Evolution - is it real?

[underwhelmist]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Yes, I get what you mean, and I agree, as we are both backing the same dog in this fight. Although just to be contrary, I would point out that animals with 4 legs, floppy ears and that go woof are largely the product of unnatural selection, i.e they have only exist due to selective breeding by humans. I'm no expert of canine evolution, but I think if you go back just a very short time in evolutionary terms, say 15k years, all we had was wolves. Then a couple of unusually tame wolves were adopted by humans and that bred even tamer wolves, and we were off and running. Now we have chihuahuas and great danes, as a result of selective breeding.

I'm sure I've banged on about it before, but just in case...Professor Alice Roberts wrote a book called Tamed which covers how all dogs are descended from European Grey Wolves (or did they domesticate us?), how we came to be so fond of apples, wheat, the domestication of cattle, etc. It's a fascinating read, highly recommended.

[AW111]

underwhelmist said:

I'm sure I've banged on about it before, but just in case...Professor Alice Roberts wrote a book called Tamed which covers how all dogs are descended from European Grey Wolves (or did they domesticate us?), how we came to be so fond of apples, wheat, the domestication of cattle, etc. It's a fascinating read, highly recommended.

It would be more accurate to say that dogs share a common ancestor with wolves.
Wolves kept evolving after the split, although they're still pretty close to the common ancestor.

[Nimby]

There seems to be some debate about whether domesticated dogs and wolves are separate species. As they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring current opinion seems to be they are the same species.

[ATG]

Nimby said:

There seems to be some debate about whether domesticated dogs and wolves are separate species. As they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring current opinion seems to be they are the same species.

The boundary between species is fairly arbitrary. The more precisely one tries to compartmentalise what is actually a lumpy continuum, the less important the distinctions become. I spent a bit of time with some botanists plant-spotting, and it sounded like the "is it a species?" question was orders of magnitudes worse in the plant kingdom compared to the animals.

[Nimby]

ATG said:

The boundary between species is fairly arbitrary. The more precisely one tries to compartmentalise what is actually a lumpy continuum, the less important the distinctions become. I spent a bit of time with some botanists plant-spotting, and it sounded like the "is it a species?" question was orders of magnitudes worse in the plant kingdom compared to the animals.

Ring species make defining a species even more tricky (but good evidence for evolution nevertheless).

[Caddyshack]

underwhelmist said:

I'm sure I've banged on about it before, but just in case...Professor Alice Roberts wrote a book called Tamed which covers how all dogs are descended from European Grey Wolves

Thanks, just got the book on audible.

[Gnits]

The good ole 'does it breed' concept did kind of die a death in biology a while back. Given that a Daschund and a Great Dane are not going to be having pups any time soon but a Tiger and a Lion can produce fertile young.
As mentioned it is a lumpy contiuum. Some humans can't have kids, are they still human? Oooh lizard people is the only explanation!

[Johnnytheboy]

AW111 said:

Can we get away from pointless religion bashing and back to evolution please.

General question on this point:

I wonder how many people who reject the concept of evolution are also atheists?

I'm guessing if this was a venn diagram, it would be two circles with virtually no overlap.

[standards]

Johnnytheboy said:

General question on this point:

I wonder how many people who reject the concept of evolution are also atheists?

I'm guessing if this was a venn diagram, it would be two circles with virtually no overlap.

I’m guessing you might find some in Glastonbury

[ATG]

Nimby said:

ATG said:

The boundary between species is fairly arbitrary. The more precisely one tries to compartmentalise what is actually a lumpy continuum, the less important the distinctions become. I spent a bit of time with some botanists plant-spotting, and it sounded like the "is it a species?" question was orders of magnitudes worse in the plant kingdom compared to the animals.

Ring species make defining a species even more tricky (but good evidence for evolution nevertheless).

Interesting! Hadn't come across that before.

[ATG]

Johnnytheboy said:

AW111 said:

Can we get away from pointless religion bashing and back to evolution please.

General question on this point:

I wonder how many people who reject the concept of evolution are also atheists?

I'm guessing if this was a venn diagram, it would be two circles with virtually no overlap.

People with a rather naive grasp of religion might have a problem with Evolution or Natural Selection, but in much the same way as it isn't particularly interesting or enlightening to listen to the scientific opinion of people with a naive grasp of science, it's also not very enlightening or interesting to listen the opinion of religionists who have a naive grasp of religion.

Only half jokingly, the kind of crazy st some theoretical physicist believe or suggest is possible is no more philosophically daunting than wondering if there might be some Prime Mover setting up the rules of the game and then freeing the ball to roll down hill. My prejudices tell me they're out of their gourds too. But like sophisticated religionists, they aren't thick either, nor are their ideas trivially dismissible.

[Johnnytheboy]

My point was I assume that a resistance to the idea of evolution is almost always coming from a feeling that it contradicts your religious belief.

If you don't believe in any god and you are smart enough to have given evolution any thought, I'd be interested to know how you arrived an opinion that you didn't believe in it.

[M5-911]

Nimby said:

ATG said:

The boundary between species is fairly arbitrary. The more precisely one tries to compartmentalise what is actually a lumpy continuum, the less important the distinctions become. I spent a bit of time with some botanists plant-spotting, and it sounded like the "is it a species?" question was orders of magnitudes worse in the plant kingdom compared to the animals.

Ring species make defining a species even more tricky (but good evidence for evolution nevertheless).

Confusing when in the same article you have:

"Ring species represent speciation and have been cited as evidence of evolution."


"However, it is unclear whether any of the examples of ring species cited by scientists actually permit gene flow from end to end, with many being debated and contested."

"Many examples have been documented in nature. Debate exists concerning much of the research, with some authors citing evidence against their existence entirely."

"Many examples have been disputed by researchers, and equally "many of the [proposed] cases have received very little attention from researchers, making it difficult to assess whether they display the characteristics of ideal ring species."

[Nimby]

I see you carefully snipped the sentence
" The following examples provide evidence that—despite the limited number of concrete, idealized examples in nature—continuums of species do exist and can be found in biological systems." and a long list I won't paste here.

[Toltec]

M5-911 said:

Confusing when in the same article you have:

"Ring species represent speciation and have been cited as evidence of evolution."


"However, it is unclear whether any of the examples of ring species cited by scientists actually permit gene flow from end to end, with many being debated and contested."

"Many examples have been documented in nature. Debate exists concerning much of the research, with some authors citing evidence against their existence entirely."

"Many examples have been disputed by researchers, and equally "many of the [proposed] cases have received very little attention from researchers, making it difficult to assess whether they display the characteristics of ideal ring species."

Wikipedia so you probably need to check who has edited which parts of it to see if the contradictions have a source.

[dickymint]

Steamer said:

Have you ever visited the Forest of Dean area?...

..You may well find a lot of your questions answered.

If you are ever there do NOT mention "the bear"

[Upinflames]

Johnnytheboy said:

My point was I assume that a resistance to the idea of evolution is almost always coming from a feeling that it contradicts your religious belief.

If you don't believe in any god and you are smart enough to have given evolution any thought, I'd be interested to know how you arrived an opinion that you didn't believe in it.

If you didn't believe in god and then you weighed up the evidence and decided evolution didn't make sense then you'd have to be looking at creation somehow else.

And that's going to end with little green men.

[Upinflames]

Joe Rogan's podcast with Katt Williams prompted this thread revival, don't know if anyone has had a listen

[ATG]

Upinflames said:

Johnnytheboy said:

My point was I assume that a resistance to the idea of evolution is almost always coming from a feeling that it contradicts your religious belief.

If you don't believe in any god and you are smart enough to have given evolution any thought, I'd be interested to know how you arrived an opinion that you didn't believe in it.

If you didn't believe in god and then you weighed up the evidence and decided evolution didn't make sense then you'd have to be looking at creation somehow else.

And that's going to end with little green men.

Or you might think that time is a loop as that side steps needing there to have been a start. Things can always have been. Depending on how much evidence you're prepared to ignore, you might decide that Tunas, boiled sweets and Raleigh Choppers are eternal as the time loop's earliest point is 3rd March 1978 which also happens to be its latest point in, say, 27th Feb 2367. That gives us a few centuries to somehow restore a bunch of extinct species and decide flares trousers are cool and for the population in 2367 to somehow be identical to that in 1978 and to forget their lives and replace it with a delusion that they were born in the 20th C. If this feels "a bit contrived", the trick is to monkey around with entropy so that information seems to have got lost so the looping point is homogeneous and boring. Some people have constructed theories that are a bit like this in order to avoid needing a magic Big Bang that had no cause and to avoid having to contemplate the universe fizzling out into perpetual heat death.

[Upinflames]

Wow. Maybe need a younger dryas to erase memory before the cycle starts again