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Kraichgauer
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01 Jul 2012, 12:27 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
The fact that so many species are extinct does not support the theory of evolution.

Evolution is "survival of the fit enough", not the "fittest". If some random species is capable of maintaining itself, it will, even though some other species better fills the exact same niche.

Your argument is basically like saying: "If you have an A in an exam, but someone else had an A+, you failed!"

I equate evolving with surviving. Something changes in the environment, a species adapts and it doesn't become extinct. However, if you look at history many species have become extinct on planet earth. They did not evolve and survive. Ye,t others have lasted millions of years, changing very little. Crocodiles for instance. Cock Roaches, I think, are another example. How can a species like a crocodile last for so long without changing much?


The crocodile, and the mighty cockroach have found their niche, and don't have to change any in order to survive. The thing is though, cockroaches have become so dependent on humans for food and shelter that if we became extinct, it's thought that they would soon follow us. Or who knows, maybe they'd evolve in order to continue to exist.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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01 Jul 2012, 12:31 am

Kraichgauer wrote:

The crocodile, and the mighty cockroach have found their niche, and don't have to change any in order to survive. The thing is though, cockroaches have become so dependent on humans for food and shelter that if we became extinct, it's thought that they would soon follow us. Or who knows, maybe they'd evolve in order to continue to exist.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

If something happened to all of us, the cockroaches would, unfortunately, feast on our corpses. I know it sounds harsh, but they would. It would keep them going a while. Their population might dwindle some after we have turned to dust, but there's enough litter to keep them going. They can live in dead leaves.



Kraichgauer
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01 Jul 2012, 12:36 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:

The crocodile, and the mighty cockroach have found their niche, and don't have to change any in order to survive. The thing is though, cockroaches have become so dependent on humans for food and shelter that if we became extinct, it's thought that they would soon follow us. Or who knows, maybe they'd evolve in order to continue to exist.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

If something happened to all of us, the cockroaches would, unfortunately, feast on our corpses. I know it sounds harsh, but they would. It would keep them going a while. Their population might dwindle some after we have turned to dust, but there's enough litter to keep them going. They can live in dead leaves.


Maybe at one time, but they've become so dependent on us - and in fact, so urbanized as most of the rest of us - that they probably couldn't get by without us in the long term.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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01 Jul 2012, 12:39 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:

The crocodile, and the mighty cockroach have found their niche, and don't have to change any in order to survive. The thing is though, cockroaches have become so dependent on humans for food and shelter that if we became extinct, it's thought that they would soon follow us. Or who knows, maybe they'd evolve in order to continue to exist.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

If something happened to all of us, the cockroaches would, unfortunately, feast on our corpses. I know it sounds harsh, but they would. It would keep them going a while. Their population might dwindle some after we have turned to dust, but there's enough litter to keep them going. They can live in dead leaves.


Maybe at one time, but they've become so dependent on us - and in fact, so urbanized as most of the rest of us - that they probably couldn't get by without us in the long term.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It's just the fact they are tiny insects that works in their evolutionary favor. Insects are wonderful survivors in the grand scheme of things.



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01 Jul 2012, 1:21 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
I equate evolving with surviving.



This seems contradictory to me, with what you say afterwards about how some species do not change much yet survive..?


ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Something changes in the environment, a species adapts and it doesn't become extinct. However, if you look at history many species have become extinct on planet earth. They did not evolve and survive. Ye,t others have lasted millions of years, changing very little. Crocodiles for instance. Cock Roaches, I think, are another example. How can a species like a crocodile last for so long without changing much?


Many species that are "extinct" did not go extinct through a die off but through their own transition into later species. Like I mentioned before, Australopithecus is an ancestor of ours, and is extinct, but it is not as if it suddenly died off and then there was the next step in evolution. A lot of Creationists use this fallacious argument. I refer to it as the Pokemon Fallacy. I sincerely believe Pokemon has affected the psyche of a great portion of the general public towards evolution, and that is both humorous and bad.

Crocodiles and cockroaches have changed. The crocodile family is really in its waning period. Its high point was shared with the dinosaurs. There were many types of crocodiles occupying many niches, including land crocodiles, walking on raised legs (not splayed out like its relatives) that are suspected to have filled a niche later occupied by large canids and felidae. Cockroach species number in the thousands and only a handful coexist with humans, and though I have not read much into its history, they and mantises seem to share a common ancestor


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01 Jul 2012, 1:44 am

Vigilans wrote:

This seems contradictory to me, with what you say afterwards about how some species do not change much yet survive..?

One contradiction in the Theory Of Evolution. Some species evolve very little and survive while others evolve into another species meaning they are extinct while still others may evolve and die off in a mass extinction, like when the climate changes abruptly, they lose their food source or they are hunted by humans.

Quote:
Many species that are "extinct" did not go extinct through a die off but through their own transition into later species. Like I mentioned before, Australopithecus is an ancestor of ours, and is extinct, but it is not as if it suddenly died off and then there was the next step in evolution. A lot of Creationists use this fallacious argument. I refer to it as the Pokemon Fallacy. I sincerely believe Pokemon has affected the psyche of a great portion of the general public towards evolution, and that is both humorous and bad.

Crocodiles and cockroaches have changed. The crocodile family is really in its waning period. Its high point was shared with the dinosaurs. There were many types of crocodiles occupying many niches, including land crocodiles, walking on raised legs (not splayed out like its relatives) that are suspected to have filled a niche later occupied by large canids and felidae. Cockroach species number in the thousands and only a handful coexist with humans, and though I have not read much into its history, they and mantises seem to share a common ancestor

Even if the species didn't die off in massive quantities due to an external event, extinction is still extinction. The species no longer lives. It's a part of the extinction principle even though the reason it died off isn't due to a cataclysmic event. It's still gone and most likely will not return for a while. It supports my idea of transition and change.
Does the reason why a species is extinct matter as much as the fact that it is?



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01 Jul 2012, 4:20 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
One contradiction in the Theory Of Evolution. Some species evolve very little and survive while others evolve into another species meaning they are extinct while still others may evolve and die off in a mass extinction, like when the climate changes abruptly, they lose their food source or they are hunted by humans.

Here is an analogy. Like all analogies, it is flawed, but still.

The Hudson Bay Company was founded in the 17th century in the fur trades, and still exists, though it is now a department store: it adapted to a new situation. The Dutch East India United Company was also founded in the 17th century for trade with Asia, became the richest company in Europe by 1700, and was abolished in the early 19th century because it was bankrupt. The Plymouth Company was founded in the 17th century, and did go much further than that.

Why should all businesses change or fail at the same rate?
Why should all species evolve or become extinct at the same rate?

Why is this a flaw?



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01 Jul 2012, 8:50 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I think one of the most ignorant arguments against evolution is the old, "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"
Because, NUMBSKULLS, we didn't evolve from all apes, but from one specific type!! !!
How hard is that to grasp?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


Even the statement that we evolved from monkeys is not exactly accurate. It would be more precise to say that we have a common evolutionary lineage


Exactly.


Chimps / gorillas / bonobos still exist for the same reason that we still exist; we all evolved from a common ancestor that became extinct. In this sense we have all evolved for the same amount of time - but evolved to suit different environments.



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01 Jul 2012, 9:22 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Theory of Extinction puts the emphasis on extinction though, not evolution. It accentuates the randomness of life. Look at how rare it is, especially human life. Humans endlessly search the universe for some other intelligent life form but never find any. Either they are really good at hiding, really far away or just not there. Chances are they are really far away if you think in terms of probability, with the great distance the chance of meeting an alien in one person's brief lifetime is remote. Probably a greater chance of winning the lottery.
Theory of Extinction states the end is not an endless process of evolving, it's extinction.


As I see it, if the fossil record is full of simply extinct animals, and not of earlier life that much of modern animals are descended from, then I fear we are on a collision course with mass extinction 8O , as most of the earth's species have been dying off.
So yeah, in that sense, it's actually a lot more comforting to believe evolution explains the fossil record.


But the fossil record doesn't just contain extinct creatures. Scientists are now realising that many are "living fossils", i.e. the same creatures still exist today. (Creationists use this as an argument in their favour). These creatures clearly found a niche early on. The scientific estimate that 99 percent of all creatures are now extinct may be a gross exaggeration. We don't see fossil evidence of the transitional species because the probability of them becoming fossilised is even slimmer than well established species by virtue of the fact they are changing / mutating at a relatively fast rate (by evolutionary time-scale standards).

Mass extinctions appear to have been a regular event in our distant past, but we can't assume these will continue. Perhaps, for instance, they were all caused by stray asteroids and there are none remaining that are on a collision course.



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01 Jul 2012, 9:44 am

enrico_dandolo wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
One contradiction in the Theory Of Evolution. Some species evolve very little and survive while others evolve into another species meaning they are extinct while still others may evolve and die off in a mass extinction, like when the climate changes abruptly, they lose their food source or they are hunted by humans.

Here is an analogy. Like all analogies, it is flawed, but still.

The Hudson Bay Company was founded in the 17th century in the fur trades, and still exists, though it is now a department store: it adapted to a new situation. The Dutch East India United Company was also founded in the 17th century for trade with Asia, became the richest company in Europe by 1700, and was abolished in the early 19th century because it was bankrupt. The Plymouth Company was founded in the 17th century, and did go much further than that.

Why should all businesses change or fail at the same rate?
Why should all species evolve or become extinct at the same rate?

Why is this a flaw?


It isn't a flaw. Things only evolve if they need to. If they are well adapted to their environment and their environment doesn't change, they don't need to change. It's the sudden changes to a species' environment that it can't adapt to fast enough that causes extinction. This may be an incoming asteroid that fills the upper atmosphere with fine dust cooling the planet, or it might be a business's inability to adapt to technological changes. It's the same principle. Examples of evolution are everywhere you look.

However, I don't see it so much as survival of the fittest as much as survival of the best adapted to its environment i.e. those that make themselves indispensable to the ecosystem.



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01 Jul 2012, 11:43 am

To put the above in simpler terms: a species adapts because certain traits present in some members but not others (larger beaks in birds, for example) enable those members to prosper better in their environment. If a species has evolved very little, it's because it has never faced a situation where its traits are not helping it to survive.

Sharks, for example, have not evolved much over the years - hell, a Great White is pretty much just a scaled-down Megaladon. The only real adaptation they've ever had to make was to get larger or smaller, benefiting sharks that had those size changes by letting them hunt different kinds of prey more easily. Sharks haven't changed much because past a certain point, they've never had a change that significantly increased their ability to thrive whereas, say, birds did.


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01 Jul 2012, 4:15 pm

DonQuoteme wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Theory of Extinction puts the emphasis on extinction though, not evolution. It accentuates the randomness of life. Look at how rare it is, especially human life. Humans endlessly search the universe for some other intelligent life form but never find any. Either they are really good at hiding, really far away or just not there. Chances are they are really far away if you think in terms of probability, with the great distance the chance of meeting an alien in one person's brief lifetime is remote. Probably a greater chance of winning the lottery.
Theory of Extinction states the end is not an endless process of evolving, it's extinction.


As I see it, if the fossil record is full of simply extinct animals, and not of earlier life that much of modern animals are descended from, then I fear we are on a collision course with mass extinction 8O , as most of the earth's species have been dying off.
So yeah, in that sense, it's actually a lot more comforting to believe evolution explains the fossil record.


But the fossil record doesn't just contain extinct creatures. Scientists are now realising that many are "living fossils", i.e. the same creatures still exist today. (Creationists use this as an argument in their favour). These creatures clearly found a niche early on. The scientific estimate that 99 percent of all creatures are now extinct may be a gross exaggeration. We don't see fossil evidence of the transitional species because the probability of them becoming fossilised is even slimmer than well established species by virtue of the fact they are changing / mutating at a relatively fast rate (by evolutionary time-scale standards).

Mass extinctions appear to have been a regular event in our distant past, but we can't assume these will continue. Perhaps, for instance, they were all caused by stray asteroids and there are none remaining that are on a collision course.


Again, absolutely.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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01 Jul 2012, 5:32 pm

Some of the mass extinctions were caused by long duration volcanic eruptions. For example the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps. The gases released by these eruptions (which went on for a million years) poisoned the atmosphere and the oceans.

ruveyn



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02 Jul 2012, 12:01 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhvmg9oiWU[/youtube]


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02 Jul 2012, 12:14 pm

Vigilans wrote:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhvmg9oiWU[/youtube]


Poopot! :lol:

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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02 Jul 2012, 12:28 pm

Vigilans wrote:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhvmg9oiWU[/youtube]


What is both sad and hilarious is how many of those exact argument's I've run across - even here, on this forum (which, I'd like to mention - most politics/religion forums are cesspits. This one is not different, but it's a higher-quality cesspit).

I hope, one day, that I'll hear something original from a creationist. Sadly, I've only ever heard a decent proposal from Shrox (who is awesome).


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