is actually bacteria). It also took some ridiculous amount of time (I think over 100 million years) before any creatures developed jaws strong enough to handle land plants and turned into full time land creatures. Think about how many organisms participated in THOSE changes.

You know, the theory of evolution might just get better if you atheists put away your blind belief that evolution is proven because we are here, and start asking more questions.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'R')eal science is about looking at things with a completely open mind. The questions on the mind of scientists at the quantum point, are the same questions, whether or not the scientist believes in a supernatural element. Real religion is open to science, not afraid of it for fear of loss of supernaturality, but interested because it endlessly reveals the depth and beauty of the creation.

[Daphne64]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'E')vidence of evolution in your own body (vestigial organs):

Appendix
Paranasal Sinuses
Vomeronasal Organ
Coccyx (AKA: The Tail Bone)
Extrinsic Ear Muscles
Toes (only big toe is necessary.. pinky toe is evolving away)
Neck Rib
Darwin’s Point (a point some people have on their ear)
Third Eyelid (vestigial)
Palmaris Muscle
Subclavius Muscle
Male Nipples
Wisdom Teeth
Erector Pili (ie. Goosebumps)
Body Hair
Thirteenth Rib
Male Uterus
Female Vas Deferens
http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/07/09/what-evolution-left-behind-on-humans/

It's just common sense.. look at the tail bone.. that's clearly a vestigial tail:

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')eal science is about making falsifiable predictions that can be tested by experiment or observation.

[vision-master]

DNA = LSD lsol.......

H >> I
A >> B
L >> M

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daphne64', 'W')hy haven't women developed bigger hips to pop out kids easier? That would be a relatively simple change, with BIG evolutionary advantages ( 1 out of 5 women died in childbirth around 1700 and presumably before).

[Keith_McClary]

The ID had a great backbone design for critters whose weight was buoyantly suspended and who propelled themselves by waving their tail fins from side to side. It's a dumb design for critters that walk upright on land. But I suppose s/he has reasons that shall forever remain mysteries to us mere mortals.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', ' ')A sure and steady decrease in the percentage of Neanderthal blood, as evidenced by Otzi the Iceman's genome, is surely to blame.

Stress is the trigger of adaptation. If and when the climate goes haywire the retards will die off, but the strong will form small, isolated, inbred groups and survive.

[Deputy Barnes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', ' ')A sure and steady decrease in the percentage of Neanderthal blood, as evidenced by Otzi the Iceman's genome, is surely to blame.

Stress is the trigger of adaptation. If and when the climate goes haywire the retards will die off, but the strong will form small, isolated, inbred groups and survive.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', '
')Everything that makes us who we are is Neanderthal. We are forever indebted to them for everything that we have. There has been no positive evolution going on since the end of the last ice age, just constant genetic damage from disasterous behaviors leading to the existence of people like Ibon. Humanity today is truly an inferior piece of shit just piggybacking off of the accomplishments of the more worthy forbearers. .

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', 'T')he oldest remains with Neanderthal attributes are found in Greece at Petralona, and are 700,000 years old with no African affinities whatsoever. Neanderthals evolved out of Eurasian protohumans like homo georgicus, older than any African subhuman. They later evolved or mutated in to Upper Paleolithic man, and there is evidence of this continuity throughout the fossil record. Upper Paleolithic man, if not entirely Neanderthal, genetically speaking, surely was 75% Neanderthal, at the very least. Out of Africa is a religion just like global warming, only someone who doesn't investigate carefully would believe in it. Those and people who just lie to themselves and others, consciously or not.