Jamie Wroe said:
DanDeFool said:
Yes, I was aware of these facts. My point (which was my advisor's point, I guess) is that it might take a million years to see a bacteria evolve into a paramecium, or to get a dog to evolve into a porpoise. Also, I don't know of any experiments that have been able to get single-celled life forms out of component chemicals.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not an evolution-basher by any stretch of the imagination. I just agree that evolution can't be tested like, say, theories about electromagnetism or gravity, and that limits how definitively we can say that we understand the underlying processes.
But my point is that while we can't see the actual process we can see it's effects. If we then look at the massive changes we can observe in the fossil records as well as the fact we know how old these fossils are we can make very good estimates about when species diverged and what they diverged into. This correlates very nicely with the DNA evidence. I don't know what else you want, we can observe evolution on the small scale, and extrapolate from that the large scale (for large organisms) and for bacteria we can observe large changes in relatively short time frames.
Add to that we can see evidence of large scale evolution in DNA, fossils and human domestication of animals. Darwin made prediction about how his theory could be strengthened, but more importantly how it could be falsified. He has been right so far, every single fossil we dig up strengthens his argument and more and more often intermediate stages of supposedly 'irreducibly complex systems' are found in nature or fossils.
I agree. This is why I am not an evolution basher.
BECAUSE we can't confirm evolution through direct experimentation, we must instead observe evidence for evolution in existing life forms, in the fossil record, and in how living things respond to environmental pressures. The fact that we have never observed speciation itself is a relatively minor concern, as far as I am concerned.
Interesting aside, I recently heard (while listening to a recording of a college [possibly ivy league] professor talking tangentially about genetics) that plants have the ability to shuffle their DNA to create entirely new proteins, and that (apparently) this is also a key capability of the human immune system. Evolution happening at the speed of infection. Cool stuff.
Also, I think that the "irreducibly complex systems" argument is pure malarkey, in much the same way that the "DNA forming by chance is so improbable that you'd have to wait for longer than the predicted lifespan of the universe for it to happen" argument is.
I'm not even a chemist, and I understand that much. I suppose it is a testament to the ignorance of... many people--I guess--that the theory of specified complexity can persist.
The first is something that takes far too long for humans to have collected any significant data on it, the second is something that has noticeable impact between single generations of creatures and is undeniably a part of everyday life, simply looking at things like farm animals and dog breeds.
