re: Darwin’s Doubt: the mathematical problem of evolution and DNA

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Go look at my last post before the one I just made. That was 10:10 AM CT this morning. I left until I made my next post a few minutes ago. I went about my day, enjoyed time at my model desk while watching a good football game, had lunch with my wife and daughter, basically enjoyed life.

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Cool. Good for you.

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Meanwhile, you’ve spent your day arguing on a message board because people have the gall to question what you consider your gospel. I compelled you to totally waste an entire day of your life. You’ll never get it back.

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Bro, you have10,000 more posts on this board than I do, and you joined three years after I did. I didn’t have the day off today. I’ve been drafting offering documents today, and will occasionally post when I take breaks since the phones have been slow.

Mo Jeaux

At this point in my life, I focus more on religion than science. I’m not here to argue for creationism though, just asking some questions from someone who grew up watching a lot of Discovery Channel.

I’ve always struggled with the idea that mutations are generally beneficial. Part of that is probably personal bias: having spent much of my life around people with special needs, it’s clear that genetic changes often cause harm. It’s hard to reconcile how a single extra chromosome can profoundly disrupt development with the claim that similar processes, over time, can build something as intricate as the human eye with all its nerves, muscles, and neural processing working together. I recognize that bias, but it’s where my intuition lands.

A couple questions:
I know the wolf -> poodle example is artificial, but it’s the only way we can actually observe such changes in a human lifetime. In the wild, it would take too long. If adaptation narrows genetic diversity, how does evolution move from a highly specialized population back to a generalist one? We can get a teacup poodle from a wolf, but the reverse seems nearly impossible without restoring lost variation. And it seems like the whole concept of macroevolution is diversity increases over time, yet it seems not to be that way from a casual observer.

In the fossil record, we often see species appear fully formed and then disappear, with few or no transitional forms. Could major biological changes sometimes happen in short bursts rather than gradually over millions of years, perhaps driven by mechanisms we don’t yet understand?

I’m not trying to argue for or against anything, just trying to understand how someone who truly believes in the theory answers these type of questions.

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Yes. Adaptation and selective breeding; not the evolution of new species.

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species don't have a real definition. there is no difference in micro and macro evolution.

species are just where humans arbitrarily decide something is different enough from something else to give it a new name.

We are the aliens

This is what happens when shallow, not all that smart people with absolutely zero expertise in the subject get their beliefs from YouTube videos.

There's massively more scientist than this guy that would dispute everything he said.

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current science

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current science

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Abstract

To build a just, equitable, and diverse academy, scientists and institutions must address systemic barriers that sex and gender minorities face. This Commentary summarizes (1) critical context informing the contemporary oppression of transgender people, (2) how this shapes extant research on sex and gender, and (3) actions to build an inclusive and rigorous academy for all.

LINK

I just don’t think people should just blindly trust ‘science’ after the ridiculousness that part of our society spewed over the last few years.

And it disappoints me as someone who is (largely) scientifically / logically oriented with an interest in several fields.

‘Trust the science’ has done damage to every part of that realm IMO. I think after what we all witnessed it is good to be skeptical.

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Yes. Adaptation and selective breeding; not the evolution of new species.

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The problem is to believe that things don't evolve you would have to believe that there were vastly many more species at some point in time and we're just constantly shrinking from a starting point number somewhere.