"The origin of species"

a reply to: vjr1113

The idea that dinosaurs died off but chipmunks, lizards, whales and elephants did not actually is propaganda to make the dinosaurs sound like pussies.

The anti-dinosaur lobby is strong since the Jurassic Park franchise.

But seriously, another crucial point of fish become people that makes no #ing sense: big animals survive better than small ones, and even if all raptors left were varans or ghila monsters, those things would have had thrice the time to evolve right back into raptors, which are way more fit to survive.

This is a scam: there is no speciation, when the last dodo is gone, it's over, same with the fish and trees and birds, stop destroying everything and thinking that's winning, because it isn't.

But that's drifting a bit, to stay focused: speciation is bull#, and tn pages later all I hear is "we got dead weird looking birds therefore mindfart"

a reply to: GreenGunther

I believe animals do indeed have consciousness...
If they didn't we wouldn't see certain behaviors exhibited by them...
They are self aware... they show affection...they are aware of thier needs...
At least that's how it seems to me, I suppose others could argue that that is just imprinting...
That's not how I see it animals either like you or they don't...
You can change thier mind about you but not without convincing...

While I'm at it, I'll say:


Flying dinos sound awesome, and are not birds, like bats are not birds and fireflies are not birds.

Just try without the implanted certainty: what if cats actually don't lay rabbit eggs?

I'll have to attend real life a tiny moment and will check back in on you ladies and gentlemen probably late tomorrow night.

Peace out

originally posted by: windword
a reply to: wisvol

So, you don't believe that we evolved from a primordial soup, but, I'm assuming, that you believe a giant deity went to the primordial cupboard for the ingredients necessary to make "7 Bean Navy Stew" or "Chicken Noodle Soup"
....some kind of a highly stylized soup.

Can you prove this didn't happen? No you can't!

So until you get some hard facts it's better not to ridicule things, otherwise you just make yourself look like an idiot.

a reply to: GreenGunther

The least I can say is that you don’t seem to be a kind person to me. The least I expect is that you would like to be a kind person to me. So let’s forget this. Please.

I respect your meaning and maybe you’re right. But I don’t think so.
I’m very sure you are wrong about one aspect: I really did a lot of research in my life about consciousness. Besides, Wallace was a great anthropologist. So if you think you are smarter than him, let it be so.

Hoping you have the decency to be polite if you answer (if you don’t, please don’t answer):

Do animals know the difference between good and evil? (And yes I know some humans are far worse than animals but does that mean they don’t know that difference?)

About symbolic thinking I’m not going to discuss, neither about the apparent big bang in human consciousness (Chauvet) that even the greatest anthropologists today cannot explain …

About the so many signs of an extraterrestrial visit I won’t say much, only this. If you were a visitor of let’s say Scholz’s star system and you would visit earth (let’s say 60.000 years) ago, what would you do? To conquer earths’ gravity, oxygen, viruses, sun rays, etcetera … You would (if you are clever enough) transplant your consciousness in an earthlike being only to be able to survive on this planet.

I love animals … really. I’m sure they have the germs of consciousness. I’m sure they are aware of their environment. And I’m sure Darwin was right about animals because all animals have a superior feature that keeps them alive on this planet. Until the next catastrophe at least...

But life on earth with all its catastrophes never gave the germs of animal consciousness the chance to grow to the point of human consciousness. So I think human consciousness does not come from this planet. It’s implanted by a higher being (by aliens to make myself crystal clear).

a reply to: jamespond

Can you prove this didn't happen? No you can't!

LOL Prove what, that a supernatural chef went into the primordial cupboard for the ingredients to create the soup of life on earth? No I can't. Can you tell me, if there is/was a chef, who trained him/her? Who created him/her?

a reply to: windword

You obviously misunderstand the point I'm trying to make.

If I were to answer your question I'd be merely speculating on something I don't know anything about, and at the same time lowering myself to your level.

The point is, none of us know for sure how we got here or who or what is responsible for us being here. So to dismiss anything is foolish and shows a bit of naivety imo.

a reply to: jamespond

The point is, none of us know for sure how we got here or who or what is responsible for us being here.

I agree with you. No one knows the origin of the universe, or of life itself. I was just making the point that Intelligent Design has it's own set of problems.

The flood gates have opened. There are now 4 trolls posting in this thread. It would be nice if a single one of them understood evolution beyond straw mans but intellectual honesty is apparently non existent among the deniers.

Woke up, now the topic is twice as long and has become a troll convention.

Ok, let's all see if we can help the OP and the OP alone try to understand the problem they're having, as it hasn't changed for 9 pages now.

OP Accusation #1: The only way a species can become another species is after a single generation. Species "A" immediately and spontaneously begets Species "B"

This is simply not factual, and if you believe the Theory of Evolution states this, I would love to read any reputable scientific article that claims "Evolution Occurs This Way". If you can't find it, and if every source you see is stating that species evolve over a gradual period of time and diverge, then you can humbly assume that your initial concept of what the Theory of Evolution stated was a simply misrepresentation.

Now, how do we explain how this occurs? It's quite simple, there is no single defining moment in time where Species "A" becomes Species "B".


Lets say we have a single large population of Grasshoppers. This group of grasshoppers can't jump very far and are indigenous to an island. This island has many types of plants on it that the grasshoppers can eat, and there's also a few predators that keep the grasshopper population stable. Over time on the island, some of the grasshoppers have developed a gene which allows their hooked feet to become slightly more hooked, allowing them to climb better. There isn't any large trees on the island, but there are a few smaller species of trees that are climbable, but only the grasshoppers with this new gene develop the behavior that makes them climb trees in search of food and to escape predation.

One day a massive hurricane comes through and hits the island. A small population of the grasshoppers blown off the island and deposited on another island nearby. This island only has a single insectivorous predator, and it's terrestrial (lives on the ground). The Island has a number of edible plants, but there is also a single, very large tree species on the island that has edible fruit in it's canopy. Because not every single individual of the grasshopper's population developed the gene and behavior that incites them to climb, only a portion of the population that inhabits this new island find that climbing these large tree's is both a source of food, and consequently a way to escape the terrestrial, insectivore predators. So the population on the island that doesn't have this climbing gene are weeded out of the gene pool through predation over time.

Now, the original island where these grasshoppers came from still has the original population. They are still evolving, but they aren't doing so in leaps and bounds because for however long they've been on that island they've remained adapted to it's respective environment.

On the New Island we have this population that has entered a new environment, and many of it's individuals are thriving with a lack of predation and an easy access to food. They are evolving with the same mutation rate as the old island's grasshopper species, but more of the new genes that are showing up are being selected for because they increase the survivability of this population of grasshoppers on this new island, within this new environment.

1000's of generations pass for both the old and new islands respective grasshopper population, each maintaining or increasing mutations and adapting to their separate environments.

One day another large hurricane comes blowing in and deposits more of the original grasshopper population onto the new island. The grasshoppers whom were just deposited on the island were very similar to how they were 1000's of generations ago, yet the first population of grasshoppers that were deposited on the island that took to the trees have changed dramatically. They've changed so much that they cannot successfully reproduce with the newly deposited grasshoppers.

And that's a scenario that happens all the time. Genetic drift. Natural selection. Accumulative mutations. Not "species A" begets "species B"

Does that example clarify the concept a bit more?

Feel free to ask on anything else.

originally posted by: wisvol
a reply to: vjr1113

The idea that dinosaurs died off but chipmunks, lizards, whales and elephants did not actually is propaganda to make the dinosaurs sound like pussies.

The anti-dinosaur lobby is strong since the Jurassic Park franchise.

But seriously, another crucial point of fish become people that makes no #ing sense: big animals survive better than small ones, and even if all raptors left were varans or ghila monsters, those things would have had thrice the time to evolve right back into raptors, which are way more fit to survive.

This is a scam: there is no speciation, when the last dodo is gone, it's over, same with the fish and trees and birds, stop destroying everything and thinking that's winning, because it isn't.

But that's drifting a bit, to stay focused: speciation is bull#, and tn pages later all I hear is "we got dead weird looking birds therefore mindfart"

you dont understand why the dinosaurs died off and other animals did not. youre just saying they didnt and frankly, its only your opinion and i dont care about it.

mammals and reptiles and fish obviously survived because they are here now. and dinosaurs are not. are you saying that life started to begin again from scratch after the dinosaur extinction? because that sounds pretty absurd.

no one is saying a fish turned into a human, only you and it seems that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of natural selection, and evolution.

originally posted by: Barcs
The flood gates have opened. There are now 4 trolls posting in this thread.

To all those who love to play that troll card...

All it does is make your argument look even more foolish and does absolutely nothing for ones credibility.

These types of verbal attacks against anyone who doesn't agree with you are a sign of desperation and only serve to backfire on those who use them.

Labeling facts as trolling only confirms what Orwell said about hate speech.

At the risk of being accused of trolling, I'd like to suggest that everyone who spends their days on the digital playground of social media should henceforth cease invoking the facile, vacuous, imprecise, insipid term "trolling." The insinuation that the "troll" is insincere in her act of provocation — or that the act of provocation is motivated entirely by the desire for attention.

This is something that can almost never be demonstrated, and since it directs attention away from the provocation itself while impugning the inevitably concealed motives of the provocateur, it must invariably amount to an ad hominem attack. Accusing someone of trolling is more like calling him an a--hole than responding cleverly and insightfully to what he has to say.

My point is simply this: At its most basic level, trolling is what everyone is doing online every hour of every day, and what many others had done long before the internet era. And at its best, trolling is coterminous with thinking itself — which often involves and requires provocation as a goad to move the mind out of its well-worn grooves and easy pieties. So please, let's retire the term.

It's time to kill the word 'troll'

originally posted by: Murgatroid
To all those who love to play that troll card...

All it does is make your argument look even more foolish and does absolutely nothing for ones credibility.

Lets see... One side of the argument makes the same argument over and over again, doesn't provide evidence, and when the evidence is presented it's either misquoted or misunderstood to begin with.

The other side of the argument presents facts, backs up claims, gives clear examples and doesn't simply ignore the evidence when it's presented.

originally posted by: Murgatroid
My point is simply this: At its most basic level, trolling is what everyone is doing online every hour of every day, and what many others had done long before the internet era.

Uh, no. Perhaps that applies to your intentions here, however...

I came to this topic to provide information to questions and concerns that were made by an individual whom does not yet understand the concept they are questioning.

There were many remarks made in the OP that were simply not accurate, that doesn't make the OP an idiot, nor do I find his first post to be troll-like at all. He had a misunderstanding on a few points in a complicate topic, I was here to help deny ignorance, not reject reality and make fun of others.

This thread is basically a "Goddidit" thread now.

You want proof of evolution, then reject it because it doesn't fit with the story you got told.

Here's a question for anyone doubting evolution.

If it doesn't exist, how come there are fish that can love out of water and have lungs?
Climbing perch (Anabas testudineus)
Mudskippers (Oxudercinae)
Snakehead (Channidae)

They also have a lung or pair of lungs and don't get air the way conventional fish do.

a reply to: Murgatroid

Labeling facts as trolling only confirms what Orwell said about hate speech.

What facts? All I have seen is creation/intelligent design pseudoscience.

Not sure you have the same definition of fact as the others, your opinion is not fact.
Show something that can be tested and reproduced, then you might be able to toss around that word.

a reply to: Murgatroid

Would you like to prove any of these "facts" you speak of?

I've not once seen anyone on this thread give proof of a big beardy dude in the sky. I've only seen people put their fingers in their ears going "Goddidit Goddidit Goddidit".

originally posted by: Murgatroid
To all those who love to play that troll card...

All it does is make your argument look even more foolish and does absolutely nothing for ones credibility.

These types of verbal attacks against anyone who doesn't agree with you are a sign of desperation and only serve to backfire on those who use them.

Labeling facts as trolling only confirms what Orwell said about hate speech.

I'm not playing any troll card. It is self evident based on their posts in this thread. There are 2 types of people. One type can allow the conversation to progress by responding to the counterpoints and actually have a discussion about the mechanisms or scientific concepts related to the topic without straw mans. The other type ignores every counter point, every scientific research paper, and every correction made to their poor understanding of the topic and just repeats their claims add infinitum while doing nothing to improve their understanding.

I get that people are going to have religious devotion to their brand of faith and it causes some to deny science as a result. There's a difference between arguing against the science or presenting doubt / skepticism, and just regurgitating unsubstantiated hogwash that proves they do not even comprehend the basics of the topic and aren't willing to even learn about it.

They are trolling because they are only trying to draw attention to their worldview and are lying about many tenants of it and starring each others posts even when they include personal insults. It's not just creationists either, because there are plenty out there that can have a good valid conversation and express doubt without the constant fallacies or need to sound superior.

Murg, I know you have had your own personal experience that convinced you god exists, but your fight against evolution is illogical, much like the OP's. You copy and paste those same 4 articles over and over, but they are the same arguments that have been debunked for decades already that rely heavily on straw man definitions of evolution rather than the real thing. Why is it that you are intent that your strong faith in god makes evolution wrong? Even if you are right about god, why does it invalidate the science behind evolution in your eyes?

originally posted by: wisvol

DNA is a specific acid, named after its lack of oxyribose, contrasting it with RNA which was found shortly before.

Acids are not magic, they're liquids (at room temp & pressure, chem geeks) that happen to have ionized hydrogen. That's it, it's a chemical, not the blood of all things living or anything else than acid.

You are correct but in a very simple way. We can also say that the term "life" is just a human created concept and what we are really talking about is some basic elements, mainly good old carbon, rolled up into a bunch of complex chemical reactions too, but what does either statement really explain?

DNA is life's hereditary material plain and simple. It is the instructions for life/species development. A species has like instruction and so can reproduce that same pattern over and over. Different species can not reproduce since each instruction is different.

If a species has enough divergent in different groups due to large number of influences there reaches point that they will not be able to reproduce between each other, and so become separate species. We can see this with the horse and donkey. Two common life forms that are on the cusp of becoming two different species. Today we can still breed them but we get a mule that has no reproduction capabilities, give it a million years or more and we will most likely can not even do that as they continue to change to the point that their life instructions are too different.

So because acid is magic, if we go back 896400 million years bricks and vines were also the same species?
See, I'm glad you believe this mostly because I'm smiling right now but how can anyone say this is science, when science is about measuring experiments you design, and not just repeating stuff you didn't even make up yourself?

Actually I think you only need about 400 million years and not 900 billion years. Snowball earth pretty much knocked life back to very simple levels.

There is really only two paths here when we know earth at some point had no life on it at all. Life either evolved from simple chemical reactions to the complexity we see today, or life doesn't change and has always been as it is, and started as it is on day one.

So which one is it?

I'm all with you on "all life is one", I can feel connected to my own garden, not even just the plants but even the ground, but that doesn't mean they're my relatives, except in the sense that great uncle may be buried not too far and is part of it all, what I say is that no matter how long vines make slightly different vines and people make slightly different people, vines aren't people's offspring or parent in a sexual reproductive sense.

And neither are monkeys, even if they sometimes juggle. A lot of things look like other things without turning into them over long periods of time. Similarity does not imply common ancestry.

You think this way because you do not see that as we go in the past there was no monkeys, humans or grape vines, there was other life forms that were precursors to all the life today.

A good way to see whether I'm full of # of holding a tiny bit of the veil up for you now is this:

imagine the first man ever, exactly the number of centuries school told you. The very first primate from the species homo-inis.
Did he breed with another species?
Thing is breeding with monkeys doesn't work, that's how species are defined.
A species is the ensemble of individuals who can breed fertile offspring.

Or maybe the very first man was in fact an entire tribe of monkeys who slowly andante over time became an entire tribe of people, which is even more retarded because each of the umpteen required mutations only apply to one embryo at a time, and only one mutation makes the difference between fertility and infertility?

That is your problem, there was no "first". We can not look at the time line and say here is when the first human popped on the scene, or here is the first grape vine. If we go back to the donkey and horse when did the first donkey appear? When two like lifeforms change extremely slow over a long period of time (millions of years) from one another there reaches a point that the difference is so great they can no longer reproduce between each other and so are considered two separate species.

There is no magic in DNA/RNA, and there is no "first" either, there is only continuous change, and if we want to call that change species then so be it, just like we call that pile of carbon with complex chemical reaction life...lol

Ok, let's all see if we can help the OP and the OP alone try to understand the problem they're having, as it hasn't changed for 9 pages now.

OP Accusation #1: The only way a species can become another species is after a single generation. Species "A" immediately and spontaneously begets Species "B"

This is simply not factual, and if you believe the Theory of Evolution states this, I would love to read any reputable scientific article that claims "Evolution Occurs This Way". If you can't find it, and if every source you see is stating that species evolve over a gradual period of time and diverge, then you can humbly assume that your initial concept of what the Theory of Evolution stated was a simply misrepresentation.

Now, how do we explain how this occurs? It's quite simple, there is no single defining moment in time where Species "A" becomes Species "B".


Lets say we have a single large population of Grasshoppers. This group of grasshoppers can't jump very far and are indigenous to an island. This island has many types of plants on it that the grasshoppers can eat, and there's also a few predators that keep the grasshopper population stable. Over time on the island, some of the grasshoppers have developed a gene which allows their hooked feet to become slightly more hooked, allowing them to climb better. There isn't any large trees on the island, but there are a few smaller species of trees that are climbable, but only the grasshoppers with this new gene develop the behavior that makes them climb trees in search of food and to escape predation.

One day a massive hurricane comes through and hits the island. A small population of the grasshoppers blown off the island and deposited on another island nearby. This island only has a single insectivorous predator, and it's terrestrial (lives on the ground). The Island has a number of edible plants, but there is also a single, very large tree species on the island that has edible fruit in it's canopy. Because not every single individual of the grasshopper's population developed the gene and behavior that incites them to climb, only a portion of the population that inhabits this new island find that climbing these large tree's is both a source of food, and consequently a way to escape the terrestrial, insectivore predators. So the population on the island that doesn't have this climbing gene are weeded out of the gene pool through predation over time.

Now, the original island where these grasshoppers came from still has the original population. They are still evolving, but they aren't doing so in leaps and bounds because for however long they've been on that island they've remained adapted to it's respective environment.

On the New Island we have this population that has entered a new environment, and many of it's individuals are thriving with a lack of predation and an easy access to food. They are evolving with the same mutation rate as the old island's grasshopper species, but more of the new genes that are showing up are being selected for because they increase the survivability of this population of grasshoppers on this new island, within this new environment.

1000's of generations pass for both the old and new islands respective grasshopper population, each maintaining or increasing mutations and adapting to their separate environments.

One day another large hurricane comes blowing in and deposits more of the original grasshopper population onto the new island. The grasshoppers whom were just deposited on the island were very similar to how they were 1000's of generations ago, yet the first population of grasshoppers that were deposited on the island that took to the trees have changed dramatically. They've changed so much that they cannot successfully reproduce with the newly deposited grasshoppers.

And that's a scenario that happens all the time. Genetic drift. Natural selection. Accumulative mutations. Not "species A" begets "species B"

Does that example clarify the concept a bit more?

Feel free to ask on anything else.

originally posted by: GreenGunther

That is correct, my example is a little direct. There will the other members of the species that will still be able to interbreed with one that has a mutation that sets it apart from the vast majority of the species, and together they will breed their own little group of new species. The genetic deviations and mutations will happen over a long period of time, but the theory remains the same. I think great example of this is reptiles. Reptiles preceded birds, but it's clear that feathers came from reptilian scales.

I think one of the hardest concepts for people to understand or believe is that all life on earth is related. A few posters here are quick to suggest it is crazy talk to think that trees and humans had a common precursor in the past. What they can not comprehend is as we go back far enough there were no plants or animals, no "firsts" either, just simple RNA, and there were also precursors to RNA. If I was religious I would put intelligent design in before RNA since religion deals with the "Why" not so much the "How" This is why evolution and religion arguments are stupid because evolution does not try to explain the "why" and religion does not try and explain the "how" so what is the point in ever trying to fine a connection between the two.

As you posted above that process can be either intelligent design or just random processes of our universe. I hope the one thing everyone in this topic can all agree on, as you point out above, is that nothing is constant, and change continually happens.