How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[brunumb]

Once again the title of the lecture was "James Tour: The Mystery of the Origin of Life" in case you didn't notice, it was not about evolution.

And this thread is about evolution, not the origin of life. Good grief.

Very well, lets all police every post for strict adherence to the title of the topic, yes? is that what you want?

I seem to recall you demanding that posters stay on topic. That said, the debate relates to evolution which is often confused with the origin of life by creationists. Tour's lecture is irrelevant and just another diversionary tactic.

[The Barbarian]

It is not a matter of politics. I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me?
...
And I have not even addressed origin of first life issues. For me, that is even more scientifically mysterious than evolution. Darwin never addressed origin of life, and I can see why he did not; he was far too smart for that. Present day scientists that expose their thoughts on this become ever so timid when they talk with me privately. I simply can not understand the source of their confidence when addressing their positions publicly.
https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/ ... %E2%80%9D/

He's wrong about Darwin, too. Which tells me he's never even read Darwin's book.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Charles Darwin, last sentence in the book, On the Origin of Species

[The Barbarian]

I seem to recall you demanding that posters stay on topic. That said, the debate relates to evolution which is often confused with the origin of life by creationists. Tour's lecture is irrelevant and just another diversionary tactic.

See above. It appears that Tour is still confusing evolutionary theory with the origin of life.

[The Barbarian]

Good Lord, you refer to "These small shelly animals were millimeters in size" as being an ancestor of something as big as a pigeon? To show that these were ancestors is a serious challenge.

Well, you're not aware of something else...

Coeloscleritophora†
The worldwide presence of small, hollow, calcareous sclerites in numerous Precambrian and Cambrian sediments (collectively referred to as “small shellies”) was an enigmatic component of molluscan evolutionary studies. However, in the early 1990s, an articulated fossil was found in the lower Cambrian of Greenland that was covered with small shellies. It was immediately apparent that what had been thought to be the remains of individual organisms were actually parts of a single larger animal (Figure 2). Recent work in the Cambrian of Europe, Asia, and Australia has greatly expanded our knowledge of Coeloscleritophora, and although their relationship to the Mollusca remains uncertain, they likely share a common ancestry with the molluscs as well as with annelids and brachiopods.



Much, much bigger than a few millimeters. Turns out, many of the shells were plates on much larger animals. A sort of transition between animals with no exoskeletons at all, and the fully-covered or nearly fully-covered Cambrian animals.

First they show that fossils from before the larger Cambrian fauna, were preserved, conditions were conducive to fossilization yet curiously we see no evidence of ancestry between Tommotian fossils and later Cambrian, each possessed shelly parts, each was preserved yet oddly nothing in between.

No, that's also wrong. These partially-armored animals lived into the Cambrian period. Hallucigenia, (early Cambrian) for example is only partially covered by sclerites.


Marella is a transitional form, very much like arthropods, but only partially covered by sclerites. Again, early Cambrian.

Opabinia is somewhat more completely covered, but not quite completely. It is also transitional between annelids and arthropods.

and left no trace of what must have been millions of intermediate forms, (each of which must have had shelly parts - likely to be preserved)?

Turns out, they did leave a lot of transitional forms. You apparently just never bothered to learn about them, and confabulated gaps that don't exist.

See! this is the blinkered wishful thinking of the creationist devotee, who merely assumes creationism is true, and therefore no evidence can exist.

The fact is the absence of these "intermediates" is itself evidence, strong evidence that they never actually existed,

See above. Your unwillingness to investigate just got you again.

[Jose Fly]

See above. Your unwillingness to investigate just got you again.

FYI, he just as much admitted that he's trolling us.

viewtopic.php?p=1069101#p1069101

[The Barbarian]

FYI, he just as much admitted that he's trolling us.
viewtopic.php?p=1069101#p1069101

Of course. But he doesn't realize that a lot of people look in on these discussions and many of them draw conclusions from the discussion. As my Mom used to say, no one is useless; they can always be a bad example.

[Jose Fly]

FYI, he just as much admitted that he's trolling us.
viewtopic.php?p=1069101#p1069101

Of course. But he doesn't realize that a lot of people look in on these discussions and many of them draw conclusions from the discussion. As my Mom used to say, no one is useless; they can always be a bad example.

I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I admire how you always have the best intentions in mind. Too few have that mindset.

[The Barbarian]

Thanks. That's one of the kindest things anyone has said to me.

[Sherlock Holmes]

So here's the "theory" so far:

At some point in the past these existed (dated: 535 MYA)

then some time later these had "evolved" into (dated 520 MYA)

Clearly there must have been potentially millions of generations between the former and the latter, so what evidence is there that the later is truly descended from the former? assuming this happened over a 15 million period, there would indeed have been several million generations, that's a lot of animals with shells, so we'd expect to find some fossils of them.

Of course we know of the enigmatic Hallucigenia too (dated 508 MYA ?)

But as you can see in that image this is apparently contemporary with trilobites and anyway is dated as later than the first trilobites, so on that basis it doesn't seem to be a precursor.

So this is the "overwhelming evidence" for the evolution of the Cambrian? are you kidding me??

It must be me, so can some evolution expert here please paste the images of the intermediary forms? perhaps we can get a nice picture with say ten or twenty images showing the gradual transformation of a 1mm shell into a 6 inch trilobite, after all there were several million generations involved, can't be too hard can it?

[Sherlock Holmes]

See above. Your unwillingness to investigate just got you again.

FYI, he just as much admitted that he's trolling us.

viewtopic.php?p=1069101#p1069101

I asked you if Biblical Archaeology Review is a religious or scientific journal Jose, a completely relevant question, you very obviously did not want to answer and invoked what you call "Poe's Law" as a "justification" for refusing to answer.

I reacted to that as being evidence that you had no counter argument and that I found that amusing.

You then reacted and described what I did as "trolling"; it seems that whenever you are out argued you lash out and accuse your opponent of wrongdoing, not very scientific I have to say.