[ASkolnick]

Trust me, I am not a bible expert or even a creationist at all. My only point is that Creationism (if not taken literally) and Evolution can co-exist together as a theory.

Also, let's assume through a series of mutations that a new "species" is born. Who gets to categorize it as a new species? Theoretically, if they started from the same population, couldn't they not be grouped based on their starting point and not their evolved form. I'm not saying they are, but somebody decided this is how they should be grouped.

I can start with a horse and donkey coming up with a mule. Let's say the mules can then reproduce (yes, I know they can't). There is nothing to say you could not group together horses and donkeys as the same species. Call this group Hornkeys.

If in the bible there were 100 (don't know the number off hand) groups listed, it is possible to use a different taxonomy then the one created to create those groups.

[helene_t]

ASkolnick, on Jan 8 2009, 06:17 PM, said:

If in the bible there were 100 (don't know the number off hand) groups listed, it is possible to use a different taxonomy then the one created to create those groups.

Good point, but there is probably only one group, then, since all life is probably related. Maybe some microorganisms are not related to us but it is beyond doubt that plants, animals and funghi are related (the group is called eucaryotes).

[naresh301]

I find the application of Occam's razor to this discussion quite strange. Doesn't one have to believe in Occam's razor, similar to believing in Intelligent Design? Can someone scientifically justify why Occam's razor should be true at all?

[TimG]

ASkolnick, on Jan 8 2009, 12:17 PM, said:

Also, let's assume through a series of mutations that a new "species" is born. Who gets to categorize it as a new species? Theoretically, if they started from the same population, couldn't they not be grouped based on their starting point and not their evolved form. I'm not saying they are, but somebody decided this is how they should be grouped.

What does it matter how "species" is defined? What is important is that living things evolve through natural selection.

I think the example of a horse and a donkey misses the point by quite a bit. The evolution of species is not usually the result of inter-species breeding, but rather slow change through intra-species breeding.

I also think that our conception of time is such that it is very hard for people to understand what millions of years mean.

[mikeh]

ASkolnick, on Jan 8 2009, 12:17 PM, said:

Trust me, I am not a bible expert or even a creationist at all.  My only point is that Creationism (if not taken literally) and Evolution can co-exist together as a theory.

Also, let's assume through a series of mutations that a new "species" is born.  Who gets to categorize it as a new species?  Theoretically, if they started from the same population, couldn't they not be grouped based on their starting point and not their evolved form. I'm not saying they are, but somebody decided this is how they should be grouped.

I can start with a horse and donkey coming up with a mule.  Let's say the mules can then reproduce (yes, I know they can't).  There is nothing to say you could not group together horses and donkeys as the same species.  Call this group Hornkeys.

If in the bible there were 100 (don't know the number off hand) groups listed, it is possible to use a different taxonomy then the one created to create those groups.

The very concepts of species or taxonomy are man-made.. they are intellectual devices that were created in order to allow for some logical means of describing the world. And the placement of 'species' within families or clades was originally done based on macroscopic similarities, since macroscopic examination was all that was available, and, moreover, the general concepts still in use today were created before evolution through natural selection was developed as a theory.

Genetic analysis has resulted in a number of reclassifications, and a much better understanding of variability within as well as between 'species'..

'Nature', which is not a conscious entity, and 'evolution', which is a mechanism rather than a thinking entity, don't 'care' about species.. but we humans like to have neat categorizations... we tend to forget about the blurring that often occurs at the boundaries.. think about our perception of colour.. the visible spectrum is a continuum of wavelengths... yet we have distinct names for the primary colours.

[Al_U_Card]

AFAIK Occam's razor has to do with energetic conformances. The most stable equilibrium is the one that occupies the state of least potential energy (or thereabouts). Thus, the obvious answer is the real one IFF it meets the criteria associated with the inquiry (not Ben specifically but perhaps generally...lol)

Kind of like asking: "How did we get here?" and answering; "It was in the direction that we were going..."

[helene_t]

mikeh, on Jan 8 2009, 06:46 PM, said:

'Nature', which is not a conscious entity, and 'evolution', which is a mechanism rather than a thinking entity, don't 'care' about species..

Well, ring-species and other curiosities nonwithstanding, the clustering of contemporary, sexually reproducing organisms into "species" is generally a real phenomena. This is because as long as all the organisms in a group can reproduce mutually they will tend to do so and thereby prevent their genomes from drifting apart. Once they split into subgroups that are not mutually sexually compatible, they will drift apart.

In an evolutionary context you are correct though, and for non-sexual organisms the concept of "species" is arbitrary.

Al said:

AFAIK Occam's razor has to do with energetic conformances.

Lol, the chemist's interpretation
As a statistician I would day that it is the idea that among equally well-fitting models one should chose the one with the fewest parameters.

[barmar]

There's almost never a moment when a new species is "born", that's simply not how evolution works. No offspring is ever in a different species than its parent. It takes an accumulation of mutations over a number of generations before you can declare that an organism is in a different species than its great-great-great-...-grandparents.

That's why the ring species example is so useful. Each group is able to reproduce with its immediate neighbors, although they generally prefer not to, which keeps them distinct. But as you go further around the ring, compatibility drops.

[Al_U_Card]

helene_t, on Jan 8 2009, 06:10 PM, said:

Al said:

AFAIK Occam's razor has to do with energetic conformances.

Lol, the chemist's interpretation
As a statistician I would day that it is the idea that among equally well-fitting models one should chose the one with the fewest parameters.

Well, at least my university degree served a useful purpose...(3rd time this life...lol).

The cross pollination of our disciplines (physical chemistry) might be somewhere in the middle...

[Fluffy]

mikeh, on Jan 8 2009, 04:47 PM, said:

If your answer is that God always existed and that these questions are meaningless.... consider.... I would argue that perhaps it is the universe that has always existed, in the sense that time did not exist BEFORE the universe came into existence.

I remember this discussion before, if universe always existed, the only thing that makes sense to me is that time is cyclic, and at some point the universe will return to every state it has.

The idea of having to live my life making the same stupid mistakes infinite times is not very appealing, but gladly Gerben told me that this is not true, there is randomness in the universe, and not everything is predictable (I don't understand this. It looks contradictory with the way I see time, but Gerben knows more than me, and it also makes a kind of sense, since otherwise after big bang I would had bet the universe would be symetric).


If god has left us after creating the universe, I don't know. Maybe. When I see my sister playing SIMs, I feel like she is the God of that micro universe.

There are many questions with no answer, why not 5 dimensional space?, why gravitatios attracts and not the contrary?, why these sets of physic laws and not some others?, are they arbitrary?, designed?. But anyway the strongest one to make me believe something is out-there still is: why the universe exists?.

[mikeh]

Fluffy, on Jan 8 2009, 07:33 PM, said:

mikeh, on Jan 8 2009, 04:47 PM, said:

If your answer is that God always existed and that these questions are meaningless.... consider.... I would argue that perhaps it is the universe that has always existed, in the sense that time did not exist BEFORE the universe came into existence.

I remember this discussion before, if universe always existed, the only thing that makes sense to me is that time is cyclic, and at some point the universe will return to every state it has.

The idea of having to live my life making the same stupid mistakes infinite times is not very appealing, but gladly Gerben told me that this is not true, there is randomness in the universe, and not everything is predictable (I don't understand this. It looks contradictory with the way I see time, but Gerben knows more than me, and it also makes a kind of sense, since otherwise after big bang I would had bet the universe would be symetric).


If god has left us after creating the universe, I don't know. Maybe. When I see my sister playing SIMs, I feel like she is the God of that micro universe.

There are many questions with no answer, why not 5 dimensional space?, why gravitatios attracts and not the contrary?, why these sets of physic laws and not some others?, are they arbitrary?, designed?. But anyway the strongest one to make me believe something is out-there still is: why the universe exists?.

At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam... if there is something still out there... what is it? And how does it work.. where did IT come from, why does it exist... don't you see that using 'it' as the 'explanation' for 'us' simply pushes the questions out another step? You are answering the ultimate questions by invoking ultimate causes that require further explanation.. that is NOT how occam's razor works

[Al_U_Card]

Hopefully, we know that we are here. (Subjective but reasonable)

We are also able to determine the "existence" of a state of nothingness. (Perhaps an illusion but one that we can use as a reference.)

Since we "know" that opposites cancel one another (in the mathematical sense) then the presence of nothingness indicates that both opposites may be present. Thus, our presence is indicative of some "other" and opposite presence.

Sometimes Occam has a beard, sometimes not.

[Fluffy]

I see your point now mike.

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on Jan 6 2009, 06:18 PM, said:

PassedOut, on Jan 5 2009, 09:28 PM, said:

luke warm, on Jan 5 2009, 06:19 PM, said:

that doesn't help me, helene... why are they not two separate processes? my understanding, which may be flawed, is that macroevolution is that which results in a new species while micro- is that which results in changes within a species... as i said, my understanding may be incorrect... i'm sure someone will correct me as needed

Doesn't the information about "ring species" demonstrate nicely how new species evolve?

i'll have to read the link provided, i haven't done so yet

I noticed you've been reading Pravda, and I was wondering if you had taken the time yet to read about ring species.

[luke warm]

i read the pravda article at work and am now on my sis in laws computer... mine should be repaired soon... btw, i wasn't aware that viruses can affect hardware, does anyone know how that's possible?

[gwnn]

They can misconfigure, overuse/misuse your hard disk. I.e. make the little reader thingies (not sure what they're called) go faster than it can go I think. Then it breaks.

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on Jan 14 2009, 07:14 PM, said:

i read the pravda article at work and am now on my sis in laws computer... mine should be repaired soon... btw, i wasn't aware that viruses can affect hardware, does anyone know how that's possible?

Sorry about your computer.

I'd like to see some of the jerks who infect others' computers with viruses going to jail for a long time.

[Fluffy]

Certain sequence of commands to your graphics card might burn it. At the university they explaned this as some of the worst things that could happen if you execute data instead of code.

[jtfanclub]

helene_t, on Jan 5 2009, 12:29 PM, said:

ASkolnick, on Jan 5 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

1) when is the last time we have seen a species "evolve" into a new species?

It happens gradually.

Think of an experiment: you have a bucket with yellow paint. You add a droplet of red paint to it and stir. Which color is it now? Still yellow of course, you can't notice the difference with the naked eye. What color does it have after you have added a million droplets? Red, obviously. Maybe it was "orange" after 100,000 droplets. Suppose someone asks you: have we ever seen a single droplet changing the color of the paint? No, we haven't. None of the one million droplets left the paint in a qualitatively different color than it was before.

Well, let's go with chomosone pairs.

We have 23 pairs. Fish don't. Frogs don't. I fail to see how you can 'gradually' go from 23 pairs to 24. What, the species has for a while 23 1/2 pairs?

While species may be vague, as far as I know the number of chromosones is not. So name a case where a species with one number of chromosones became a different species with a different number.

[hrothgar]

jtfanclub, on Jan 15 2009, 07:04 PM, said:

Well, let's go with chomosone pairs.

We have 23 pairs. Fish don't. Frogs don't. I fail to see how you can 'gradually' go from 23 pairs to 24. What, the species has for a while 23 1/2 pairs?

While species may be vague, as far as I know the number of chromosones is not. So name a case where a species with one number of chromosones became a different species with a different number.

http://www.gate.net/..._ape_chrom.html is a good starting point