Oakley_man_540,
You’ve gone over a lot of points in your argument, and I
feel I would like to step in and correct you in a few places where you have
mentioned evolution. I cannot spend the time and effort to teach you an entire
evolutionary biology class, so we’ll have to start with what you’ve brought up
and move from there.
First, cats and dogs. You seem to understand bits and pieces
about how recessive and dominant genes work. However, you seem to believe that DNA
is completely fixed and permanent. It is not. Recessive and dominant expression
of traits is in fact expressed by subtle changes and switching in DNA strands
of parents that combine in an embryo. Furthermore, DNA can be subtly changed by
errors that occur in DNA replication. These errors don’t happen very often, but
(and this is a common trend in evolution theory) because there are billions of
individual DNA strands in your body and that these divisions occur every second
of every day in your body, its inevitable a mutation will occur.
Next, you brought up a point about how no matter how much
switching on or off of these traits occur, you will not get a new species. To
this, you are correct. However, it is the random mutations that can instigate
new traits, and through these coupled with environmental factors, you can get
new species. Over 95% of your DNA is effectively ‘junk’, as in it codes for
nothing. Scientists believe that a lot of this is just leftover traits and
genes that encode them that are now useless to us, as they’ve mutated beyond
what we could use. All this extra DNA also functions as a ‘jumble box’, where a
stray mutation could create a new gene that codes for a new protein. If that protein
is somehow useful, like say, it gives more o2 to blood cells allowing you to
run faster and further, and is beneficial and helps extend your progeny, it
will likely be kept in the gene pool of the species and distributed as the
offspring generate. Species are created in essence by a lot of these mutations.
Its rare, true, and it takes time. That’s why we don’t see it in many lab experiments,
just due to the generation time. We’ve accomplished speciation in simple life
forms with short life spans however, such as bacteria and recently some algae.
Now, on to the coevolution of bacteria and termites. Lets
look at the ancient termite ancestor. Back before it was a termite, assuming
evolution is in play, it was a simple bug with billions of bacteria in its gut,
like most other bugs. Somewhere along the line, a population of these bugs
started living around trees, since more food was available there. Trees make
lignin, which is a starch that is very hard to digest. If the termites-to-be
started eating little bits of this occasionally when they scavenged, or when
food was scarce, the ancient bacteria strain it its stomach that specialized in
lignin digestion ended up with a lot of food it could digest. In these times,
the population of this bacteria would explode and beat out all the other
bacteria in the gut. Naturally, the bacteria that produced no good effects to
the termite-to-be wouldn’t provide an advantage to that individual bug and
increase its offspring’s chance to survive. But if a bacteria produced a
byproduct that was advantageous, say giving the bug more energy, that bug would
have a greater chance to survive and pass on its genes. Now, at some point,
these bugs started living in communities, which also spread the bacteria to all
the members. Eventually, the bugs began eating only wood, and thus, by competitive
exclusion, only the lignin producing bacteria could survive in their guts. By this time of course, the bacteria
themselves had been specialized to fit the environment of the gut the best. That
of course is just a possible scenario to why we see that today – there are many
possible ways to explain co-evolution based on other systems observed in the
natural world and by following observed trends in evolution.
“i know i am asking
questions that is because there is no answer for them... i am asking all the
evolutionists those questions and am looking for an answer/explanation for the
belief that you have....i am not trying to change what you believe but rather proove
that it is false....get back to me when you have an answer for my questions
about termites and the big bang theory”
Thank you for trying to invalidate my belief, I’m sure you don’t
want to change what I believe in, just prove that I’m completely ignorant and
wrong when it comes to my reasoning and understanding of my world.
Supernovae: Please go read an astronomy book. The universe
is an incredibly large place – this is fact, not theory. There are billions and
billions of stars we can see. And you’re right about supernovae, we haven’t seen
many. Again, I believe you have trouble grasping incredibly large numbers and
the odds at play here. For one, while there are trillions upon trillions of
stars in our universe (check out the Ultra Deep Field scan the Hubble did back
when for proof of this), we can only see a relative few from Earth. Second, we cannot
scan every corner of the sky at every moment – we’re sure to miss a lot of
them. Lastly, stars have lifespans of billions of years, and supernovae are
there and gone in a instant. The sky isn’t
full of them, and I hope I’ve shed some light on how rare an event us seeing
one really is… I don’t know why you brought this up either, it really doesn’t prove
the existence of a higher power either way.
Next comment:
[if !supportLists]1)
[endif]Birth defects are outward expressions of changes
in DNA. If they’re advantageous, they stick around are proliferate through a
population. Small toe loss could be evolution in action
[if !supportLists]2)
[endif]What the heck are you on about. The appendix was
once the caecum, a structure that’s in cows, rats and many other mammals. It is
a sac that holds bacteria that helps break down tough starches. Since humans
stopped eating grasses many millions of years ago, its slowly shrunk down to
make way for other organs. This too is natural selection – humans having a huge
caecum would devote energy to sustaining an organ that isn’t used, while humans
with it absent could devote energy towards other things, and would survive
stresses better. This is the way that structures can de-evolve, so keep it in
mind.
[if !supportLists]3)
[endif]Fire was probably a more recent innovation,
within the last 30,000 years, maybe older. Its not had enough time to effect us
if there was some sort of evolutionary change it instigated.
Continuing on:
[if !supportLists]1)
[endif]You cant watch a water boil. We have seen gas
clusters and nebulae which one day will make stars, but the time it takes for a
start to form is, well, longer than we as a species have existed. Shit takes a
while. Go ask any astronomer.
[if !supportLists]2)
[endif]Why are people more dominant than any other
species? Good question. Its fair to say however, that if say dolphins evolved
before us, might they be asking the same question? Intelligence is a risky endeavor
evolutionarily, and it might just be simple dumb luck that our species ran across
it and it somehow benefited us. Maybe we are special, eh?
Carbon dating is inconsistent…. Oh man. Unless the laws of
physics were DRASTICALLY different just a thousand years ago (and I’m fairly certain
the Earth wasn’t incredibly radioactive during the middle ages, you don’t see
tapestry’s of glowing knights…) Carbon dating is as close as we can get to
discovering the real time period something existed in. Yes, it is limited to
organics for the most part, but it’s a tried, tested and scientifically proven
method of correctly dating a substance. Creationists absolutely hate it simply
because it blows the biggest hole in their argument for a 6,000 year old earth.
And yes, Halo’s are a creationist creation that has no
scientific merit, or evidence supporting. Good try.
Next, you ask about rocks, monkeys and humans. The fact is,
scientists don’t know how life evolved.
We have many ideas of how it could
have occurred – for example, I’m sure you are familiar with the Miller-Urey
experiments, where amino acids were made from basic elements you would find on
a primordial earth. Recently, under the same conditions, RNA’s were found to
have been made as well. Self replication is quite a feat, but rocks do it.
Crystals for example. My favorite theory at this time is that some amino acid/protein
complex was helped to self replicate through some sort of crystalline silicate
structure. Scientists have made these self assembling and replicating
structures in Germany last year, and it puts many more questions out into the
field of early life.
You may point out here, yet again I might add, that we
cannot ‘make’ life in the lab as of yet. Its true, we cant. We also cannot
produce fusion reactions. But they power our sun. Just because something is out
of humanity’s knowledge doesn’t deny its existence. Based on countless
observations over hundreds of years and around the globe, scientists the world
over have found proof of speciation by evolution. It’s a theory as much as
gravity is a theory. You would be hard pressed to find any respectable
professor in biology to say otherwise.
I know this will not shift your faith in any way shape or
form. However, I hope it has given you answers to some of your questions. They
have been raised by proponents of creationism before, and have been answered by
the scientific community in some way. Scientists are not afraid of simply
saying ‘we don’t know’ when we truly do not have an answer. It does not mean
something is inexplicable or created by some higher being – it simple means
that given our current understanding, we cannot be sure of an answer. We’ll get
back to you on that. For me, I like to base my beliefs of what I see in the
world and the way in which it has been observed to work. Science works in the
same way. I’m sorry that advances in science are butting heads with your system
of belief, but that’s life, and its happened before. But heres my take on that
issue – why do we need a higher power? Humans have split the atom, gone to the
moon, unraveled our structure and delved deep into the cosmos on a quest for
knowledge. Why not just have faith in humanity? Arent we as a species special
and gifted and powerful enough?
