calling evolution just a theory, grants you a legitimate kick in the balls

jverne

jverne

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ok all of you know evolution is not just a theory, but piling up evidence is just a fun thing to do

In 1971 biologists moved 5 adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their island home of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, and introduced them to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has discovered that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo shockingly fast and large-scale evolutionary changes.
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http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/04/scientists-disc.html#more
 
Pretty wide notion of "evolution". Read the comments on the page itself for more info.

But yeah, that's pretty cool :)
 
Amazing how friggin' fast it can go. 36 years is nothing.
 
calling evolution just a theory, grants you a legitimate kick in the balls
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Gravity is still a theory too. It just means a coherent set of relations deduced from physical experience.

Without skeptics and critical thinkers we would still have the sun being pulled around by chariots, so please do not unilaterally force dogmatic views down peoples throats. Sure the evidence backs it up, but the evidence also supported the flat Earth view at the time. And it was people with exactly your attitude (that nobody should think different than me) that kept it that way. It's attitudes like this that do the most damage to scientific progress. And it is far too prevalent among people who are far too little qualified or informed to support the views that they fanatically support.

I'm not condemning evolution, I am condemning your (and other's) attitude about it as well as the attitudes that many people have towards popular issues today like global warming etc.
 
HAH !!! science 12387946123786 - 0 everything else

-dodo
 
Science 0, everything else 0

It's not like the universe cares.
 
Ok so it's
universe - 12387946123786
science - 0
everything else - 0
 
Technically evolution is still a theory. It is, like all things in science, falsifiable.
 
Until they do full genomic sequencing it's unclear how much of that is actually evolution rather than differential expression of genes.
Also it is almost certainly a case of changing frequencies of alleles already present in the population rather than mutation, and founder effect probably comes into it too.
 
It accounts for the genetic material of Eejit personally inseminating all of the female lizards during the course of the study.
 
Catch them and lock them in some freak lab for 50 years. Awesome.
 
Pesmerga said:
Technically evolution is still a theory. It is, like all things in science, falsifiable.
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Evolution will probably be replaced with a better theory in a couple hundred years anyway. Just like gravity (we're still not really sure what gravity is).
 
Well until all physical theories can be reconciled into one single unified model of how the universe works, we can guarantee that they contain some flaws or are incomplete.
 
Depends on your definition of fact, Matt. I do very clearly understand the word theory, and I was not misrepresenting the term at all. Please do not imply otherwise.
 
A fact is a physical observation that is so obvious or well documented that any rational person would accept it. You look up and see that the sky is blue. That is a fact. Evolution is not a fact. Fossil records are facts. You can dig in the ground and see for yourself the fossils. The structure of DNA is a fact. The composition of organic molecules are facts. The existence of animals and humans are facts. Evolution is the theory that explains the relationship of these facts.
 
Dan said:
Gravity is still a theory too. It just means a coherent set of relations deduced from physical experience.

Without skeptics and critical thinkers we would still have the sun being pulled around by chariots, so please do not unilaterally force dogmatic views down peoples throats. Sure the evidence backs it up, but the evidence also supported the flat Earth view at the time. And it was people with exactly your attitude (that nobody should think different than me) that kept it that way. It's attitudes like this that do the most damage to scientific progress. And it is far too prevalent among people who are far too little qualified or informed to support the views that they fanatically support.

I'm not condemning evolution, I am condemning your (and other's) attitude about it as well as the attitudes that many people have towards popular issues today like global warming etc.
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^This.
 
Dan said:
Gravity is still a theory too. It just means a coherent set of relations deduced from physical experience.

Without skeptics and critical thinkers we would still have the sun being pulled around by chariots, so please do not unilaterally force dogmatic views down peoples throats. Sure the evidence backs it up, but the evidence also supported the flat Earth view at the time. And it was people with exactly your attitude (that nobody should think different than me) that kept it that way. It's attitudes like this that do the most damage to scientific progress. And it is far too prevalent among people who are far too little qualified or informed to support the views that they fanatically support.

I'm not condemning evolution, I am condemning your (and other's) attitude about it as well as the attitudes that many people have towards popular issues today like global warming etc.
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Exactly. I tried to have this conversation with some friends the other day, and the only response I could get from them was, "no, those aren't theories, math is real."

:rolleyes:
 
Beerdude26 said:
What is the founder effect?
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Usually it means genetic variation is lost when a small population goes on to found a new colony, resulting in allele fequences atypical for the species in the new colony. Usually.
However in this case it obviously means:

Dan said:
It accounts for the genetic material of Eejit personally inseminating all of the female lizards during the course of the study.
Click to expand...
 
Dan said:
A fact is a physical observation that is so obvious or well documented that any rational person would accept it. You look up and see that the sky is blue. That is a fact. Evolution is not a fact. Fossil records are facts. You can dig in the ground and see for yourself the fossils. The structure of DNA is a fact. The composition of organic molecules are facts. The existence of animals and humans are facts. Evolution is the theory that explains the relationship of these facts.
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Evolution is a fact as it has been observed in action in the wild numerous times. Its natural selection that's the theory that describes the biggest influence on how evolution occurs. Sorry to be so pedantic. :p
 
Dan said:
Gravity is still a theory too. It just means a coherent set of relations deduced from physical experience.

Without skeptics and critical thinkers we would still have the sun being pulled around by chariots, so please do not unilaterally force dogmatic views down peoples throats. Sure the evidence backs it up, but the evidence also supported the flat Earth view at the time. And it was people with exactly your attitude (that nobody should think different than me) that kept it that way. It's attitudes like this that do the most damage to scientific progress. And it is far too prevalent among people who are far too little qualified or informed to support the views that they fanatically support.

I'm not condemning evolution, I am condemning your (and other's) attitude about it as well as the attitudes that many people have towards popular issues today like global warming etc.
Click to expand...

you're being an ass.

you know exactly what i meant. i explicitly said "JUST A THEORY". arguing about grammar here is not constructive.

yes i know science is based mostly on models of the universe. and models tend to change. but evolution is currently scientifically unchallenged, and i'm sure it wont be totally discarded in the future.

who's forcing you to believe what i believe? but you better keep your mouth shut if you don't plan to offer me a better solution. arguing for the sake of probability won't yield any results.

oh and i don't think that flat earth was really a scientifically based idea. it was more of a myth based on some halfassed story, there was a greek who made some calculations to prove the earth was round, i think he made a mistake of about 500km, which is nothing compared to what tools he had. and that was way before the rise of Abrahamic religions.
 
Do you ever get tired of this same old argument over and over? I personally think we should have a section of the forum dedicated to religious squander because we seem to be getting them weekly.
 
Shift said:
Do you ever get tired of this same old argument over and over? I personally think we should have a section of the forum dedicated to religious squander because we seem to be getting them weekly.
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Until you posted the only mention of religion was with regards to flat earth. Which nobody here argues about, ever. It's a universally flamed idea.
 
The thread title, at least, is true. Calling evolution just a theory is obviously silly*.

*unless you are trying to draw attention to the philosophical instability of all knowledge. Whatever.
 
AFAIK you can't prove it - you can't prove anything, but only discover mounting evidence until the point that there is far too much for any real counter-argument, excepting the discovery of new and contradictory evidence. You can't ever prove something definitively, but only make it more likely - or disprove it.

'AFAIK' because my discipline is most certainly the wishy-washy world of literature and humanities, rather than the hard fist of science. Although, interestingly enough, most of the religious people in my college are those doing technical or scientific degrees.
 
there is a specie ofbird in the galapagos that evolves acording to the season of some plants

when pant whit big seeds start brooding that specie is born whit a big beak able to crack the seeds

and them when plant whit litle fruits or something like that start brooding newborns are born whit little agile beaks and the big beaked one die for starvation

and then when the big seeds plants brood then the big beaked eat and the others die and vice versa
 
Just this argument is simply impending our own destruction.
Universe- Infinity
Us- 0
Evolutionists- -1
Creationists- -1
Stephen Colbert - 1
So, why don't we all just play video games and make the most of the time we have?
 
^- secretly an aoplogist creationist who doesnt want to hear the LIES!!!!


GOD MADE EVERYTHING IN EXACTLY 8 DAYS!!! ...unfortunately the bible's writers mistranslated the divine word of god to mean there are 7 days in a week ..they inadvertedly dropped Caturday


and the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu...
 
[Matt] said:
Evolution is a fact as it has been observed in action in the wild numerous times. Its natural selection that's the theory that describes the biggest influence on how evolution occurs. Sorry to be so pedantic. :p
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Err... no, you've got it all backwards. Evolution has not actually been observed in the span of recent human history. What you see when animals adapt is just different expressions of the genes they already had. We have never seen a new species separate itself from another species. Thats why all the different types of dogs out there can (and do) have sex with each other (size allowing). They are all still the same species despite being bred to appear drastically different.

Natural selection is simply a restatement of the fundamental logic that governs the universe. Natural selection states that things that aren't good at existing, cease to exist while things that are capable of continued existence continue to exist. Thus the measure of how good something is at existing is whether it exists or not. It is an abstract principle based on pure logic and not debatable.

Natural selection was coined because it provides an explanation for how random mutations might be guided to produce life that is best suited for continued existence.
 
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