The evidence for evolution

[Dr Jekyll]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIEoO5KdPvg

Contains REALLY interesting fact about Whales and Hippos.

[Dr Jekyll]

I think the problem was that nobody back then appreciated the timescales involved. If you think life is only a few hundred generations old then evolution via survival of the fittest doesn't seem plausible.

[Dr Jekyll]

The Spruce goose said:

Evolution is a word people use easily.

the film is too simplistic, evolution is genetic mutations that offer an natural advantage. Looking at a whale with nostril half way down head is not valid to show evolution, there are much better evolution arguments than this bubblegum science.

Evolution is change, genetic mutations or variation offering a natural advantage is the mechanism.

The point about the ancient Whale with nostrils half way down it's head is that most creatures had nostrils in the conventional position while current Whales have the blowhole on top of the head. So it backs up the idea of current Whales having evolved from animals with conventional arrangements. It's exactly what Darwinian evolution predicts should exist.

[Dr Jekyll]

ATG said:

"Natural" is a supremely useless concept except in travel brochures.

The more closely one examines "species", the less it means. If you are cataloguing life then imposing a scheme like Linnean classification is extremely useful. But where you draw the boundaries between families, species etc is ultimately arbitrary. It's driven by utility, not by discovering fundamental properties.

Botanists in particular are forever rearranging the deck chairs, splitting and joining families, merging species, trying to improve the utility of their classification schemes.

So when thinking about the processes that drive speciation, fixating on "crossing a species boundary" is a near complete waste of time. The boundary is something we arbitrarily impose on the system, it is not an intrinsic property of the system itself.

It'd be like worrying if there was a difference between the chemistry of a cup versus a saucer in the same tea set.

+1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

[Dr Jekyll]

cymtriks said:

Bible studies are required for scientists if scientists keep making errors in their scientific appraisal of the Bible.

In the quotations thread I included:

"I don't need to go to a Star Trek convention to know that Captain Kirk isn't real."

[Dr Jekyll]

There is even one that the Shoreham Hunter crash never happened.