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KoltirasRip — EvolutionChart
Published: 2012-06-25 00:36:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 5349; Favourites: 138; Downloads: 49
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EDIT: Apparently hyenas aren't dogs. This blows my mind *laughs* Anywho, the point was that mutts would look like them in the sense that a common dog resembles all of its peers, like wolves, African Wild Dogs and Dingos do, if left to their own devices...so since Hyenas are morphologically similar to canines, the point is still valid.OKAY...COMMENTS CLOSED NOW. It's been an hour since I made my last reply to the last comment sent to me, and I haven't gotten another response...so I'm gonna go ahead and close this thing. Please be aware that there are only like...3 people total that ended up getting banned because of their arguments, and it was certainly not because of their beliefs. It was their manner. I've said it before and I'll say it again...believe whatever you want, but don't shove your faith down someone else's throat like it's fact. Faith and fact are not the same, and no matter how hard you think something is true, believing it won't make it so. Until you can find proof for your claims, they are little more than empty, soulless promises. So I close by saying "I respect the believer, but not the beliefs, and I can't, so long as a large chunk of those beliefs brainwash people into hating, discriminating, and devaluing other people who never once had the choice of being born into your favored place in existence."
UPDATE: Just a fair warning...I'm gonna close comments on this thing pretty soon cuz I'm spending far too much time reading and responding, and I'm not getting any work done. It's been awesome talking with some of you guys (frustrating as shit with others of you,) but I gotta finish my costume for Otakon XD
At the risk of pissing off a lot of people, I'm gonna post this. Normally I keep my views about this to myself but there's been a lot of Creationist stuff going around lately and my forehead is raw from the face-palming and head-desking I've been doing.
If you believe in God, that's cool, I'm not trying to tell you not to. However, your religious leaders are going out of their way to impose upon ALL PEOPLE their twisted views of how the universe came into being, and the morality rules of some Bronze Age goat-herders who believed lightning was God's wrath, and children could be sold into slavery. It is both detrimental and absurd.
So...yeah. Don't hate. Educate. Learn. Never take ONE source as the truth. There's a reason your school teachers and college professors REQUIRE you to cite several credible sources when you do research assignments. If you only use one source, and that source ends up being wrong or an outright lie, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.
And no, the Bible doesn't count as multiple sources because it was written by multiple people. It has been heavily altered, mistranslated, changed, mistranslated again, applied falsely, and most of it, even before then, was heavily self-contradictory... The Sunni and Shia Muslims are killing each other because of a difference in translation of the Koran. The entire Protestant Bible is a heavily edited version of the Old Testament because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce that the Pope wouldn't give him. The Old Testament itself is a fucked up amalgamation of DOZENS of religions and pagan beliefs that predated it.
After all, if Emperor Nero had chosen Mithra-ism as the State Religion, everyone in America would believe in Mithra. I would still be an Atheist. The very reason you find all other religions on earth to be false is exactly why I know Christianity is. It's all a lie, perpetuated by superstition and the inferiority-complex of long-dead men who wanted to control even more inferior men (and women.) Sorry.
I'm hoping any comments added to this are civil. I feel, however, that many people will see this as an attack on their faith. To me, it's no different than telling a child that Santa Claus isn't real. The only difference is that God is the Santa Claus of adults and it's frightening that many are trying to dictate how others live their lives because of their 'faith.' Faith is not a virtue. It's a cancer.
EDIT: Really quick...if I don't respond to you, there's probably 2 reasons. 1, You're agreeing with me, or 2, I think you're too stupid to breathe. If I don't reply to your nonsense, it's not because I think you're right...it's because you can't be reasoned with and I'm not going to try.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: [link] Here's a link to an article that describes how scientists created biological entities in the lab. They weren't insects and you could hardly call if 'living, breathing, motivated life' but RNA is an ancestor to DNA, and we all know what comes after that.
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Comments: 200
I'm starting to wonder if you have even a basic Biology education, because pretty much everyone, even the most evangelical Christians, are told at some point in their life that living creatures started as single-cell organisms. Those organisms, over most of the amount of time that life has even existed, eventually became multi-celled organisms. This is the base of the tree of life, as we call it. Multi-celled organisms developed into things like bacteria, yeast and fungi, which in themselves gradually got bigger, more specialized, developed sexual reproduction, got bigger again, some got onto land, got bigger again...Cambrian Explosion when the most diversification of life took place. Dinosaurs dominated the landscape and were then eradicated, leaving small mammals to take their place. Mammals got rather large before/into the Ice Age, when most died out again, and then after that we got the stuff we see today, which is -basically- the same but MUCH smaller.
If you're looking for how molecules became living things, then you'll be happy to know science has done that, too. There was a bit on the news about how scientists took the basic organic molecules (Carbon, Nitrogen, etc) put them in a big sphere, recreated conditions on early proto-earth and, after striking it with electricity (like lightning) actually got early RNA to develop. The whole sphere was overrun by organic, living material. It was kinda gross-looking.
[link]
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And where did that life come from? Look around you, everything is already in a state of decay. You. Me. We are all slowly dying. So why did life even start? How did it even start? And actually, I did know that. It's just that after they got the RNA, they couldn't get any actual living things to grow out of it.
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You're asking pointless questions. I gave you transitional forms, and I gave you evidence that science can replicate the creation of basic life.
And of course they couldn't get life to crawl out of the sphere. That stuff takes FOREVER to take place, countless generations. You don't understand how life changes or develops if you're stumped by the simple fact that a dinosaur didn't jump out of the test tube after a week of observation. What they could get is biological compounds to come about from otherwise lifeless chemicals. They created the most basic form of living material. It doesn't need to be aware or have an agenda to count as life. I'm pretty sure bacteria don't have awareness (at least in our understanding) but they're still alive.
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Hardly! According to their own theory, microbes should have already been forming! And you haven't given me a single transitional phase. We are talking MACROevolution, not MICROevolution.
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I think we're done here. You clearly either don't understand how life works, or are too inefficient at explaining what it is you're looking for. I'm tired of telling you the same thing over and over again.
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Thank you for educating me further about my faith.
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Wonderful! Your spin of humor on this makes it even more entertaining than informative. ^_^
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Thanks XD I think..
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yay for evolution because it can work with religion and it actually makes more sense
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Evolution only works with religion when the religious establishment manipulates the scripture to fit it in. It's like the cop-out the Pope made when he said that if extraterrestrials existed, it only means we weren't aware of God's creativity. No, it means the Pope changed what was said in the Bible to suit the probability of life elsewhere in the universe.
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yeah which is why the bible can't be used as a credible source
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I find it very intriguing that WE helped to create the different breeds of dogs but who helped create our different "breeds"?
With the appendix, do you know any information about those who are vegetarians and whether or not they have any issues with their appendixes?
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I'm sorry, what? You think someone out there helped create the different kinds of humans? No. Variety is a natural byproduct of the environment we are in. The dark skin of Africans is an adaptation to scorching sunlight, whereas the light skin of Northern Europeans of a byproduct of lacking as much sunlight. It's the same reason why cave-dwelling creatures are completely white. Lack of exposure to sunlight inhibits to production of Melanin, which is what causes pigment in our skin.
Appendixes are a left-over organ from our ancestors and likely has no impact on the ability of human vegetarians to digest, seeing as we are omnivorous regardless of our choices over what we eat. It's the same as the tiny limbs sometimes found in snakes and whales. Leftovers with no real use to the modern creature.
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I wasn't talking about the color variety in humans, I was talking about ape ancestor to human.
Another thing about the development of love over instinct. (in general the entire intelligence idea) Why would we develop other religions and the like if we are animals? The first humans to actually really start looking like humans must have thought something like that. Even once "cavemen" moved forward and began advancements, were they not able to distinguish that they were still animals?
Then, with what is stated here in your example, organs cannot shrivel up or anything of the like in order for the body to become more efficient?
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Ape ancestors to man: [link]
If you don't feel like reading it then don't ask anymore questions about it.
Religions are how early man tried to explain the natural world because they couldn't understand it. Zeus was the answer to lightning in the Mediterranean, Thor was the answer in Northern Europe. The Grim Reaper, Hades/Pluto, both religious answers to what happens after we die. There were fertility gods in almost all cultures, blood-thirsty gods who wanted animal sacrifice to make the crops grow, rains that wouldn't come unless a virgin was thrown into a volcano. These are answers primitive people have for questions that need not be asked because they couldn't be explained with the technology of the time.
The last part of your post didn't really make any sense. I think you're asking why the body doesn't purge unnecessary parts of itself? Because evolution and genetics don't work that way. The human body still has its leftover bits because they aren't causing actual problems to its life or ability to reproduce. Now, if we had a third arm sticking out of our chest, that would be another question all together because it would flop around and get in the way. Birds, for example, had to lose density in their bones in order to go from simple gliding to actual flying. That sort of thing developed over time, as more successful generations of early birds bred with other successful fliers, until we get apex predators like eagles and falcons instead of clumsy things that can't fly straight. Selective breeding, like in domesticated farm animals, dogs/cats, etc, can lead to these developments happening much quicker. However, it seems to be harder to get rid of unnecessary traits than it is to develop new ones. After all, there are blind newts in caves that haven't had reason to see for thousands of years, but they still have eye sockets in their skulls. No real need, but since they don't cause problems, there's not much naturally occurring incentive in getting rid of them.
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Why care about such questions though? If we are from animals, then why not only concern ourselves with what will continue our survival? Why create a new possibly harmful "predator"? How could we possibly create such fanciful things?
Okay, so if a limb is in the way, it's lost. How is it lost? I understand that it's gradually lost, but how does this process begin? Let's say we did have a third arm(disregarding intelligence) would we selectively breed with other humans that had slightly shorter third arms until they were gone?
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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca
That's why.
To answer your other question, the limb is lost in the same way that the Elephants in my image have shorter tusks. The ones who have longer tusks are all killed off so only the ones with shorter tusks are left to reproduce. For a creature to lose a limb that's not useful, it would in some fashion have to impede it from being able to pass on its genes. A third arm in the middle of a person's chest is a bad example of something logical that could be evolved away because there'd be no reason for why it got there in the first place. It would probably be a freak abomination, like the extra legs that grow on cattle sometimes. Maybe a better example of a trait that could be evolved away is the tail. Humans are still evolving it away, even though sometimes kids are born with non-working tails up to 12 inches long. It's really rare, but it happens.
[link]
In the long run, apes that stopped needing tails eventually evolved them away and stopped living in the highest treetops, scampering across flatlands instead. As a result, we started standing upright more, and eventually our pelvis changed to accommodate the upright locomotion. Chimps and Bonobos can maintain SOME bipedal movement, but they often go back to using their arms for movement because their hips aren't designed for constant upright motion. Gorillas rarely walk upright...their upper bodies are just too massive for their tiny legs. The biggest reason why humans evolved the way they did is because those that were able to run faster didn't get eaten XD Eventually the better upright-walking-traits became dominant in larger portions of the population.
Every so often I see pictures of people who have ape-like faces, but for some reason I can't find one on google right now. My google fu is pretty weak. Suffice it to say, the big, spherical/projecting mouths that apes have are SOMETIMES apparent on folks of African descent. Usually it's just enormous lips on the men that I see.
We also evolved away the need for body-covering hair and now it's mostly just on our heads and faces.
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How were we able to discover so much so soon about the effect of religion? One person must have somehow developed a far greater intelligence of the sort, quite clever actually. To move from an animalistic state and further so much to decide that words to overpower rather then physical force is quite interesting.
Elephants have shorter tusks because HUMANS selected the ones with longer tustks, forcing elephants to have fewer long tusk breeding options. Yes, a third arm could be quite cumbersome, but for the sake of argument, if there was one, how would it be "evolved" away?
So the apes that had tails decided they didn't want them anymore? I can understand how a pelvis can change in ONE ape, but to continue the "gene" it's not possible. The apes genes didn't change because its body did. That would mean that every generation would have to redevelop the pelvic alteration. The gene remains the same.
I find it interesting how much we had to change to force ourselves into a brand new environment. Completely changing what was previously a well working society.
Why would we decide to lose our hair before we created clothing? We most likely didn't care for clothing after evolving, so why would we need it? Our fur previously shielded us from the elements and suited us very well, why all of a sudden begin reducing the amount of hair? Wouldn't that be a negative trait?
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Short answer: It's not about "deciding". It just happens.
WARNING: TECHNICAL.
Long answer: An analog to your third arm example is the gradual loss of wisdom teeth (third molars) in modern human populations. An increasing number of individuals fail to develop their wisdom teeth. Why might this be? It's not that humans as a group are deciding 'I don't want wisdom teeth', or that your parents' teeth getting yanked out prevents you from growing wisdom teeth. Instead, what is happening is that wisdom teeth are not particularly good for us. It's less of a problem in developed countries where we can get dental care, fluoride-infused toothpastes and antibiotics, but throughout the bulk of human history those things haven't existed. There are 2 main problems with wisdom teeth. One is that they're WAY BACK IN YOUR MOUTH, and it's hard to keep them clean. Particularly in an environment where you're eating a lot of starches and sugars (pasta, bread, etc.), you increase the likelihood of getting cavities. A cavity all the way in the back of your mouth can't be effectively cared for, and if you get an abscess because the infection in your unreachable tooth rots it away, you would typically get sepsis and die. If your wisdom teeth kill you before you have babies, your wisdom-teeth-having gene does not get passed on. Instead, someone else who either a) got his/her wisdom teeth later in life, or b) didn't get them at all, gets to use the resources that you would have been taking up and has MORE babies instead, increasing the proportion of late-tooth/no-tooth genes in the population. This effect repeats until carriers of the wisdom teeth gene are gone from the population, and no one has wisdom teeth anymore.
Another problem with wisdom teeth is that they can cause crowding of other teeth. Our mouths have gotten smaller over the past thousands of years, partially because we switched from tough, leafy foods to softer grains and cooked meats. So as our mouths got smaller, the teeth became more crowded, and wisdom teeth would come in at age 18 or so and shove all your nice dentition out of order. Then you ended up with snaggle teeth which:
A) Other people may have found unattractive, which meant that people WITHOUT wisdom teeth were able to keep their straight, shiny smiles and score more mates;
B) were difficult to care for (see above);
C) prevented people from eating and therefore they starved to death and didn't make any babies/made fewer babies than people without wisdom teeth. You know, because they were starving.
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Taking this all the way back around to the arm loss thing, maybe the environment changed. Pretend our three-armed monkeys found that the nice forest they lived in was becoming less and less forest-y. In a dense forest, the third arm was useful for climbing, but if there are no trees to climb then the arm is just sitting there on your chest (or back, wherever), using up calories. If the arm is using calories, you (As a three armed monkey) have to spend more of your time looking for food, and you have less time to, say, groom yourself, so you have parasites, and the ladies don't like parasites, and so you have less mating success, and so your beefy third-arm gene doesn't get passed on.
INSTEAD, individuals with SCRAWNY third arms are reproducing more efficiently, because their scrawny arms don't take as many calories, and they can spend more time doing the nasty and making babies that carry the genes for scrawny third arms.
20 generations later you have a population composed mostly of scrawny-armed monkeys. They all still have three arms, but the third arms are much smaller. Repeat ad nauseum and you will eventually end up with a population of monkeys with only TWO arms.
Note: This process may go faster or slower depending on how damaging having a third arm turns out to be to your reproductive success. If there's a lot of food around, it may take longer for the calorie-costing arm to disappear, but you can bet that if you stick those monkeys in food-poor environment, the ones most efficient at keeping their calories will reproduce the best.
Hope that helps clarify things.
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I can fully understand the point with the wisdom teeth, though I do feel as though wisdom teeth won't be disappearing. In times before there were antibiotics and surgeries available for those with wisdom teeth, I don't feel as though they would have kept much of a record for it. I am not completely certain, but would you be informed on the knowledge of whether or not it WAS a problem?
Thank you for taking the time to fully elaborate on the idea.
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You don't seem to have enough of an understanfing of DNA, genetics or adaptation to environmental factors to be able to have a good discussion about the subject. Apologies, but I won't be continuing. I feel like I'm explaining art to someone who can't hold a pencil.
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Very well, it was a good discussion while you decided to elaborate.
One final argument though. One doesn't have to know how to hold a pencil to understand art.
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You have to know how to hold a pencil to draw though. That's what my point was. I'm simply not interested in teaching you everything I know about the subject on a whim, when it's likely you won't agree with me in the end anyway based on the position you entered the discussion with.
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Yes, in order to draw, knowing how to hold a pencil would be beneficial, but you gave the example of describing art.
I understand your feelings, I simply enjoy learning new things.
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I laughed so hard when reading this, thank you for making this. I've heard people say the exact same things you were talking about in it so I understand your frustrations.
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Every time a political type or Evangelical guy gets a microphone, or half an ounce of attention from the media, I seriously worry about the advancement of our society.
Most of the biggest breakthroughs in science and technology have been by Atheists, Agnostics or, as it happens in some cases, Gay people. No major advancement in this arena has been offered by religion since the Muslims gave us Algebra...and we see how they haven't advanced much since then. They've REgressed, actually. It's quite sad.
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Umm... what about Sir Issac Newton? Ben Franklin? Galileo? They were all religious people who made big breakthroughs. And also, science in the beginning was a way to show God's glory.
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Newton did not believe in a personal god. He's on the record for that.
Ben Franklin was a non-denominational theist of the same sort. He was basically spiritual, but he didn't follow the biblical "one true god."
Galileo was branded a heretic for contesting the religious/biblical idea that the earth was the center of the universe. He believed that the Scripture was written from the naive perspective of man as one could observe the world with his own eyes, from his own place upon it. He tried to persuade the Catholic Church not to ban Copernicus' writings, and then he himself was forced to keep silent on his own views for many years, essentially on pain of death.
Anything else?
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Oh, sorry but my sister went on my computer and wrote that, haha. But I myself don't believe in Evolution and strongly back up Christianity. In fact, Christianity is the only religion that can be proven by science and history.
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Umm Excuse me? Christianity is the only religion that can be proven by science and history? I'm ignoring the science part for the moment and going to ask you if you have heard of Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism? Gautam Buddha, Mahavir Jain and Guru Nanak were actual people. There are actual historical mentions of them. Quoting you, 'people should also research other religions before talking about it'.
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Yes, I did know about those religions and their finders. I didn't mean that Christianity was the only religion that proves history, but it is one of the only ones that proves history. And who do you think was the founder of the God that I believe in?
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A bunch of old superstitious men who were probably smoking hasheesh and thought they had a vision, but it was just a fart.
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Quoting you again "In fact, Christianity is the only religion that can be proven by science and history."
That sentence definitely does not mean that Christianity proves history. History does not need a Religion to prove itself. Religion however, does need History's support. And God, if he exists, needs a founder? The very idea is preposterous. Religions need founders. An almighty, super-powerful, all-knowing, ultimate creator needs a founder? Then wouldn't that founder be the superpowered being? I think you have your definitions a little confused.
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Jesus never lived. The only documentation of his story is in the Bible, which didn't even mention him until some 50+ years after he supposedly died. Most of the Gospels contradict each other, and that's not even counting the ones that didn't get put into the Bible in the first place. Saying Jesus lived because the Bible says so, would be like saying Ironman existed because Tony Stark can be seen in the movies.
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Hey, it doesn't matter what other people believe in. If you want to believe in evolution, that's fine. But I would like to believe in my religion without feeling like I'm stupid for believing that. And I would like to agree on the fact that people should research evolution before talking about it, but people should also research other religions before talking about it. And also, where do you get your information from. I'm very interested in reading it.
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I don't believe in evolution, just like I don't believe in trees or my cats or that I have a mother. They are facts.
Religion can't be proven. It has to be taken on faith. That's not good enough.
My information comes from several years of personal inquiry. You can do quick fact checks with simple searches such as "domestication and different breeds of dogs," "nature vs nurture experiments" (the one I like best is the one that was done on Grey Foxes, wherein selective breeding enabled researchers to create a domesticated version of the creature), "diversification of the human race," and so forth. They are general topics that can freely be looked at.
Similarily, you can research "how Christianity relates to other religions" like Islam and the Jewish faith, "what lead to Christianity", and "actual historical evidence for Jesus," but you have to look at places that are research-based, not funded by biased religious organizations or done by people who believe. Credible researchers will give you the truth about Jesus regardless of the faith that wants it to be real or not.
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First of all you have to believe in something to believe in the "facts", second of all can you send me some links to unbiased websites on evolution?
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Facts can be proven and are true whether you believe in them or not. I've said a few times now that I don't believe in evolution, just like I don't believe in trees or my cats or that I have a mother. They are facts that don't require belief to exist.
Do a google search on evolution. You'll find plenty.
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I have done searches of evolution on Google. They are all bias, just like Google searches of Christianity. And you don't have to believe in facts. It's my choice to not believe in evolution, just like it's your choice to not believe in Christianity. Everyone has their own opinions, and I don't bash (or mean to bash) people because of their opinions. And I hope that you do the same. Peace out, God loves you (no matter what you say), I'll be praying for you (even if you don't believe in the power of prayers or want them) and I hope that the rest of your day is good
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Don't pray for me. I wouldn't want you to waste your time. I'll have a good day regardless of whether you clasp your hands together and talk to an imaginary man in the sky.
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I chose how to waste my time. And to be honest it isn't a waste. And I'm glad to know that you'll have a good day
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Aright then, do whatever you want lol, won't make any difference to me
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Rip, you are... Just amazing xD There is no other way to describe you lmao
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Sometimes this kind of thing really makes you wonder where we're headed in general. Quite clearly, according to evolution, we are supposed to continue to advance. But I seriously wonder about that. Like you said with the Muslims I have a feeling certain other religions will also begin to regress, especially towards things like gay rights. It is rather sad.
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It could very well be that humans are basically at the peak of their evolution right now, just like sharks have been since pretty much the beginning. I know that modern man is an average of 4-5 inches taller than those in the distant past, simply because we have better access to reliable foodstocks and now medical care. But...my honest worry is we'll end up like the humans in Wall-E, who are so lazy that their big blob-like bodies can only move around with machine assistance.
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Here's hoping to a catastrophic event that gets people off their arse's.
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