Poll: Do you support evolution?

[Silvanus]

I once worked as a staff assistant for a research professor in theoretical physical chemistry. He actually forbade his team from using the word "indicate" and "imply" in any paper submitted for peer-review. His reasoning: The data either supports the claim or it does not. To infer additional meaning from the data is dubious at best and dishonest at worst.

So, once again, the scientific method can only state that there is no objective evidence for the existence of a supreme deity. It cannot prove that such a deity does not exist.

I don't think your research professor would like the idea that, if no data whatsoever supported a claim, that claim nevertheless had greater-than-negligible probability.

So, once again, there is negligible probability that a deity exists.

 

[TK421]

I think evolution is absolutely idiotic. The idea that everything happened by pure chance in just the right way seems much less believable to me than the idea that someone more powerful than any of us created it all.

 

[Frission]

I think evolution is absolutely idiotic. The idea that everything happened by pure chance in just the right way seems much less believable to me than the idea that someone more powerful than any of us created it all.

That's not evolution at all. No one cares about what role god did or did not have in it. God simply does not matter in either side of evolution, despite what fundamentalists or what militant atheists (whatever that means) have said.

I'll repeat what I already wrote:

(1) Variation exists in natural population

(2) This variation affects survival (& fertility)

(3) This variation is inherited

(4) Therefore, those that survive are more likely (than
the original average) to possess traits that enhance
survival

(5) Therefore, through time, species evolve traits that
best help them to survive in their environment

If you acknowledge 1, 2 and 3 to be true, them 4 and 5 must take place. That is evolution, extremely abridged.

Someone said something about how evolution doesn't always seem to better a species. That is because evolution works through two ways:

Random production of new gene variation. Otherwise known as mutation.
Nonrandom retention (survival) of some of the new gene variants, otherwise known as Natural Selection .

Mutations just tinker, not improve and according to Kimura, most mutations are neutral.

So there is no "just the right way". We are not a perfect template. We are one of many species in a phylogenetic tree.

OT: A good argument I found against "but think about the odds", is that probability is not proof of divine inspiration.
The unlikeliness of having a liveable troposphere and having a planet in the right range to be habitable for life is very unlikely, yet I hope that doesn't mean that you say the earth couldn't possibly have gone through geophysical global cooling "because of the chance".

There is no "chance" about this. What do you mean by chance?

People too ignorant to believe in evolution fail to successfully raise children to sexual maturity. I don't see the problem here. Natural selection does sometimes work even for our coddled and sheltered species.

Social Darwinism, a gigantic misunderstanding of evolution. Well seeing your other posts, you can believe what you want.

You are effectively allowed to not know. Ignorance of a subject matter is not a crime, but it's important to understand that something as major as evolution is not a "piddly little thing". If school systems don't properly teach people, you're going to raise a generation of idiots. If an elected official can't understand as something as simple as evolution, how will they deal with the challenges of climate change or genetics, which will be bigger issues in the future?

You don't care though? Good for you, it's a much healthier lifestyle. I'm not going to breathe down the necks of people if they keep their misconceptions to themselves, but when ignorant people have power, then it's unacceptable for them to be ignorant and proud of it.

 

[Yopaz]

Also moths don't evolve to change colour in response to the environment. There needs to be moths with the specific colour scheme (or moths with seasonal changes as a part of their genes). The moths that have the advantageous phenotype will grow in numbers due to natural selection.

Bzzt! Wrong. Evolution consists of natural variation in offspring coupled with natural selection for those that best fit the environment/interact with other organisms in that environment. What you just described *IS* evolution.

Variation in moths. Natural selection for those moths that best fit the environment who go on to have offspring that are more likely to be like their parents. The gene pool (of the species/pool of organisms) has thus shuffled. That's evolution.

Yes, what I described is evolution I never claimed it wasn't.

I merely claimed that this was wrong.

moths evolve to change color when air quality changes the color of the trees they rest on.

This is wrong because they don't evolve to change their colour. The colour is already present, but due to natural selection the phenotype will increase in that population. This is evolution, your way of putting it is wrong.
You put it in a way that made it seem like evolution has a purpose rather than using it as an explanation of why things are. That is in fact one of the biggest misconceptions in evolution.

You clearly don't know evolution as well as you think you do, yet you have the audacity to tell others they have no right to speak unless they read up on it... I'll leave it at that.

I never said it had a purpose. Natural selection favors existing some mutated alleles over others. Accumulated damage or (semi-)random events provides the mutations. As to telling people they should read up on it I was correct in doing so. I did however make an error when I was responding to you. In reading comprehension of your reply to someone else, not in terms of the science. So I owe you an apology for that.

Again you misinterpret what I am saying here.

I didn't say you think evolution has a purpose I said your phrasing gives off the IMPRESSION that evolution has a purpose.

You also treat evolution as a mechanism rather than a process. This is a quite serious misunderstanding.

Your wording shows off knowledge of the basic principles with lack of any deeper understanding. You might not believe this, you might never admit it, but please, try to be more respectful to people who share your lack of understanding rather than fend them off and saying they have no right to voice their opinion. You think you understand it, but I'd say you've misunderstood a lot. Does that mean you don't have the right to voice your opinion before you get a degree in it? How can we be sure we understand something if we only got our own belief that we understand it?

I'm not asking you to admit you phrased your statement incorrectly, I'm not asking you to read up on it. I'm simply asking you to be more respectful, is this really an impossible task to you?

 

[zombiejoe]

Why not both?

I see myself as a religious man, but I believe in evolution too. I've heard it argued that the Bible's creation story, in a sense, still works. The universe is created, then planets, then animals, then man.

You don't actually think the "days" mentioned are 24 hour days, right?

 

[BrassButtons]

I think evolution is absolutely idiotic. The idea that everything happened by pure chance in just the right way seems much less believable to me than the idea that someone more powerful than any of us created it all.

That's not what evolution is, though. The individual changes can happen by pure chance (noting that "can" does not mean "do"--there is more involved than chance) but whether or not they stick around is the result of selection pressures. Those changes that survive the selection process stick around, and are built upon with future changes.

For a rough analogy, imagine you're playing a game of Gin Rummy. The cards are shuffled ahead of time, so your hand should be completely random. Additionally, the cards you draw from the deck should be completely random. But the entire process isn't random. There are selection pressures at work. You don't just keep and discard cards willy-nilly--you keep cards that improve the "fitness" of your hand (those that get you closer to having the sets you want) while discarding those that don't improve the fitness of your hand. The end result is something orderly, even though part of the process was random.

Evolution doesn't have an intelligence guiding it, of course, but it still has selection pressures. Instead of those pressures taking the form of an intelligent being guiding things in a particular direction, they take the form of things like predators and mate selection.

 

[Dinwatr]

I think evolution is absolutely idiotic. The idea that everything happened by pure chance in just the right way seems much less believable to me than the idea that someone more powerful than any of us created it all.

You obviously don't know what evolution is.

Briefly put, evolution is the non-renewable survival of randomly varying heritable traits. That "non-random survival" bit is the important part. Life in fact DIDN'T happen by pure chance in just the right way. Life has undergone an enormously long period of refinement, and refinements upon the process of refinement. The fossil record shows that process in far more detail than almost anyone outside paleontology imagines, as does DNA, morphology, and a number of other fields. The selection pressures can be determined mathematically, and can be used to predict what will happen in the future in individual lineages (medicine does this constantly; it's how we predict what flu vaccines we need).

I once worked as a staff assistant for a research professor in theoretical physical chemistry. He actually forbade his team from using the word "indicate" and "imply" in any paper submitted for peer-review. His reasoning: The data either supports the claim or it does not. To infer additional meaning from the data is dubious at best and dishonest at worst.

As a scientist, I hvae to say I find this mentality absurd to the point of being moronic (I'd have said something else, but he called me dishonest, so no holds barred far as I'm concerned). Case in point: At my current job, I'm finding fossils eroding out of hillsides. This implies that there are more fossils in said hills. It supports the idea that there are fossils, but it certainly doesn't prove anything (fossil hunting is a matter of luck as much as anything else). The word "implies" is accurate--the support of the conclusion is an argument via implication, and not terribly strong.

To remove such a useful word from our vocabulary reduces our ability to have a meaningful discussion. I just can't see the sense of it.

 

[scw55]

This is a no-brainer. Yes, based of the evidence we have, evolution is indeed a thing.
Like climate change.

Like Rabbits eat crops and their numbers are kept at a healthy level through predating Foxes.

And there isn't enough evidence to suggest Badgers transmit TB to Cows.

And humans are killing a significant more amount of song birds per year through habitat destruction than domesticated cat.

Why not both?

I see myself as a religious man, but I believe in evolution too. I've heard it argued that the Bible's creation story, in a sense, still works. The universe is created, then planets, then animals, then man.

You don't actually think the "days" mentioned are 24 hour days, right?

I have thought about the Bible myself. It contains a lot of 'strange facts' and odd things. And I thought, that if you took it from a abstract and metaphorical point of view, it would then fit. But then I realised, you ended up having a very abstract and vague narrative of events that actually don't say anything.

To me, Adam and Eve could simply be the first Judaeans. And the Garden of Eden was just a nice part of the countryside. You then get into the interesting realm of implied incest. I need to read the Bible again.

(I'm agnostic)

 

[Silvanus]

Actually, he was a Bible-thumper from the Mid-West.

Ah! I admit defeat (& surprise), then.

I really must stop assuming atheism of scientists. It's something I've been called out on before.

 

[piinyouri]

For the record, I do support evolution. As long as I have the evo points to get those awesome jaws and the tail that let's me jump higher than a frightened armadillo.

Spoiler

 

[AnarchistFish]

You can believe in both God and Evolution.