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.

[JoeyKnothead]

Exactly! It's like seeing a Flat Earther pontificate in his best Dunning-Krugerese on the ignorance of astronomers because they haven't personally visited all the planets to see if they are really round.

Or how we can't tell the other planets are also planets, cause there ain't another'n in between em to compare to.

[The Barbarian]

I have heard of animals that belong to (supposedly) different species within the same genus (according to the classification given to them by specialists) and that under certain circumstances mated and had offspring. Were they really different species as nature dictates?

Yes. The key is if they reproduce in nature. For example, we can induce lions and tigers to breed in zoos, but they never do it in nature. Likewise, many birds that will have nothing to do with each other in nature, can be induced to breed in captivity. Remember when I pointed out that if evolution is true, then specieation is not a binary thing, but will have all sorts of intermediate cases? This is why. Polar bears are likely a few tens of thousands of years old, having evolved from brown bears during the last glaciation. They freely interbreed with brown bears when in the same area. The rising temps in the Arctic are leading to more of these hybrids and could lead to the extinction of polar bears by breeding themselves out of existence.

There is not enough knowledge about animals and how they can reproduce with each other. You cannot act as if you already know everything that has to do with nature.

We can't know everything. But we can know some things. And the list of things we know is expanding rapidly.

You do not even know all the animal species that exist on land or sea. With so little knowledge, what absolute conclusions are you going to draw about nature?

Notice that Darwin, who knew a fraction of what we know about it, accurately predicted the nature of speciation.

The only certainty is that you are not going to change how it works...

For a scientist, the key is to know how it works. Engineers are the guys who use it to change things.

that's how it was designed and that's how it has been since the beginning. That is why you can study it.

Our Creator made it that way.

You need to get it clear in your head whether it was a mere "designer" or an omnipotent Creator. God does not "design" anything. He has no need to figure things out.

[Purple Knight]

What is interesting, at least to me, is the similarity of cat papillae to humans. Filiform papillae are the most common in human and they are keratinised, like cat's, though obviously not in the same form.

Oh god. Now I want to pick at my tongue.