I never claimed it did.JaJa wrote:Unfalsifiable speculation doesn’t prove a theory is right.
JaJa wrote:Those near infinite pathways (if true) would still be open despite competition – hence near infinite possibilities – an almost endless number of crossroads. If one path is shut because of competition then another door will always be open due to near-infinite possibilities.
Let me first start by saying what I should have said a long time ago. I am not an evolutionary biologist, I just play one on internet fora. I may very likely misspeak or say something completely wrong, and if so I will happily eat crow.
The notion of punctuated equilibrium is what comes into play here. When there are openings in any niche, it is filled by whatever lifeform can adapt or take advantage the quickest. After this happens, the ecosphere remains fairly stable and evolution happens very slowly. For example, This is why predators and their traditional prey are so well adapted to each other with both offensive and defensive mechanisms. However, when a species is transplanted either by nature or by human accidentally, it can wreak havoc on the system since there may be no natural predator, or a particular species has no natural defense and is killed off quickly. Whenever there is a large disruption like a natural disaster or an extinction level event the balance is destroyed. Whether this is large or small, there is now an opening for rapid evolution to occur to fill the void.
Everything IS a transitional stage. The difficulty in assembling detailed evolutionary changes in a species is manifold. Fossilization requires very specific circumstances to occur, there are innumerable species we will never know existed because they lived in environments that were not conducive to fossilization. There is a fair amount of luck in finding fossils and extracting them is very time consuming. Many are currently inaccessable or we just don't have the resources to track them down.JaJa wrote:If these little critters have endured 3.5 billion years and there is zero evidence of them in transitional stages either now or then how can we even consider they came from something else.
What you are asking for is a movie from beginning to end. This does occur, but the spacing of the "move frames" cannot be controlled. I can show you a picture of me as a baby, at 10yrs, and an adult. I would be "evolving" from one state to the next, but you only get a few snapshots to prove it. This is about as good as it can get.
In regards to evolution, typically, the larger a population is (a fully breeding population, i.e. no isolated groups) the less likely any disruptive mutation is able to flow through the species and induce a change. Small populations have the greatest potential to change.JaJa wrote:We are not evolving into something else despite filling our niche to the point we might actually destroy ourselves - prokaryotes and eukaryotes multiply and die off the same as us. There is no evidence they evolve into something else to utilize another niche or space when theirs becomes full. There is also no evidence (to my knowledge) that any species on this planet is undergoing change and turning into something else - considering evolution is an ongoing process I would expect this.
Just so I know what I'm dealing with, I mentioned earlier how Lions and Tigers can breed to create a Liger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger. I would call this evidence of past macro evolution. Would you call this micro evolution? Or is it neither and just an interesting coincidence?
I'm not going to get into human consciousness, there is just way too much speculation and we don't have enough data to really scratch the surface here.JaJa wrote:In your above comment you are basically accrediting intelligence to what is supposed to be a machine-like process akin to a random number generator. A machine doesn’t care if a niche is filled because it is simply coughing out near-infinite combinations in a blind process – hence I expect to see the little critters or those things small enough to have super-fast metabolisms still churning out those random numbers or at least trying to.
webolife wrote:"You can't rewind the tape," Stephen Jay Gould was famous for saying. It's a nice dodge for the "how" question of evolution. Most evolutionists parrot this by saying something like, "As lucky as we are, we're here, so it must have happened." As if that is all that is needed to defend this mechanismless and evidenceless process.
When I said it "is a natural tendency", I was speaking more colloquially. The comment was in reference to humans being the "top of the evolutionary tree". Without getting too philosophical, it is almost universally espoused that humans are "special". This tendency is usually fed by theistic beliefs but not always. With the advent of modern technology and creature comforts its almost like people think of humans, oh I don't know the right wording, as some extrinsic class outside of animals that is looking down on the world. Life just IS, the Universe IS, there is no deeper meaning, objectively.Aristarchus wrote:I think you need to explain further on what you actually mean, "is a natural tendency." In addition, how did you derive what you stated in the first part of your sentence, and then conclude, "I don't think its warranted." It appears to be a non sequitur.
This ties into webolifes comment. There is no evasion by evolutionary biologists here. There is no preferred direction to evolution. There is no idealized or ultimate state that life is driving towards. In regards to mechanismless process, that is a baseless assertion. The mechanisms are well defined. Whether or not they are true for macro-evolution is something yet to be fully proven due to the long-term nature as proposed by evolution.
If electrostatics are another mechanism to induce rapid change, that may very well be the case and I have no problem accepting that if true. It seems that this has gotten very little attention by the mainstream and I'm curious as to why it is not further studied? The links published earlier describe some very basic experiments and results should be very easy to replicate, get some grad students on it. This would have monumental implications for biological engineering. If electrostatics can be proven to affect macro-evolution, that does not prove evolution wrong, it would just be added as a new mechanism to the theory. It's not like there's some conspiracy to keep it hidden from the world, it's likely due to the fact that in a "gravity only universe" electric phenomena are not usually considered outside of Technology.
I've only just heard about electrostatics inducing rapid evolution. I would like to study it a little more before commenting further. I've also read the TPOD's regarding gravity and dinosaurs and find them interesting, I have yet to draw any conclusions about that.JaJa wrote:Speaking of which - considering you are very familiar with electrostatics I would be very interested to hear your views on electrostatic fields and spontaneous or rapid evolution. I'm sure I read on a TPOD that gravity might have been different with the dinosaurs - indicating a change in earths electric environment. Also, it makes more sense to me to assume sudden and rapid changes in evolution as this would account for the extraordinary lack of transitional fossils - wouldn't you agree?
huh? Spontaneous generation is speculative. And of course life is interdependant, there are numerous symbiotic relationships and dependencies called the food chain. I don't know where you got this from. I was talking about the first appearance of life, there was NO inter-dependencies, just the first original ancestor.webolife wrote:Be sure not to mention spontaneous generation,... or the inescapable interdependence of organisms upon each other [ie. life as we know it].
I'm not interested in playing word games with you. Yes there are tremendous information jumps, that was kind of the point I was making about the two cell types being vastly different and suited for different types of evolutionary progress. The current theory states that the earth is 4.5B years old (I know this is probably garbage, I am sympathetic to the EU and understand this), but complex life forms are only about ~500M years old. The first 4B years was the proto-cell and the evolution to prokaryote and eukaryote. There was ample time for this formation to occur. It is not know which came first, if one came from the other or if they developed separately. My point was that if one did come from the other, we would could potentially reproduce this in the lab. This would be further compounded with difficulty due to the fact that no species alive today would be representative of the first pro/euk cells.webolife wrote:2. "very easy... to evolve from prokaryote to eukaryote." Never mind the tremendous information jump for genes to build any or all of the cell organelles and regulate their very specific functions. Never mind that the process of protein synthesis for even the simplest of life forms [even viruses, if they are considered] is irreducibly complex.
How do you think this occured? Lighting struck a bacteria and out popped an ameoba?
Phew, now I'm tired.