G.I.Jim wrote:Arianddu wrote:G.I.Jim wrote:Yep, I have heard about mutations. Now can you give me an example of one of them that survived as long as it's parents and has branched off into something new that could produce it's own offspring that were just as healthy?
1. Anybody with blues eyes. Or green for that matter. Benign mutations that survive within our population with no adverse affect.
2. White mice with pink eyes. Every white mouse on the planet is decended from one single pair of albino mice, twin females from the same litter. We even know who the mice were; they were given to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi as it was believed they were a gift from the divine, and were kept there as sacred animals.
3. Carriers of sickle-cell anemia or thalassemia who live in areas where malaria is endemic. Both are recessive genes, both are fatal if you receive the gene from both parents, both, however, will confer immunity from malaria if you are a carrier, i.e. have the gene from only one parent.
Every single species on earth exists because of mutations that make them different. Not all mutations are harmful. Everything that makes you different from the man standing next to you comes from a mutation in one of your ancestors.
Notice anything about what you just stated? They're still eyes. They didn't grow horns, or wings, or anything else than what was supposed to be present. In order for evolution to be a viable explanation, there HAVE to be examples in nature of something giving birth to something else with different physical traits that show signs of evolving into something different. Do you have any examples?
Sigh. How many times do I have to say it - evolution doesn't work like that. It isn't about a lizard suddenly giving birth to a bird; small changes over time that accumulate in certain populations.
But yeah, I'll give you one. Webbed fingers. Every so often people are born with them. And yes, they do tend to be better swimmers. Who knows, maybe several hundreds of thousands of years in the future, if the ice caps melt and the world floods, the warm shallow waters will be populated by web-handed people.
Did you know rhinocerous horn is actually
not horn, but hair? And that it's not that uncommon for people and animals to have benign tumours made of exactly the same stuff? Did you know that 'real' horn, such as cattle have, is keratin, the same stuff fingernails and hooves are made of. Guess what? Benign keratin tumours aren't that uncommon either. The trick is to get the tumour to grow somewhere, say, on the head, where it might produce a benefit, say, in allowing the animal to better defend itself, thus giving the animal a better chance of survival.
Chance is the optimal word. It's all down to chance. That's why I allow there is room for the possibility of God controlling evolution, even though I don't believe in him/her/them/it; it's all luck and chance. Life is complex enough, and vast enough, for me, as an atheist, to say 'yup, evolution can occur despite the high levels of fortuitous chance, because the statics add up and it can all work'. But I don't have any problem with someone who believes in God saying 'yaknow, that's a hell of a lot of chance occurances, I think God, as an omnipotent, omniescent being controlls it; a being who can simultaneously obsverve where the small nudge here results in something fortiutous happening 90 generations later, that's a God-like way to create life.' I fully accept that as a possibility for how evolution works - but I don't accept it's the only way it could work, and I don't accept that it is proof that God exists.
I certainly don't understand how people can look at the overwhelming variety of life we have, the millions of species and the billions of variations, and then snap their fingers and say 'evolution doesn't exist because of X'. There is plenty of debate about the fine tuning of how it works, but to just say 'nope, God said let it be, and everything was and evolution is totally wrong' - just bewilders me. How can you deny something so miraculous, so amazing, so overwhelmingly elegant and beautiful and say it can't exist because that's not how you want God to have made the world.
Honest truth Jim - if anything is ever going to convince me that there is a higher being, a God, it's going to be evolution. It's a pretty amazing thing, once you start looking at it.
Why treat life as a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in an attractive & well-preserved body? Get there by skidding in sideways, a glass of wine in one hand, chocolate in the other, body totally worn out, screaming WOOHOO! What a ride!
Let me know when you find one. 
