Surprising Number Of Americans Still Don't Believe In Evolution

nixie_nox
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Actually, the hot hypothesis right now is that humans shed the fur coat in order to not carry fleas, lice parasites or other hitchhikers.

Though losing hair because It was hot and to sweat is the other one.

I was under the impression that having fur or long sleeves in the desert helps protect against the harmful UV rays, from my understanding and my extensive experience in the desert. I once heard another hypothesis is it had something to do with a predator prey relationship but I cannot recall the details off the top of my head.

I wanted to also note on the source of this thread:



That the older generations are the ones with the higher disbelief margin then those who are young. I note this as educational opportunities from my limited understanding were not as available to the older generations as say they are to those of 18-29 when this poll was conducted. If you look at the percentage of college grads put against the ones with HS or less it is a staggering difference, and I know quite a few people in that age group and a bit of them dropped off for metal foundry jobs and the military without graduating. To me this is telling of what is truly being said about this poll. It is my opinion.

Brotherman
That the older generations are the ones with the higher disbelief margin then those who are young. I note this as educational opportunities

Hi brotherman, good observation on the age bracket and educational level in the demographics, which I think support your explanation. You can look at other statistics of education versus time and find that the percentage of people obtaining various types of degrees has increased over time so that's also a factor in the age-education relationship. Also, you wisely didn't attempt any explanation of the gender disparity, though that's interesting as well, as the gap is greater than the margin of error.

Arbitrageur

Brotherman
That the older generations are the ones with the higher disbelief margin then those who are young. I note this as educational opportunities

Hi brotherman, good observation on the age bracket and educational level in the demographics, which I think support your explanation. You can look at other statistics of education versus time and find that the percentage of people obtaining various types of degrees has increased over time so that's also a factor in the age-education relationship. Also, you wisely didn't attempt any explanation of the gender disparity, though that's interesting as well, as the gap is greater than the margin of error.

I thought about the male female rates but decided it was of little importance proving the point didn't require all of that. I am having a hell of a time trying to derive meaning from this to make a comparison to that There's a reason I chose the infantry and not genetics I don't even know where to begin at comparing the information it is so frustrating!!

nixie_nox
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Actually, the hot hypothesis right now is that humans shed the fur coat in order to not carry fleas, lice parasites or other hitchhikers.

Though losing hair because It was hot and to sweat is the other one.

www.sciencedaily.com...

As an interesting side note, the above article discusses the evidence for when AMH first began to wear clothing based on lice adapting to live on clothing as opposed to body hair.

Arbitrageur

Brotherman
That the older generations are the ones with the higher disbelief margin then those who are young. I note this as educational opportunities

Hi brotherman, good observation on the age bracket and educational level in the demographics, which I think support your explanation. You can look at other statistics of education versus time and find that the percentage of people obtaining various types of degrees has increased over time so that's also a factor in the age-education relationship. Also, you wisely didn't attempt any explanation of the gender disparity, though that's interesting as well, as the gap is greater than the margin of error.

Why not? It is quite well known, especially in feminist territory, that men and women pursue different types of education however there are traces of a convergence trend emerging as the sciences are increasingly becoming the best way to secure a job.

Most Popular College Degrees by Gender
www.collegeatlas.org...

Just look at the disparities demonstrated between the genders.

Top three masters for women:
Business Administration and Management, Education, Social Work
Note that the higher tier sciences don't even make an appearance in the most popular master's programs.

men:
Business Administration and Management, Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering, Educational Leadership and Administration
Note that engineering makes several appearances further down the list.

Bachelor's for women:
Psychology, Business Administration and Management, Nursing (RN,ASN,BSN,MSN)

men:
Business Administration and Management, Finance, Biology/Biological Sciences

Difficult math is involved in all the physics and chemistry involved in the actual study of these topics so it is not surprising that such a result would been seen.

-FBB

reply to post by peter vlar


Peter U2U Sent, I am trying to start small I guess on the basics here of understanding this evidence, is there an easy way to explain CG Dinucleotide, Nucleotide Divergence, and codon frequency mode ( with CFM I get to a place that wants to explain codon frequency bias, is this different?) in regards to this section:

Rates of divergence
Nucleotide divergence rates were estimated using baseml with the REV model. Non-CpG rates were estimated from all sites that did not overlap a CG dinucleotide in either human or chimpanzee. KA and KS were estimated jointly for each orthologue using codeml with the F3x4 codon frequency model and no additional constraints, except for the comparison of divergent and polymorphic substitutions where KA/KS for both was estimated as (ΔA/NA)/(ΔS/NS), with NS/NA, the ratio of synonymous to non-synonymous sites, estimated as 0.36 from the orthologue alignments. Unless otherwise specified, KA/KS for a set of genes was calculated by summing the number of substitutions and the number of sites to obtain KA and KS for the concatenated set before taking the ratio. Hominid and murid pairwise rates were estimated independently from codons aligned across all four species. Human and chimpanzee lineage-specific KA and KS were estimated on an unrooted tree with both mouse and rat included. Lineage-specific rates were also estimated by parsimony, with essentially identical results (see Supplementary Information). KI was estimated from all interspersed repeats within 250 kb of the mid-point of each gene

This section is used in both the pro and the anti sides so i chose this to pull apart, simply put what is the significance??
For snippet
Codon Usage Bias
CpG site
Big ass Nucleotide Divergence math stuff??


When in the article in favor of creationism they refer to BLAST-N algorithm I am guessing this is it here and that is in reference to the Nucleotide divergence right???

...In 2011 Tomkins queried 40,000 chimpanzee genomic DNA sequences against four different versions of the human genome assembly using a wide variety of BLASTN algorithm parameters (Tomkins 2011c). For just the aligned regions, depending on the algorithm parameter combinations, an 86–89% DNA similarity was observed. However, less than 20% of the total chimp DNA sequence actually aligned under the most optimal algorithm conditions. The average length of the chimp query sequences in the Tomkins 2011 study were 740 bases. These results indicate that localized regions of human-chimp DNA similarity breaks down significantly at stretches of DNA 740 bases long or less on average. The question then arises as to what query sequence lengths would be more optimal for comparing the chimp genome against human.

For a recent review of the creationist literature on human-chimp DNA similarity, see Tomkins (2011c, pp. 234–236). For several recent reviews of the secular (evolutionary) literature on the subject of human-chimp DNA similarity, see Bergman and Tomkins (2012) and Tomkins and Bergman (2012)....

Pro Creationist take on your linked research

Brotherman
I thought about the male female rates but decided it was of little importance proving the point didn't require all of that. I am having a hell of a time trying to derive meaning from this to make a comparison to that There's a reason I chose the infantry and not genetics

I don't even know where to begin at comparing the information it is so frustrating!!

So you pick one of the most complicated topics ever in the history of human study and find it frustrating you don't understand it? Seems perfectly natural to me that only professional specialists in their fields can truly understand them in depth these days, and those are some involved reports. But I gleaned three pieces of information, I think. The Nature report says:

Of ~7.2 million SNPs mapped to the human genome in the current public database, we could assign the alleles as ancestral or derived in 80% of the cases according to which allele agrees with the chimpanzee genome sequence

while the answersingenesis report says:

To compare the two genomes, the first thing we must do is to line up the parts of each genome that are similar. When we do this alignment, we discover that only 2,400 million of the human genome’s 3,164.7 million “letters” align with the chimpanzee genome—that is, 76% of the human genome. Some scientists have argued that the 24% of the human genome that does not line up with the chimpanzee genome is useless “junk DNA”. However, it now seems that this DNA could contain over 600 protein-coding genes, and also code for functional RNA molecules.

The first two pieces of information are the 80% versus the 76%, which is a discrepancy but I don't consider it huge. They are about in the same ballpark to me.

The third piece of information is, the discrepancy with the often quoted statistic we hear that our genes are 98% the same as chimps genes, which difference is explained by the "junk DNA" reference, and while I'm not a geneticist I think it's at least partly true that "junk DNA" may not really be "junk".

In the end, whether the similarities are 98%, if all the junk dna was really junk, or some lower percentages like 76% or 80%, even the 76% still shows a vast majority of genetic materials in common between humans and chimps. Answersingenesis explains some additional manipulations to get it down to 70% but that's still way over 50%. I'm not sure what you were looking for specifically, but that's my take anyway.

However I will add that I've found some unreliable materials published on "answersingenesis" before, which even the site url implies some kind of religious bias, so I don't generally use that site as a reliable reference, but in this case since I'm not seeing any huge discrepancy with the Nature journal, I'm not complaining about the discrepancy between 76% and 80% as it could be related to some discrepancy in the analytical method.

I would add that the Nature articles are peer-reviewed, and if answersingenesis has a peer review process at all, I doubt it's as rigorous as that used by the journal "Nature".

reply to post by Arbitrageur


To be honest I am trying to find the core of the aspect of this ongoing debate (which predated Darwin if I'm not mistaken) to a degree that I can personally say I make a stance one way or the other. I have been reading an awful lot on this subject for the better portion of 2-3 weeks which of course is not relatively a long time with the amount of data available on the subject. That being said, the data on this subject is very confusing for someone not educated as a biologist or geneticist or evolutionary biologist, and it has been re-occuring to me that it is easy for one source to say yeah look its not evolution God did it and the Evolutionists say no those other guys are bonkers and for a reader like myself the only time I get to see simple numbers is when they are presented in a bias loaded article. It pisses me off so now I am trying to figure it out for myself, I won't go as far to say it is academic dishonesty or anything like this but I will say either camp wants to be heard keep it simple stupid not everyones a damned geneticist biologist Ph.D etc. Thank you for your insight it did help me get a better understanding.

reply to post by Brotherman


too funny!

SkepticOverlord
And so it appears a surprising number of ATS members refuse the science of evolution.


sad

what else do you believe in?

we can't get to mars but we figured out evolution?

reply to post by tsingtao


I'm not exactly sure I know what is funny

FriedBabelBroccoli

SkepticOverlord

FriedBabelBroccoli
If you have a list of other theories accepted as truth without any supporting laws I would be very grateful.

From a science standpoint, that's a silly question. A scientific theory is a group of one or more hypothesis that have been confirmed accurate or true via a repeatable series of tests and/or observations.

You don't expect not to fall off a building because gravity is "only a theory" do you?

LoL honestly this is the most lame response in response to this issue. There is a law which describes how fast I will fall with repeated results. You can describe it and predict how objects will act under its influence.

This is where the theory of evolution has many holes in it. The idea that it is proven without doubt is ridiculous until it is actually demonstrated. I have outlined many of the actual, physical aspects which have yet to be addressed in terms of physics or chemistry.

The cause of the denatured DNA/RNA which arises to the ability of continued replication of the mutation is severely lacking. The chemistry of which is also working to incorporate quantum theory which brings up several other issues as well as solving a few problems.

Right now these issues remain unresolved though they are the source from which your magical "survival of the fittest" model has yet to evolve out of.

There are hardly any models outlining what we think "fit" is or how much genetic variation actually differentiates one species from another.

Macro-evolution has not been confirmed through repeatable experiments, it is supported via modeling derived from fossil records. LoL it could turn out the scientific community was suffering from pareidolia.

Too bad eye-balling fossils has NOTHING to do with identifying the genetic mutations which would lead to such result.

It has become very clear that most people on this website have no clue about the scientific method or what a proper proof entails.

-FBB

I would still love a list of ANY other scientifically accepted theory which has no laws describing its action.

lol, gravity and other stuff have been working 100's of years before we named them.

Brotherman

Peter U2U Sent, I am trying to start small I guess on the basics here of understanding this evidence, is there an easy way to explain CG Dinucleotide, Nucleotide Divergence, and codon frequency mode ( with CFM I get to a place that wants to explain codon frequency bias, is this different?) in regards to this section:

its different but all related. A codon is a sequence of three adjacent nucleotides constituting the genetic code that determines the insertion of a specific amino acid in a polypeptide chain during protein synthesis or the signal to stop protein synthesis. Or in other words, not the entire genome but a small portion of it that contains enough genetic material to determine where amino acids are inserted and what it codes for.
The CG Dinucleotide or CpG and refers to regions of DNA where a cytosine nucleotide occurs next to a guanine nucleotide. Its a complicated way of saying that there is only one phosphate between the cytosine and guanine. Essentially this all refers to different arrangements of genetic sequences. In mammals, 70% to 80% of CpG cytosines are methylated. When cytosine is methylated it essentially shuts off that particular gene. It's all a part of epigenetics which unfortunately, is not my forte.

Rates of divergence
Nucleotide divergence rates were estimated using baseml with the REV model. Non-CpG rates were estimated from all sites that did not overlap a CG dinucleotide in either human or chimpanzee. KA and KS were estimated jointly for each orthologue using codeml with the F3x4 codon frequency model and no additional constraints, except for the comparison of divergent and polymorphic substitutions where KA/KS for both was estimated as (ΔA/NA)/(ΔS/NS), with NS/NA, the ratio of synonymous to non-synonymous sites, estimated as 0.36 from the orthologue alignments. Unless otherwise specified, KA/KS for a set of genes was calculated by summing the number of substitutions and the number of sites to obtain KA and KS for the concatenated set before taking the ratio. Hominid and murid pairwise rates were estimated independently from codons aligned across all four species. Human and chimpanzee lineage-specific KA and KS were estimated on an unrooted tree with both mouse and rat included. Lineage-specific rates were also estimated by parsimony, with essentially identical results (see Supplementary Information). KI was estimated from all interspersed repeats within 250 kb of the mid-point of each gene

When in the article in favor of creationism they refer to BLAST-N algorithm I am guessing this is it here and that is in reference to the Nucleotide divergence right???

the BLAST is 'Basic Local Alignment Search Tool'. It is an algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information, such as the amino-acid sequences of different proteins or the nucleotides of DNA sequences. A BLAST search enables a researcher to compare a query sequence with a library or database of sequences. Its a really complicated way of saying that they use math that's above a lot of peoples heads, mine included, to compare a sequence against a database of previously sequenced genomes. It ties into nucleotide divergence by comparing two organisms or species to determine how different their sequences are which in turn helps determine things like how long ago they diverged from one another. So, yes, it is a reference to divergence.

Please feel free to take me to task if I didn't answer this appropriately or you need something clarified further. I appreciate that you're trying to look at both sides for a more complete picture. It's rather commendable.

reply to post by peter vlar

its different but all related. A codon is a sequence of three adjacent nucleotides constituting the genetic code that determines the insertion of a specific amino acid in a polypeptide chain during protein synthesis or the signal to stop protein synthesis. Or in other words, not the entire genome but a small portion of it that contains enough genetic material to determine where amino acids are inserted and what it codes for.
The CG Dinucleotide or CpG and refers to regions of DNA where a cytosine nucleotide occurs next to a guanine nucleotide. Its a complicated way of saying that there is only one phosphate between the cytosine and guanine. Essentially this all refers to different arrangements of genetic sequences. In mammals, 70% to 80% of CpG cytosines are methylated. When cytosine is methylated it essentially shuts off that particular gene. It's all a part of epigenetics which unfortunately, is not my forte.

So essentially this is one of if not the prime component in when scientists open an egg and inject dye to trace an embryonic function inside a growing organism, and then try to shut them off or turn them on? I just got finished with a suggestion from the "other" thread from woodcarver into Jack Horners research with the dinochicken, while watching it I was like gtfo I think I was just reading about that. when you say methylated does that mean whatever is methylated is shut off whether it be cytosine or guanine etc etc or is this process only organic to that genetic component?

nixie_nox
reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli

 

Actually, the hot hypothesis right now is that humans shed the fur coat in order to not carry fleas, lice parasites or other hitchhikers.

Though losing hair because It was hot and to sweat is the other one.

sorry but that doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

gorilla's don't sweat? dogs?

head lice? scabies? flea's? have you owned a dog?
they will live in a rug or couch!

Brotherman
reply to post by tsingtao

 

I'm not exactly sure I know what is funny

your fail vid.

that kid and the car window. lol!

reply to post by Brotherman


the methylation, as far as I know, only affects cytosine, not guanine when shutting off the gene. its like taking the starter out of your car. everything else is there but its not going to function. I just saw the other thread with the Horner link. I'm going to check it out shortly.

why do some animals change and others don't?

why do some die off?

why do some get smaller and others bigger?

allegedly.

kind of odd it doesn't happen to everything.

BlueMoonJoe
Speaking of strawmen, I have never made this argument and never will.

Fantastic, see that you never do.

A few guesses here and there? Good grief, man.

Yes, we discover new things all the time and one of the things we have discovered is that the fossil record does not support DE. That kind of counts, ya know.

It would if what you said was true, except it DOES support evolution. The fossil record is what most of the theory is built on. There has been mountains of evidence presented in this very thread that proves you wrong. Instead of making baseless claims, back yourself up with some proof.

Well, sure, except for the universal LAW of gravity. That is the point FBB has been making and it is no small point.

You should probably learn the difference between the Theory of Gravity and the Law of Gravity. The Law of Gravity doesn't explain WHY an object pulls every other object in the universe towards it. It just gives the equation to calculate the force applied.

Is Gravity a Theory or a Law?
Gravitation