Evolution is not a fact, it's a scientific theory. Seriously go and ask a scientist if they can prove evolution or any theory for that matter. They will just laugh at you because it's not possible to prove it true.
You are aware that I lifted the concept of "evolution is both a fact and a theory" straight from Stephen J. Gould, who just happens to be
one of the greatest and most widely-respected evolutionary biologists of the past century, right?
Are you seriously saying that you know more about evolution than one of the greatest evolutionary biologists ever?
The fact is that we have empirically observed evolution. We *can* prove it happens because we see it happen, precisely the same way I can prove there's a red ball in a box - direct observation.
This is the problem with the non-scientific community, they don't even understand what a scientific theory is. Anything in science that is a theory, requires faith to believe in because it cannot be proven true. Tomorrow a small scientific finding can be found that destroys the core of a theory.
So, how many scientific conferences have *you* presented at? How many scientific papers have you published? In top-tier journals?
Right, zero. Don't pretend to tell me I don't understand science, kid.
For your information, that theories are tentative does NOT mean 'faith' is involved. Faith would be if we believed a given theory was 100% correct, but ALL scientists acknowledge that theories are tentative and vulnerable to future alteration.
What you fail to realize is that any new theory must not only explain the data that invalidated the old one, but all of the data which supported the old one too. This has happened twice to evolution, and is happening right now. First, evolution had to be reformulated in light of the discovery of Mendel's laws. Then non-selective methods had to be incorporated as a result of discoveries in molecular biology. Now developmental biology is being incorporated into evolution through the new field of evolutionary developmental biology, aka 'evo-devo'.
So basically, anything which altered our understanding of evolution would simply result in "evolution 4.0". Evolution can no more be undermined by new data than gravity can be - regardless of what new information shows, the empirical phenomenon cannot be disputed.
There are many Biologists who are Christian who don't believe in all the aspects of evolution. In fact there's a pretty high prestigious U.S. Lab that has fired a Biologist because one day him and his boss were talking in the office and he told his boss he doesn't believe in evolution, but in God. Little after that he was harassed and then fired, because of his beliefs. He was an expert in what he was hired to do. His faith did not hinder his work performance. He is now currently suing his workplace for this.
Wrong - there are precisely ZERO working biologists who do not believe in evolution. It's the single, unifying theory underlying all of biology.
And that moron was fired because they joined an EVOLUTION lab and then refused to do experiments. That's like me expecting not to be fired if I take a janitorial position and then state my religion forbids me to clean.
I'm sure you'll also bring up the creationist who lost a tenure bid recently, and I'll head that off now. He lost tenure for the same reason most people do - inability to win extramural grants and a poor record of publications.
Actually I just finished another semester of Biology this last semester and received a B-, at a college level.
What a coincidence, I'm up for an award for
teaching biology this year.
Theories cannot be proven, and TRUE scientists will not tell you that they can be proven. They will tell you that a theory is the best scientific explanation for a phenomena, based upon what can be observed and tested. It is not TRUTH, it is not FACT, it's a THEORY. Theories can and some have been disproved. Either way it takes faith to believe in them, just as it takes faith for me to believe in God.
Once again, nobody has 'faith' in theories, at least not by the definition of 'faith' that applies to religious faith. And you don't need 'faith' in observations/data.
To analogize to my work, I believe my theories on arboreal locomotion are accurate, but I can PROVE that in trial #2 on the 2.2" peg-perch snake #3 moved a 0.45 SVL/sec. The former is theory, the latter is data.
Evolution is like that - there's theory, yes, but there are
actual observations of evolution happening, including one species evolving from another. These are
proven because they are observations of a real-world occurence, not theories about the underlying mechanisms.
Truly I want someone to show me how different micro and macro evolution are.
To be truly fair, there *are* some arguments for subtle differences, mostly due to competition between non-interbreeding groups (different species/genera/families competing for the same niche), but on the whole, you're correct: it's just a difference in timescales.
Apparently the Eucalyptus leaves (the only food source of a Koala) contain cyanide and sedatives. The person there was trying to explain to me that the Koalas evolved to be able to eat the Eucalyptus without dying. Lets think about this for a second. If the original Koala could not eat Eucalyptus without dying, then how did it "evolve" over a period of time to withstand the lethal amounts of cyanide?
Simple: Koalas weren't always Eucalyptus specialists. The original proto-koalas lacked resistance and ate lots of different plants. Now, cyanide isn't some sort of 'insta-death' - it's even present in your own body in miniscule amounts, and small doses can be effectively detoxified. Like any natural population, the proto-koalas had lots of variation, including a variation in how much cyanide they could handle before becoming ill. Individuals who could eat 20 leaves a day did better than those who could only eat 10 on account of having more food. Those who could eat 30 would do better still, and over time, the most resistant individuals would breed more, resulting in a overall change in average population resistance. Over time, koalas became more and more resistant, until finally they became completely resistant.
It's actually similar to something we recently saw in flies (when we
directly observed the origin of a new species). The original population of flies laid eggs in cactus, the larvae ate the cactus and eventually metamorphosed into flies. They were unable to lay in a particular species of cactus which had toxins. Then, a mutant appeared which had resistance to the toxin, and could lay in the toxic cactus. Interestingly, the mutants dealt with the toxin by turning it into a chemical they needed, and eventually, they lost the ability to naturally produce the chemical, becoming totally dependent upon the toxic cactus. The end result was two populations (original and toxin-dependent) who could not interbreed, therefore qualifying as different species.
If you want more information on the evolution of toxin resistance, look up pesticide resistance in insects. The main reason we have to keep changing and strengthening pesticides is because the insects evolve resistance.
Yes but marriage has always been an institution between a man and a woman
Wrong. Numerous cultures have included same-sex marriage within the definition, including christianity - the church performed same-sex weddings until the 10th century.
Adapting to snake venom and having a specialized digestive system that can handle Eucalyptus are two different things.
If it were fictionally possible to give you 1,000,000,000,000,000 lifetimes and in each lifetime we gave you cyanide, do you think you would evolve an adaption?
Um, digestive specializations are actually quite easy, evolutionarily speaking. Cyanide isn't actually very nasty and is fairly easy to detoxify compared to some of the more advanced toxins out there.
And, in fact, it would take far less time than you think for such resistance to evolve. You, me, and everyone here carried an average of 5 mutations that affect final protein structure, and one person in a million has a full gene-duplication. It's been shown that a single mutation with a mere 5% increase in fitness can spread through a population within 200 generations, and in many species, 200 generations is about 400 years or less.
Seriously, go get one of Stephen J Gould's books out and read it. You'll find it all a lot more clear.
Koalas don't have a mutated gene, they have a specialized digestive system that allows them to handle Eucalyptus leaves. The time it would take for their digestive systems to evolve to handle the cyanide would be too long and they would die from the cyanide. This is not a simple gene mutation
Um, that specialized digestive system is built by genes. *Everything* is genes. And remember, a single gene doesn't always produce just one protein - if it's a developmental gene, one mutation can drastically alter where, when and how dozens of other genes are expressed. We've identified a
single mutation that gives chickens teeth (which, incidentally, look exactly like theropod dinosaur teeth) (it's the
talpid-2 mutation).
Also, as JLAP and I have pointed out, ancestral Koalas ate other things, and only ate limited eucalyptus based on their resistance.
over time humans can adapt to snake venom.....why cant over lots of time an animals body learn to cope with cyanide?
The ability to build a tolerance is different from evolution. If I build a tolerance to rattlesnake venom, then have kids, my kids will be just as vulnerable as anyone else. However, if you give 1000 people an injection of venom, different people will be affected more or less, and if you breed all the less-affected people, then resistance will evolve.
RattlerMt, I know you like herps, so I suggest checking out the work of Brodie jr. and Brodie III on the arms race between toxic newts and garter snakes. Some of the snakes are actually now
poisonous (not venomous, but rather toxic if eaten due to stored, unprocessed newt toxins).
Mokele