/atheism/ - Atheism

>The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred.
That's a matter of abiogenesis, which I believe is still unclear. Evolution is about what happens to DNA, not how it came about.

Breeding is not exactly the same as evolution, it's not so much about creating new traits, but mixing existing ones and amplifying them, creating new traits would take way more time so you shouldn't use breeding as a model for evolution.

The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred.We simply don't have enough lifetime, to see the evolution of an entirely new species, which would be tricky to say when it happened exactly anyway.
Vide the species problem. Taxonomy is just our way to think about plants and animals but evolution doesn't give a shit about it. we could say that every creature is a different species because they have different DNA and different traits.

The examples you presented don't seem inconsistent with evolution to me. Dogs evolved from dog-like creatures. Horses evolved from horse-like creatures. Mammals evolved from mammal-like creatures and all cell organism evolved from the first cell organism. It's expected that animals with a common ancestor all share it's traits and can therefore be classified as being of the same kind.

I don't know much about biology and the problem with chromosomes. Why is it impossible to make a different number of them? Like I said, evolution is super slow, and one whole chromosome is a huge change so we shouldn't expect to see so much evolution in a few generations. Isn't down's syndrome an example of accidental appearance of an animal with a different number of chromosomes though?

>The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred.

Argument from ignorance

>cannot account for the development of a completely new species.

That's like saying you can walk to your backyard, but you can't walk to the super market. I think this is the old macro/micro-evolution nonsense. So far no one has ever managed to find a single mechanism that keeps species and their genetic makeup into rigid boundaries, and considering that genetic material changes form one generation to the next, you can guess what happens when we're talking about thousands or perhaps millions of generations. The effect is amplified over time

>>6424
>The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred
lol

I see statuefag is at it again.

>>6424
>The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred
It could have evolved from the simpler molecule RNA. See video.

>The second was more challenging. It acknowledges that natural selection can account for considerable variation within a species, but cannot account for the development of a completely new species.
>For example,, Humans have been selectively breeding dogs for centuries and have produced all kinds of different results.. but they remain the same species. They can still interbreed and they still have the same number of chromosomes.
1. Natural selection can alter separate populations of the same species to the point that their members can no longer interbreed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
2. The fossil record clearly shows species evolving into other species, with your picture being a good example. The reason we can't observe it happening is because it takes a long time and depends on random mutations.

> Humans have been selectively breeding dogs for centuries

Found your problem. Try looking at development across a much, much longer timespan.

>>6424
>The first was the idea that DNA is simply too complex to have simply occurred.
Good thing nobody claims DNA simply occurred. The current theory as I understand it is that over time, self-replicating molecules grew more and more complex and started exhibiting DNA-like functions where they would control the chemistry around them to form molecules that supported their existence. Sort of like how any given complicated trait in an animal took a while to evolve.

>>6424
>The second was more challenging. It acknowledges that natural selection can account for considerable variation within a species, but cannot account for the development of a completely new species.
>For example,, Humans have been selectively breeding dogs for centuries and have produced all kinds of different results.. but they remain the same species.
Emphasis mine. Centuries are not long enough for speciation to occur, especially in a population that interbreeds as much as the dog population. For a counterpoint, look at humans and chimps. We know we're related due to our similar DNA, but the conditions of our environments changed enough that we diverged. I don't think it's been tried but it's a pretty good bet we can't breed with chimps. You could extrapolate farther back into the past though, like to the point where humans and dogs diverged. We can't breed with dogs (they have exactly 3 times the chromosomes we do), but we know we are related to a certain degree.

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>>6433

>For this theory to be sound, I think somewhere somehow something crosses that species barrier and goes from being a fish to an amphibian.

That's not how taxonomy works. It's a hierarchy. As time goes on and populations diverge and speciate, they get new categories applied to them. Take humans for example. Before ~200,000 years ago, there were no anatomically modern humans. There were animals who are the ancestors of anatomically modern humans, but they themselves do not fall into that category of subspecies that's most specific to humans today. They were "humans" or Homo sapiens as opposed to what we are (Homo sapiens sapiens). If you take a taxonomic step back from those guys, we can look at our genus: Homo. Creatures in the genus Homo first appeared something like 2,500,000 years ago and included ancestors of modern humans and human cousins who are now extinct. Homo, as a group, appeared when it differentiated from its relatives. Before all but one line (us) died out, it further differentiated into species like Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis, which were distinct species, but still members of Homo. They didn't stop being Homo and start being their species, the species is just a label that applies to the populations that differentiated from the earliest Homo. Any species belonging to Homo will always be Homo, and so will all of its descendants.

Let's go back even further, to the Class humans fall into: Mammalia. At the time mammals first appeared, there were no such groups as human or Homo. There weren't even apes or primates back then. These groups didn't exist yet because populations had yet to differentiate into groups that we humans would later describe and categorize as such. So let's look at mammals. Class Mammalia has multiple orders but let's just look at two: Primate (us) and Carnivora (closest shared taxon of dogs and cats). When the first Mammal species appeared, differentiating from their non-mammal cousins, the Primate and Carnivora orders did not have any members yet (remember where exactly the lines are drawn is an abstract model we use in the modern day and not a fundamental feature of the universe or anything). As time went on, various populations of mammals differentiated into several groups including Primates and Carnivora. These orders continued evolving and further differentiated. Primates split into Apes, monkeys, and prosimians (e.g. lemurs) each with further subcategories. Carnivora split into two groups, caniforma and felinoforma. Both of these split further as time went on. Caniforma split into Canidae (dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals), an extinct branch, and Arctoidea (which split into species as diverse as walruses and badgers). Felinoforma split into groups that include creatures like house cats, big cats, mongooses, and hyenas.

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>>6555
>>6433

Now that I've laid that down, here's the actual point. Nowhere does a dog population produce human offspring. Nowhere does a tiger become a chimpanzee. This doesn't happen because "kinds" or taxonomic categories appear as a result of species diverging. They're not something that already existed and a species turned into; they appear as new traits appear in populations. Like for mammals, (this is a very blurry line) the taxon only appeared when some creatures evolved mammary glands, fur, etc. that characterize mammals. Before that, there were no mammals. This doesn't mean that mammals stopped being members of the group they were in before. The ancestors of tetrapoda (name meaning four-limbed creatures) will always be tetrapoda. Even snakes who have lost their limbs are still tetrapoda, because they have ancestors in that taxon. The population didn't stop being tetrapoda, or reptilia, or chordata, or amniota when it evolved into the first snakes. It just added another classification to its biological history.

Crossing the species barrier is by definition impossible as a species is defined as a group of organisms that can breed with each other to the exclusion of other organisms. The closest we get to a species barrier is that if I were to go back in time, say a thousand years in each step, I could meet members of my species. I could successfully reproduce with the humans I met for quite a lot of steps. At some point though, the genetic makeup of the ancestral population would be too different for reproduction to work. Taking an extreme case, I would not be able to breed with the earliest apes. I may, however, be able to breed with human precursors like the Homo erectus, which does raise important questions about where we draw the line on species. The main point here is that I would eventually go back far enough that my own direct ancestors would be too different to breed with me. That doesn't mean there's any single point of speciation, because go forward a thousand years or maybe even just find another ancestor alive at the same time, and I may be able to breed with them.

As someone with east-european ancestry, something like 3% of my DNA can be traced to neanderthals. The rest is from Homo sapiens who lived during the same time, so it's obvious those two species were able to interbreed. For another example you can look at ligers - lion/tiger crossbreeds. There's actually a fair amount of debate as to what constitutes a species and exactly how useful the term is. Personally, I think we should try to find a better framework to describe what is essentially a massive family tree, but as far as I know it's the best we have so far.

>I hope someone reads this who is better educated on the subject then me, and eloquent enough to explain it to me.

I hope I did this right.

>>6563
>how did the Cambrian Explosion occur?
Abundant resources, including room is probably a factor. And biodiversity can be self-reinforcing. The more species there are, the more potential ecological niches there are, and new species with diverge possibly filling those in. Like, you can't have a carnivore without an herbivore and a producer species and you can't have a parasite without a host species. Everything is interdependent, and the more diverse the rest of the ecosystem, the broader the opportunities for species to differentiate.

>Just saying it seems to be unexplained.
So? We'll never have an explanation for everything, but the number of unexplained things will keep shrinking. Why does it matter if we don't know what caused any specific thing?

>>6563

Oh look, explanations in the link you just posted. Maybe you should actually read the fucking article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion#How_real_was_the_explosion

TL;DR the "explosion" was more a rapid evolution towards hard parts, before those evolved animals didn't fossilize so easy so we have a relatively few amount of them compared to their harden progeny.

And evolution doesn't have to take a long time. Sometimes it is really slow, sometimes not. It depends on how rapidly beneficial mutations happen and spread throughout the population. Bacteria produce more than animals so they can evolve more rapidly.

>>6541
>>6552

While I agree with your explanations there is an alternative: humans don't want dogs to evolved beyond what they are. We select in dogs features we want, so if we don't want a feature its bred out or not allowed to be passed on in the first place. If someone really tried I'm sure they could produce a "neo-dog" not capable of reproducing with current ones, but no one wants to.

>>6563
>unexplained

Perhaps you would understand it better if you actually pay attention in high school.

>>6612
>humans don't want dogs to evolved beyond what they are
Evolution does not work this way. A species never transcends anything. They're still whatever they were before. They just acquire new traits, lose traits, or alter traits and eventually the population has changed enough that it can't breed with other descendants of the same ancestors.

But in spirit
>humans don't want dogs to evolved beyond what they are
this is more or less true. Breeders want different breeds to get closer and closer to particular archetypes, but those archetypes are still very much dogs. In the former USSR, there is a subspecies of feral dogs called metro dogs that have evolved to be more like wolves down in the subway, losing the dog-like characteristics. They could probably still breed with dogs. Wolves can. If the separation of household dogs and wolves/metro dogs kept up long enough they would diverge. An important thing that nobody's mentioned yet is environmental stressors. Even if a population is separated for a million years, it won't speciate if the environments aren't different enough to push them in different directions. The only way for that to work is if random mutations occur in one population that are wildly successful, and there would have to be quite a few for the population to change enough to speciate.

>>6634
Are you sure you don't want your dog to go beyond it's limits?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFL5u1X5Dew

>>6847

>How did life originate?

We don't know and this isn't explained by evolution

>How did the DNA code originate?

See above

>How could mutations create huge volumes of information?

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

>Why is natural selection taught as evolution?

Because it's been observed and verified again and again

>How did new biochemical pathways originate?

That's an unknown at this point. However, the Lenksi experiment shows that it in fact can happen

>Living things look like they were designed; how do evolutionists know that they were not designed?

Sorry, what is this based on?

>How did multi-cellular life originate?

Single celled organisms started working together, resulting in an evolutionary advantage

>How did sex originate?

Sexual reproduction allows for more variation than asexual reproduction

>Why are the (expected) countless millions of transitional fossils missing?

There're not

>How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years?

Punctuated equilibrium

>How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality?

How is this even slightly related to the truth value of evolution?

>Why is evolutionary ‘just-so’ story-telling tolerated?

The fact that it's backed up by evidence

>Where are the scientific breakthroughs due to evolution?

Genetics is a massive breakthrough, medicine has benefited massively from evolution and it has allowed for advances in agriculture that feeds millions

>Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as operational science?

See the story-telling question

>If ‘you can’t teach religion in science classes’, why is evolution taught?

Same