Evolution: PROVE IT!

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Whether or not you believe in evolution prior to the rise of mankind, you still have to believe that the body and mind will adapt to its surroundings in the future.

If we took a colony of people and put them on Mars, and checked back with them in say, a few millenia, they would have evolved to their surroundings. Evolution will occur, even if you don't believe it's happened in the past.

reply to post by BrandonTsia


Oh I firmly accept that it happens and that it has happened. I just wanted to open a thread to allow people to present evidence to convince those who don't accept it.

There will never be a way to prove if it ever existed. WHY? because they can now make animals in laboratorys that have any trait they desire it to have. And before they had these capabilities? We werent even thinking about evolution. So at no point in history,could anyone ever prove it existed. exspecially now.

see topic Dark Face of Darwinism if you want proof of the benefits of Darwins 'Theory of Evolution'

It has contributed so much to mankind but I would say that it is not the field of science that has benefited the most, but and entirely different field.

reply to post by whipsandchainsamerica


We've observed speciation in nature. You clearly didn't read any of the proofs of evolution in this thread and just gut-reacted to the title, bravo for ignorance.

Ok I will make a go at it given some of the things I know about the natural world.

Evolution claims that at one point all animal life lived in the oceans or fresh water bodies and at some time moved on to land.
So one would guess that there are species that demonstrate a half way point between aquatic and land bassed existence.
Well the good news is there are species in the animal kingdom that do demonstrate this for example
the Christmas Island crab spends most of its life on land in the rainforest's of Christmas Island.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/70f993eb7933.jpg[/atsimg]

However this species of crab has not completely severed it's ties to it's aquatic ancestors it must still return to the ocean
to spawn. The larvae of the crab must still undergo part of their development in an aquatic environment.




Next up is Amphibians like frogs, salamanders, and newts. Each of these species begin their life cycle in the water where they are dependent on gills to breath only latter do they develop legs and eventually lungs to breath
on the land.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fb1b44be91dd.jpg[/atsimg]

Amphibians would seem to be at a midpoint between fish that spend there entire life in water and reptiles which spend their entire life on land and are not dependent on water for their developmental life cycle.

However some amphibians do not let go of their gills and keep them their entire life.
Like this little fellow the Axolotl
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0230809ac68d.jpg[/atsimg]



Last example the snakehead.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4eb2baa25f53.jpeg[/atsimg]

This fish is an invasive species yet it has an evolutionary advantage that gives it an edge.
It has a primitive lung and can live out of water for up to 3 days and move on land!


Just some examples that I think make a strong case for evolution.
cheers

Another nice piece I found online is a great video from one of the world's foremost genetic biologists, Jerry Coyne.



It's lengthy, around an hour long. But if you're really interested in understanding evolution, it would be best if you actually watched it. If you think you have a proper objection to evolution, he's probably refuted it in this single hour of video.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Can you prove Creationism?

One of the best evidences there is no God is the fact of evolution. Not only does evolution explain perfectly how life works without any need at all for a supreme being, but it also completely contradicts the explanations given by "God" in the Bible, the Koran, and every other book written by man claiming to be written by God.

And if God were the mastermind behind evolution He wouldn't have explained how life works incorrectly. And since the books God writes are the best evidence man has made to prove God's existence, God therefore can be determined not to exist anywhere but in the minds of men.

Science is indeed the right way to acquire knowledge, and science again and again proves God wrong. This does not bode well for man's invention.

I believe that eliminating God from our minds would only have a positive effect on our morality, because life would be seen as even more valuable (since we only have one), and our differences could be more easily solved on the bases of evidence instead of pretending we have knowledge of God's true intentions then fighting to the death for them (that's what a true belief in God's Will entails).

The Bible's explanation of Evolution: "On the third day God produced all vegetation by kinds. There was evening and there was morning and that was the third day. On the fourth day God created light to separate the days. There was evening and there was morning and that was the fourth day. On the fifth day God created the living creatures according to their kinds. There was morning and there was evening and that was the fifth day. And on the sixth day God created man in His own image." Genesis 1:11-27

This contradicts the Theory Of Evolution in EVERY WAY, and you do not need to be a professional Theologian, nor a professional scientist to see that it fails miserably in explaining how life was formed on planet earth.

Science cannot "PROVE anything" as you so flippantly profess. Science deals with a body of facts systematically arranged to explain the operation of general laws. Science proves many things, and it has proved Evolution as fact. Just like the Theory of Gravity, it is called a theory still but everyone knows it's fact.

reply to post by ac3rr


While I do not object at all to you slating the bible, I do find it curious that you move from pointing out that it was written by men to it disproving God by being a false representation of events. Surely this merely proves that the men who wrote the old testament were, shall we say, liars?

reply to post by ac3rr


...You might want to do more than just read the title of the thread, friend. Madness is no creationist

reply to post by ac3rr


What Fox said. Also, look at my avatar, I'm not messing with you. I accept evolution, this thread is about providing the evidence so we have a quick reference whenever a creationist works up a stink.

Also, I don't think evolution is definitive proof against a deity, though it does create one less gap for some deities to hide in. It does refute creation story claims.

I don’t know there is a need to prove something that has so much evidence behind it.

A good example to show how it works is the business world.

An individual ‘A’ finds a niche where there is little to no competition. His success allows his company to grow and the numbers employed rise. The company can now dominate any competition there was and monopolise the resources it needs. The competition is starved of resources and fails (goes extinct) or finds another approach that gives it an advantage the big business lacks and either puts the original one out of business, or lives along side it.

Business ‘A’ is not superior it is just more successful. It can diversify find more opportunities (speciation) or it can specialise. Specialisation has the advantage of a focus but also has the disadvantage of being dependant on the narrow market environment it works in. Any change would put its survival at risk no matter how successful it was originally and may itself face extinction.

The subsidiaries on the other hand may find this change an advantage and where it struggled before now becomes successful. So ‘A’ does have another choice to survive. It could be absorbed by its close relations or disappear completely.

If absorbed it would mean that the skills that made it originally successful remain amongst the group where it may find new opportunities or be in place if the environment it trades in returns to something close to where it thrived before.

Pretty simplistic I know but sometimes describing something familiar helps understanding.

As a footnote, it does not describe where business man ‘A’ came from. Just like evolution does not describe how life started.

Originally posted by LordBucket
reply to post by hypocrites

 

the fact that whales have given up their "legs"
in exchange for fins should be an example

Rebuttal: you appear to be asserting that whales at one time had legs. Demonstrate this, please.

whales have hips man, and dont have anything that it would be useful for

And humans have tailbones. But it's a leap of logic to assume that just because organisms have "unused parts" that these are necessarily leftovers from previous forms.

We have tails in the womb along with gills.

Originally posted by CitizenNum287119327

Originally posted by Dantas
.....You can even see it today, kids are taller now on average than in the past....

so you are inferring that humans would appear to be evolving then into a taller race?

Or has a God created some bigger species of human.

It's more likely all the chemicals in our water and the hormones in milk. The average age children go into puberty is shrinking exponentially.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


In less than 5 minutes that video blew my mind.

reply to post by PhantomLimb


That could also be due to better nutrition and genetic drift. The general species-wide increase in height is almost certainly due to nutrition, as worldwide nutrition is increasing even in the most impoverished of nations. This is where I plug Project Peanut Butter, which you should all support as it's trying to help end childhood malnutrition.