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re: Evolution: Missing link found. Fish => Tetrapod
Posted on 1/14/14 at 12:26 pm to PrimeTime Money
Posted on 1/14/14 at 12:26 pm to PrimeTime Money
quote:
Other forms of evolution, like natural selection, makes perfect sense.
This.
Natural selection and survival of the fittest make perfect logical sense.
However, monkeys evolving into humans or fish suddenly sprouting legs and lungs to breath out of water seem way more far fetched and implausible.
If one says that evolution is simply the outcome of natural selection, then I can understand that.
However, "natural" physical mutations that just suddenly occur based on need, seem much harder to buy in to.
Why did the alleles and genes of a particular fish decide it needed the body as a hole to have legs and be able to breath out of water? How did it even know what it needed? Can alleles and genes have intelligent thought to even understand what it needs and why it needs it?
I could probably be safer if I didn't have to drive everywhere, why don't my gene's/alleles mutate to give me the ability to have wings and fly?
As far as the monkeys evolving into humans, why do we not see a middle ground today?
We can see a baby, watch it grow into a child, then into a young adult, then into a full grown adult. At any given time, I can see any stage of this growth process on our planet for most any species. Why are there ONLY 100% monkeys/chimps and ONLY 100% humans? Where's the in between? If evolution was/is occurring, shouldn't there be middle stages evident today?
This post was edited on 1/14/14 at 12:27 pm
9
Posted on 1/14/14 at 12:38 pm to dcrews
quote:
monkeys evolving into humans
Wow, you have an excellent grasp of the theory of evolution.
Posted on 1/14/14 at 1:13 pm to dcrews
quote:
However, "natural" physical mutations that just suddenly occur based on need, seem much harder to buy in to.
Why did the alleles and genes of a particular fish decide it needed the body as a hole to have legs and be able to breath out of water? How did it even know what it needed? Can alleles and genes have intelligent thought to even understand what it needs and why it needs it?
I don't pretend to fully understand but based on college courses in genetics, biology and botany what I remember is this. Genetic mutation is a natural occurrence; it happens often. Most mutations are not helpful and even harmful such as a genetic heart defect. However over millions of years and trillions of mutations rarely a naturally successful mutation coincides with an environmental change that allows said species to survive the change.
The classic and one of the most well documented examples is the English Peppered Moth LINK The misnomer is assigning logic or personification to the process. A species doesn't consciously evolve through it's own strategy, it's just a chance happenstance as a result of the favorable (lucky if you will) mutation that happened at just the right time. Most species, again a classic example was dinosaurs, were not so lucky and died out.
As such, I can imagine that over millions of years with drought conditions over a previously large swampy area/water world that a chance mutation allowed a species previously filtering oxygen from water to become able to breathe air directly. The water breathers died out due to drought conditions and could no longer reproduce obviously so the air breathers became the evolved species because they were able to survive and reproduce. It seems far fetched to be sure from our time perspective but a lot can happen over thousands even millions of years. Just think about the things we have discovered over the last 100 years.
Posted on 1/14/14 at 2:16 pm to dcrews
quote:
Why did the alleles and genes of a particular fish decide it needed the body as a hole to have legs and be able to breath out of water? How did it even know what it needed? Can alleles and genes have intelligent thought to even understand what it needs and why it needs it?
Of course not - all that genetic information had to be present in the "primogenitor" creature that spawned us all - and it had to be placed there by someone or something, period.
Heck, assuming we were the only animal species on Earth (completely impossible, I know, but for purposes of the discussion) - and all we had were pictures of all the other species, without genetic samples of the material, we couldn't approach cobbling together human genomes to produce the creatures - even if we were given all the necessary equipment by some unseen power.
Yet we're to believe that all these mutations that resulted in an evolutionary advantage, were not fatal and were inheritable (EXTREMELY rare in our admittedly limit scope of observation) changed a single organism into every living thing on Earth.
Even if I accepted that all of that is possible (F*ck it - I'll concede that it is possible), then you have to admit that all that information had to be present at the very beginning - at least in some accessible form - and that information must have come from either some "pre-Earth" donor lifeform or some intelligent creator/initiator.
The law of entropy suggests it did not happen that way - by the way, but at least we have observations of natural selection processes that work counter to entropy, at least as we understand it - albeit on a much smaller scale than proposed.
This post was edited on 1/14/14 at 2:18 pm
Posted on 1/14/14 at 4:19 pm to dcrews
quote:There is nothing "suddenly" about it, and none of it happens because of a need, either.
However, "natural" physical mutations that just suddenly occur based on need, seem much harder to buy in to.
quote:You are not understanding the process from the get-go. There is no "deciding", there are no "needs", and there is no particular path evolution takes. Evolution has no particular goal or end result, it is just the process by which organisms change and adapt.
Why did the alleles and genes of a particular fish decide it needed the body as a hole to have legs and be able to breath out of water? How did it even know what it needed? Can alleles and genes have intelligent thought to even understand what it needs and why it needs it?
quote:Hands are pretty fricking handy.
I could probably be safer if I didn't have to drive everywhere, why don't my gene's/alleles mutate to give me the ability to have wings and fly?
quote:Monkeys did not evolve into humans, monkeys and humans have a common ancestor. And we have found partial skeletons of several of these intermediate forms between the common ancestor and modern humans.
As far as the monkeys evolving into humans, why do we not see a middle ground today?
quote:Why lump all monkeys/chimps/etc into one category? If you do that, you have to lump humans into that, too, since we are all primates.
We can see a baby, watch it grow into a child, then into a young adult, then into a full grown adult. At any given time, I can see any stage of this growth process on our planet for most any species. Why are there ONLY 100% monkeys/chimps and ONLY 100% humans?
quote:Every species that we see today is an "in between" what it once was and what it will become. The evidence is everywhere.
Where's the in between? If evolution was/is occurring, shouldn't there be middle stages evident today?
Posted on 1/14/14 at 4:50 pm to dcrews
quote:
However, "natural" physical mutations that just suddenly occur based on need, seem much harder to buy in to.
This isn't evolution. Evolution is that there is natural variation that nature selects for that drives the phenotypes gradually to vastly different uses than their origins.
Posted on 1/14/14 at 7:49 pm to dcrews
quote:
As far as the monkeys evolving into humans, why do we not see a middle ground today?
Posted on 1/14/14 at 7:50 pm to dcrews
quote:
As far as the monkeys evolving into humans, why do we not see a middle ground today?
Monkeys did not evolve into humans. There was a common ancestor.
Posted on 1/14/14 at 7:50 pm to dcrews
quote:
However, monkeys evolving into humans
Posted on 1/14/14 at 7:56 pm to dcrews
quote:
However, monkeys evolving into humans or fish suddenly sprouting legs and lungs to breath out of water seem way more far fetched and implausible.
Why couldn't a mutation with stronger fins that allowed it go on land not live on? It seems like it could easily escape from predators that way, and then over time air sacs popped up which turn into lungs?
quote:
Why did the alleles and genes of a particular fish decide it needed the body as a hole to have legs and be able to breath out of water? How did it even know what it needed? Can alleles and genes have intelligent thought to even understand what it needs and why it needs it?
It knows it needs to survive and run from predators. Land back then would have been a great plan if they could just bask out there for 15 minutes when a predator has just chased after them, and then they could return to the water safely. Animals are smart enough to get a basic defense down from predators, or they're pretty swiftly eliminated.
quote:
I could probably be safer if I didn't have to drive everywhere, why don't my gene's/alleles mutate to give me the ability to have wings and fly?
Why do you need to fly? Sure it would be cool, but it wouldn't be evolutionarily advantageous to a human at all. Do you have any idea how much being able to fly would contradict some of our basic and human functions, like for instance, the hand?
quote:
As far as the monkeys evolving into humans, why do we not see a middle ground today?
What is the so-called "middle ground"? We're all middle ground animals. We've put birds on different islands where their previous food source isn't there, but we've seen that over the matter of a few decades, their beaks evolve to where they can change the way they eat food and their general diet.
quote:
We can see a baby, watch it grow into a child, then into a young adult, then into a full grown adult. At any given time, I can see any stage of this growth process on our planet for most any species. Why are there ONLY 100% monkeys/chimps and ONLY 100% humans? Where's the in between? If evolution was/is occurring, shouldn't there be middle stages evident today?
I would try to explain it to you further, but these concepts would go too far over your head.
This post was edited on 1/14/14 at 8:15 pm
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