Intelligent design taught in schools

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

Why aren't some of those transitional forms still alive today? Since these transitional forms provided an advantage over the original species, and those original species somehow managed to survive to the present, why couldn't the transitional forms have done so? Instead, all we have are fully developed creatures. Also, why don't we see any mistaken transitional forms in the fossil record, ones with random mutations that didn't actually benefit the creature, but instead hurt it? Obviously they wouldn't be too differentiable from the originals, but they should still exist.

Imagine evolutionary paths as branching flowchart.

Different species branch off in order to adapt to new conditions/enviroments, so obviously those which do not (the old ones, lower on the chart) will die off.

Now you seem to be asking why the animals who grew fingers exist today and those who only grew stubs (the hypothetical transitional form) don't, so to speak. The answer should be obvious. (IT DIED)

You are also assuming that such transitional forms don't exist. They do exist, and there are fossil records of them. There also may be "mistaken" transitional forms that were classified as regular fossils, but they would obviously be rarer due to a bad case of the dying.

 

[Nicholas1024]

You missed the point. Although land animals supposedly evolved from fish, we still have plenty of fish in the sea. So if the older type (the fish) is still alive today, why couldn't the slightly more advanced type (fish with lungs and limited walking ability) have survived as well? It would obviously have an advantage over normal fish, and you can't tell me that every single one developed into a normal land animal.

As to the mistaken transitional forms... I've never heard of any of them. Please enlighten me then.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

have you ever heard of amphibians? yeah, me neither.

Various types of Fish -> Land compatible creatures who could adapt to the new environment
and
-> Fish more capable of living in their current environment

Not all fish evolved into land animals.




I just said that the bad evolutions DIE, making fossil traces of them infinitely rarer. Cmon now.

 

[rvkevin]

So if the older type (the fish) is still alive today, why couldn't the slightly more advanced type (fish with lungs and limited walking ability) have survived as well?

You mean like this? Not to mention that it is possible to have such a form be adaptive to land when there is no competing species, but subsequent species who have better "legs" will be able to out compete the previous species for resources on land making the original species maladaptive for land.

 

[Nicholas1024]

I just said that the bad evolutions DIE, making fossil traces of them infinitely rarer. Cmon now.

All I'm asking for is an example. Can't you provide one?

@rvkevin
Point taken. (I'm going to have to either take biology, or abandon this debate to someone who has. I just don't have the scientific knowledge I need.)

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

As far as your first source goes, it looks impressive at first glance, but after looking a little further into this "evidence", it's really not that convincing. Let me quote the first example it gives of a transition between species.

So basically, he found a new variant of a flower among his existing ones that couldn't interbreed with the ones he already had, with twice as many chromosomes. The differences are minute, and there's no "transitional form". It's completely possible it was just a previously unclassified flower he mistook for the O. lamarckiana, or perhaps one with a genetic defect of some sort. Hardly a change between species. The other examples I read were similarly unimpressive. I'm sure you'll accuse me of picking on the weakest example or say that it's really "transition between species", but if you do so then I'm putting the burden of proof on you: Quote me a more convincing example.

Umm. Sure, some of these aren't that convincing, but I would say that this one is pretty good:

5.3.1 Drosophila paulistorum
Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).

There you have a group of organisms that descended from one organism that couldn't interbreed with their original species. They have experienced reproductive isolation and thus is an example of speciation. They know this happened in the space of 5 years, pretty convincing if you ask me.

As far as your second source goes, I can't debate those because I'm not a biologist, I couldn't prove anything either way. (If you want a real argument there, go ahead and ask a Christian biologist. I just haven't read much on the subject. Sorry.)

Ironically, most Christian biologists would probably be supportive of evolution, but carry on.

However, I will say this: Why aren't some of those transitional forms still alive today? Since these transitional forms provided an advantage over the original species, and those original species somehow managed to survive to the present, why couldn't the transitional forms have done so? Instead, all we have are fully developed creatures.

Off that bat, every organism is a transitional form, because evolution is constantly occurring process. Transitional organisms are also fully developed organisms capable of functioning as a species. Second of all, it's actually unlikely that the original species would survive to the present as well, evolution would probably occur during that time, and change the species into something better adapted to it's environment.

The reason a number of these transitional forms don't exist today is that environments change, so that mutations that may have previously advantaged organisms may now disadvantage them. Furthermore, what rvkevin said.

Also, why don't we see any mistaken transitional forms in the fossil record, ones with random mutations that didn't actually benefit the creature, but instead hurt it? Obviously they wouldn't be too differentiable from the originals, but they should still exist.

Ah, see transitional forms are generally a long way through the process of evolution between one group of animals and another. This represents an accumulation of beneficial mutations. Bad mutations are unlikely to accumulate, because they disadvantage the organisms carrying them. This would mean that the organisms with the disadvantageous mutations would be pretty much indistinguishable from the normal organisms, aside from a slight variation.

Additionally, fossilisation is quite rare, as poor mutations disadvantage the organisms carrying them, there would be very few of them and consequently pretty much zero fossils.

Also, the problem between macro-microevolution is on your end. Tons of atheists here have just been assuming "Microevolution is true, therefore macroevolution is true". I'm pointing out the flaw in that argument. Micro evolution BY ITSELF does not imply macro evolution in any way shape or form. You would need additional evidence for that.

Transitional forms and observed instances of speciation. We have the additional evidence.

 

[Dre89]

Hold on, I thought transitional fossils were just those that displayed the evolution from one type of animal to another, like that reptile-bird thing (can't remember its name).

I know one of the arguments against evo is that if it were true, we'd have millions of those types of fossils, yet the ratio of "normal" fossils to transitional fossils apparently suggests otherwise.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Hold on, I thought transitional fossils were just those that displayed the evolution from one type of animal to another, like that reptile-bird thing (can't remember its name).

Yeah. They are. Like archaeopteryx. It just so happens that evolution is an ongoing process and that there will be different evolutionary forms in the future all organisms are transitional forms.

I know one of the arguments against evo is that if it were true, we'd have millions of those types of fossils, yet the ratio of "normal" fossils to transitional fossils apparently suggests otherwise.

Define "normal" fossils, and we have plenty of transitional fossils. The fact that they're there at all is evidence of evolution.

 

[Dre89]

When I say normal, I mean things that are entirely mammal or reptile, instead of a hybrid.

I think the argument is though that the transitional fossils would greatly outweigh the the normal fossils if evo were true.

 

[GwJ]

Most transitional fossils are entirely mammal or reptile. They don't need to be mutant freaks.

 

[rvkevin]

When I say normal, I mean things that are entirely mammal or reptile, instead of a hybrid.

I think the argument is though that the transitional fossils would greatly outweigh the the normal fossils if evo were true.

I would have to see the details of the argument, but at first glance, it doesn't sound right.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

When I say normal, I mean things that are entirely mammal or reptile, instead of a hybrid.

I think the argument is though that the transitional fossils would greatly outweigh the the normal fossils if evo were true.

I think I know what you mean, but the argument doesn't really make sense. The term hybrid doesn't really make any sense in this context, the fossils are not hybrids, they're species in their own right.

See, the thing is that, all fossils are transitional forms, just as all organism are transitional forms. We, at the moment are seeing a snapshot in time of the everchanging results of the evolutionary process. This is exactly the same for fossils. So, yeah, the number of transitional forms do greatly outweigh the number of "other" fossils, which is evidence for evolution.

The only caveat is that there an on "other fossils" or "normal fossils" as you describe them.

 

[Nicholas1024]

I think he means transitional forms as in showing the links between the species still alive today. Like half-man half-ape sort of stuff.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

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

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

I think he means transitional forms as in showing the links between the species still alive today. Like half-man half-ape sort of stuff.

Yeah, I understand, but I'm trying to say that all species are transitional forms. Why? Because evolution is an ongoing process. Any species at any time just represents a frame in the movie of life. There are frames before and after every frame (apart from the first and the last), so all frames are a point of transition between the frames before and the frames after.

If we could come back 10 million years in the future, and see our descendants, then we would realise that we, homo sapiens would be transitional forms, just like our ancestors.

 

[Dre89]

Now I'm confused what a transitional fossil is again.

I thought they were hybrids, otherwise I don't see why they would be considered strong evidence for evolution.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

He means that we are ALL technically "hybrids" since we are constantly evolving.

Transitional fossils are snapshots of an in-between phase between two arbitrarily chosen organisms. In the future, our fossils could be considered transitional fossils by an evolved form of us and a previous form.

The fact that there are in-between fossils strongly suggest that we not have changed/evolved, but are changing/evolving, which provides evidence for the Theory of Evolution.

 

[GwJ]

Not every evolving creatures has to completely switch it's type from reptile to mammal or whatevs.

 

[Dre89]

Yes I get that you're saying we're always in a transitional state, but we're not always in a transition between mammal and some other type of animal.

 

[GwJ]

Ok.

So what's the problem then?

 

[Ganonsburg]

There's all kinds of reasons not to trust random sources, and you said you wanted PROOF.

Historians really do debate what happened based on the various sources.

I want proof....for science class. Because in a science class, science is taught. Science, by definition, needs observable evidence, repeatable tests, etc. I'm not talking about history class.

Similarly, evolution is based on two theories that we can observe - namely natural selection and mutations. Evolution must follow as a consequence of the fact that natural selection has been occurring and organisms can change (due to mutation or other factors like genetic drift etc).

I believe Nicholas said this as well, but just because it is the result of two other theories doesn't mean that it is correct. We have not seen how those two (observable) theories behave over long periods of time. It's very possible that the changes simply do not result in a completely new species, but rather that the changes stay within the species. Think of it like an infinite series. If you say, "I'm going to keep adding numbers forever," one's initial thoughts are that "Oh, the sum will be uncountable/infinity." But if we have a geometric series with R<1, this is not the case (as with many, many other types of series, tis is just an example).

If you want a different example, we could be observing a ball fall and find that it continuously accelerates when dropped from 1ft from the ground. We could say, "Oh, it continuously accelerates, so if I were to drop this ball from the Empire State Building's top, it would accelerate all the way to the ground." But when we observe that happen, we actually see that it stops accelerating because of the force due to air resistance.

The point is, that outside the scope that we have observed something in, we can not say for certain what will happen. We can hypothesize on what we may find, and when we observe that the hypothesis is correct then we can confirm that the theory holds true within that range as well. But without those observations, we can not say for certain that the theory holds true beyond the circumstances we have seen it to be true in.

As for stuff being "important in our daily lives", you realize that very little that we learn in school is important to our daily lives? Sure, some people need to know how to do Math or how to write, but certainly not everyone is going to be an engineer or a writer. Sure, it's good to learn science to know how electronics work, but my TV is still going to work regardless of whether I know the physics behind it. Then, what about history, chemistry, literature, etc? Schools have long since moved away from teaching students only practical knowledge.

But this stuff is important in our daily lives. Whether or not we know it, this knowledge has a profound effect on our lives. Whether or not it is you who knows the knowledge, the knowledge is needed to make your TV work. We (as humans) could not have made TVs as we did when we did without knowing that electrons have charge and can be affected by electric fields.

But what does knowledge of the Big Bang allow us to do? What does knowledge of macroevolution allow us to do? That these have no application in the real world sets them apart from other scientific theories (along with their inability to be observed or repeated).

Evolution is demonstrably true. Take a fast-breeding life form, like fruit flies, split them into 2 groups, with 2 different environments, and eventually you will be able to distinguish one group from the other.

Again, this does not demonstrate macroevolution. This falls under the definition of microevolution.

Ganonsburg

I don't know how to respond to you, except to say that almost everything you just said is wrong. The Big Bang can be observed, it does impact our daily lives, it does have repeatable experimentation, etc... Where are you getting your information? Yes, I would have things "which may never be proven" be taught in science classrooms because that phrase describes EVERY scientific theory.

Wow, thanks for the great argument. Clearly telling my opponent that they are wrong is the best debate strategy.

But in all seriousness. Take me to a lab and show me the Big Bang. The very Big Bang that started everything. Not just any two particles ramming into each other. I'm talking about the exact Big Bang that started everything (supposedly). This event has not been observed. This is just common sense. If you asked me to repeat the breakfast I had yesterday, I could go eat the same cereal that I had (Weetabix) and sit in the same place with the same person (in the dorm with my GF), but I would not be repeating the exact breakfast that I had yesterday. I would simply be repeating the conditions.

Smashing particles into each other may/can have daily impact on our lives via the technology that will be built off of what we learn, but I'm asking how the specific Big Bang, if it is true, impacts this. How does knowing that it was the Big Bang, and not something else, bring forth new technology to better advance our society?

And no, you're taking my words out of context again. The other theories, such as gravity, photoelectric effect, magnetic flux, etc, can all be demonstrated easily. They are observable, repeatable, and so on, and fit the definition of science (if I need to link to the definition again I will). The BB and Macroevolution are not.

Not even the catholic pope denies the Big Bang anymore. That says something. It's a fact. It is a part of science. Intelligent design is not. It's a bunch of religious nonsense poorly disguised as science so that christians can teach their mythology in public schools. No thank you.

Appeal to Authority. Also, I'm not arguing for ID in schools.

 

[rvkevin]

A couple comments:
1. Your definition of science you are operating under is not the accepted legal definition of science, and the legal definition of science was determined by scientists. They would not accept your definition since it is too narrow.

2. Speciation has been observed, which is what you previously identified as macro-evolution. When this was pointed out, you said that it falls under micro-evolution. This is what is known as shifting the goal-posts. There is no non-arbitrary way of distinguishing between micro and macro evolution. This is why scientists don't make this distinction between different "kinds."

3. You are conflating the difference between theory and fact. When you say that gravity is observable, you are referring to the fact of gravity. To say that theory of gravity is observable would be equivalent to saying that I can see the sun warping the fabric of space, which is more than slightly different than just dropping an object. However, if you consider the theory of gravity to be a fact, then to not consider evolution to be a fact would be to engage in special pleading. This is because the theory of evolution is far more established than the theory of gravity.

4. The applications of research are not typically predictable. This is why scientists favor a supply sided model than a demand side model. Also, this would be irrelevant to whether it should be taught. For example, whether or not the information about the solar system leads to new products in the marketplace is irrelevant. It is information about how the solar system works and is therefore included in the field of cosmology. There is no application test about whether something is true or not.

 

[ballin4life]

I want proof....for science class. Because in a science class, science is taught. Science, by definition, needs observable evidence, repeatable tests, etc. I'm not talking about history class.

First of all, there is no such thing as proof in science. I'll elaborate on this later in this post.

According to your standards, we cannot make any statements about the past. We might as well hypothesize that there wasn't any gravity 2000 years ago. I mean, no one was alive to see it happen, so how do we know that there really was gravity 2000 years ago?

The analogy to evolution might not be obvious. I'll start by pointing out that we tend to assume that the universe is consistent. That is, we assume that there was gravity 200 years ago, because we observe that there is gravity today. Similarly, we assume that there was evolution in the past, because we have observed evolution in the present. But this is an assumption, and there is no proof behind it.

Additionally, one might argue: Well if there wasn't gravity 2000 years ago, then we never would have gotten here today (the universe would have changed so drastically that what we currently observe could not possibly happen unless there was gravity 2000 years ago). Similarly, one might argue: well if there wasn't evolution in the past, then we never would have gotten here today.

You can invent an alternate explanation to deny evolution in the past, but it is akin to denying gravity in the past, and then saying "well there wasn't any gravity 2000 years ago and the universe ripped apart, but God put the universe back together and then turned gravity back on".

I believe Nicholas said this as well, but just because it is the result of two other theories doesn't mean that it is correct. We have not seen how those two (observable) theories behave over long periods of time. It's very possible that the changes simply do not result in a completely new species, but rather that the changes stay within the species. Think of it like an infinite series. If you say, "I'm going to keep adding numbers forever," one's initial thoughts are that "Oh, the sum will be uncountable/infinity." But if we have a geometric series with R<1, this is not the case (as with many, many other types of series, tis is just an example).

If you want a different example, we could be observing a ball fall and find that it continuously accelerates when dropped from 1ft from the ground. We could say, "Oh, it continuously accelerates, so if I were to drop this ball from the Empire State Building's top, it would accelerate all the way to the ground." But when we observe that happen, we actually see that it stops accelerating because of the force due to air resistance.

It is possible that there were other factors besides natural selection and mutations/genetic drift at work (i.e. the equivalent of air resistance in your analogy). But we don't have any evidence for any of those. Furthermore, it is consistent to say that natural selection and mutations/genetic drift caused the changes in species (you might deny this, but that is a different argument, and one that I believe other people in this thread are explaining).

The point is, that outside the scope that we have observed something in, we can not say for certain what will happen. We can hypothesize on what we may find, and when we observe that the hypothesis is correct then we can confirm that the theory holds true within that range as well. But without those observations, we can not say for certain that the theory holds true beyond the circumstances we have seen it to be true in.

Following this would defeat the purpose of much of science. As I said, part of the usefulness of science is generalizing experimental results. You might argue for gravity by saying that "When I drop a pen, it falls. Therefore things fall when you drop them". But by your argument, I will just respond "Yes maybe that is true for that particular pen. But if I go drop a piano off of a building, it won't fall".

According to you, "we can not say for certain that the theory holds true beyond the circumstances we have seen it to be true in" (I would actually go farther and say we can't say the theory is true EVER - but I would still use the results as a guideline for what to expect from other events). My point is that we assume that science generalizes beyond our experimental results.

Sure, sometimes it is wrong to generalize, as in the case of a helium balloon (it doesn't fall, instead it rises). When we observe a case like this, we have to modify our theory to say "Things fall when you drop them unless they have a density less than the density of air". But without actual evidence to the contrary (an experiment showing that helium balloons don't fall), we do generalize the results of experiments.

But this stuff is important in our daily lives. Whether or not we know it, this knowledge has a profound effect on our lives. Whether or not it is you who knows the knowledge, the knowledge is needed to make your TV work. We (as humans) could not have made TVs as we did when we did without knowing that electrons have charge and can be affected by electric fields.

But what does knowledge of the Big Bang allow us to do? What does knowledge of macroevolution allow us to do? That these have no application in the real world sets them apart from other scientific theories (along with their inability to be observed or repeated).

No idea what your point is here. Most students don't need to know anything that they learn in school. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that there are practical applications of evolution (related to climate, selective breeding, ecosystems) and Big Bang theory (astronomy/cosmology).

Overall though, you can take a nihlist viewpoint and say that nothing matters. You can also say that TVs and the science behind TVs matter because people like TVs. But it is also true that people like science, therefore science can also be an end in itself.

 

[Dre89]

Ok seeing as transitional fossil meant something alot less specific than I thought, from now on I'll just refer to fossils that display two animal types (eg. fish and reptile) as "hybrid" fossils for clairty.

My point was that one argument against evolution is that if it were true, the number of hybrid fossils would greatly outweigh the number of "pure" fossils (eg. just mammal).

They kind of have a point. Seeing that it would have taken millions of years for mammals to come about after the first forms of life, it seems reasonable to expect that the majority of fossils would be hybrids, yet apparently they're not.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

I am not very well versed in paleontology, but I would assume it is because most early life existed in the ocean, which is notoriously difficult to dig into for fossils.

It is probably even impractical for us to perform the major excavations that we can on land.

There are probably many many fossils in the ocean that we haven't discovered because we lack the technology.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Ok seeing as transitional fossil meant something alot less specific than I thought, from now on I'll just refer to fossils that display two animal types (eg. fish and reptile) as "hybrid" fossils for clairty.

My point was that one argument against evolution is that if it were true, the number of hybrid fossils would greatly outweigh the number of "pure" fossils (eg. just mammal).

They kind of have a point. Seeing that it would have taken millions of years for mammals to come about after the first forms of life, it seems reasonable to expect that the majority of fossils would be hybrids, yet apparently they're not.

Umm... I don't really see your point. See I would have thought that, in most cases the time during the transition between a two different forms wouldn't take as long as the time different forms have existed.

 

[Dre89]

That sentence confused me. Not saying the sentence didn't make sense, just that I didn't understand it, whoever's fault that is.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

That sentence confused me. Not saying the sentence didn't make sense, just that I didn't understand it, whoever's fault that is.

It's probably my fault, I'll try again, and I'll use an example.

I thought that in most cases, the time taken for a transition to occur between 2 different forms would be a comparatively short amount of time compared to the amount of time that the different forms have existed.

Let's take the example of dinosaurs and birds. Now it probably took around 100 million years for dinosaurs to evolve into Archaeopteryx, which is considered by taxonomists to be the first bird. Archeaopteryx is 150 million years old and birds are still around today, so birds must have existed for more than 100 million years. The same is true for dinosaurs, which have existed for roughly 185 million years. So here we have both birds and dinosaurs existing for longer than the time it took for dinosaurs to evolve into birds.

In terms of an equation: Time for transition to occur < Time different forms existed.

 

[Dre89]

Hold on, I've seen what Archeaopteryx is supposed to look like, and it's half reptile half bird, so it would not bear the first traces of bird traits.

In fact, it still would have taken millions of years for the reptile with the first bird traits to get to the stage of Archeaopteryx.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Hold on, I've seen what Archeaopteryx is supposed to look like, and it's half reptile half bird, so it would not bear the first traces of bird traits.

In fact, it still would have taken millions of years for the reptile with the first bird traits to get to the stage of Archeaopteryx.

Okay, but that doesn't invalidate my argument in any way at all. And additionally, taxonomists would disagree with you there. Archaeopteryx, is for classification purposes, a bird.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

he means that it wasn't the first organism with bird-LIKE qualities

 

[Dre89]

The man with the hoes is correct.

 

[Mike]

Punctuated equilibrium is an explanation for why there are less transitional fossils than non-transitional ones. It stats that species will go through long periods of little change and short periods of rapid changes.

 

[GwJ]

I also don't know why you're EXPECTING fossils. Fossils are not a common thing; we're actually lucky we even have them. Granted, evolution would still have mounds of evidence supporting it.

The reason transitional fossils are less common than non-transitional fossils are fairly obvious if you're talking about external looks: There weren't as many of them living. If you've got an animal in the middle of a major transformation, I wouldn't expect it to be that good. There's a large chance the whole damn species could just die off because it's not efficient anymore.

Sigh, my point is that you shouldn't expect fossils.

 

[jaswa]

We should teach intelligent design in schools. There's big schools of science and philosophy behind it.

Sigh, my point is that you shouldn't expect tangible evidence.

 

[GwJ]

That's definitely not what I said, but carry on.

 

[Mike]

We should teach intelligent design in schools. There's big schools of science and philosophy behind it.

There is zero science behind ID. That is a fact. You cannot have science backing a nonscientific idea.

And saying ID has philosophical backing means it has no backing. Philosophy is just about the most useless method of figuring out how the universe works. You need science to do that.

Sigh, my point is that you shouldn't expect tangible evidence.

What do you mean by this? That ID doesn't require tangible evidence to be correct? If something cannot be observed, its existence should not be taken seriously.


By the way, all these ideas have been repeatedly brought up. Why do you insist on claiming that ID has even a shred of credibility behind it?

 

[GwJ]

Also Jazwa, fossils are evidence of evolution, but not the only evidence.

 

[Dre89]

So much philosophy hate here.

That's ok, I'll just let you all continue believing that science suppsoes no philosophical truths.

 

[Nicholas1024]

Also Jazwa, fossils are evidence of evolution, but not the only evidence.

Really? What other evidence do you supposedly have?

@Mike
Do some research on the big bang. Do you know how fragile the universe is? There's about 50 fundamental constants in the universe, and if any of them were altered even slightly, the universe as we know it couldn't exist. You saying that Intelligent design has no evidence behind it is baseless.

And what Jaswa was doing with the "tangible evidence" comment was showing the fallacy behind the "You shouldn't expect fossils" argument