Debunking Creationism

[emmiedahl]

Someone suggested this topic on another thread. So here it is. Post your arguments against evolution (or someone else's) and let's shred them.

I didn't see a similar thread, so feel free to combine if there is one.

I'll get you started. MYTH: there is no "Missing Link" between early primates and modern humans.

[celestial]

"If humans evolved, why aren't we still evolving?"

[debrand]

Question. Is there a difference between evolution and adaptation? My husband works with a man who says that he doesn't believe in evolution but believes that living things adapt. Isn't that a part of evolution?

[debrand]

"If humans evolved, why aren't we still evolving?"

We are still evolving. Evolution is very gradual. I don't think that most people(I can't) grasp the length of time that scientists are talking about.

[celestial]

Here's an article that speaks to emmie's missing link issue:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... found.html

And to my "still evolving" issue:

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/hu ... -evolution

[emmiedahl]

Question. Is there a difference between evolution and adaptation? My husband works with a man who says that he doesn't believe in evolution but believes that living things adapt. Isn't that a part of evolution?

I am supposed to be studying for a test right now so I will only tackle one question. This is a very easy one! Adaptation is the underlying principle of evolution. Living things adapt to their environments and over time become so differentiated from other populations in other niches that they are genetically distinct. Adaptation=small scale, evolution=adaptation over long periods of time, the large scale.

Some adaptations come from mutations of the genetic code. For instance, sickle cell anemia came from a mutation in which hemoglobin has a valine in the beta-6 position rather than a glutamate. This shortens the life span of the red blood cell so that the organism that causes malaria cannot effectively reproduce in the bloodstream. People who are carriers of sickle cell anemia are not likely to die of malaria and also have few/no effects from the mutant hemoglobin; it still carries oxygen just fine, and they have normal hemoglobin in there as well. Unfortunately, people who are homozygous for sickle cell anemia have other health effects because they have no wild-type hemoglobin and thus die before they reproduce--but the benefit of being a carrier is huge to people living within regions where malaria is common, so more carriers survive than non-carriers, thus many people from these areas are carriers of SCA. In non-malaria-bearing regions of the world, this mutation is not selected for within the environment; it bears no advantage and thus is quite rare. This is a relatively small scale adaptation, but it illustrates how mutation can change a population's genome. The same mechanism has produced species differentiation over a much longer time frame.

[celestial]

We are still evolving. Evolution is very gradual. I don't think that most people(I can't) grasp the length of time that scientists are talking about.

Yup. Especially if they think the earth was created 6,000 years ago. :roll:

[celestial]

Some adaptations come from mutations of the genetic code. For instance, sickle cell anemia came from a mutation in which hemoglobin has a valine in the beta-6 position rather than a glutamate. This shortens the life span of the red blood cell so that the organism that causes malaria cannot effectively reproduce in the bloodstream. People who are carriers of sickle cell anemia are not likely to die of malaria and also have few/no effects from the mutant hemoglobin; it still carries oxygen just fine, and they have normal hemoglobin in there as well. Unfortunately, people who are homozygous for sickle cell anemia have other health effects because they have no wild-type hemoglobin and thus die before they reproduce--but the benefit of being a carrier is huge to people living within regions where malaria is common, so more carriers survive than non-carriers, thus many people from these areas are carriers of SCA. In non-malaria-bearing regions of the world, this mutation is not selected for within the environment; it bears no advantage and thus is quite rare. This is a relatively small scale adaptation, but it illustrates how mutation can change a population's genome. The same mechanism has produced species differentiation over a much longer time frame.

This is also a good point against "my" question about why humans aren't still evolving. Thanks!

[kamcho_papio]

Question. Is there a difference between evolution and adaptation? My husband works with a man who says that he doesn't believe in evolution but believes that living things adapt. Isn't that a part of evolution?

Sort of. Adaptation means that an organism has enough elasticity in its diet or life that they can survive a change. Humans, for example, are omnivorous and eat a hugely varied diet. However, if carnivores were suddenly forced to eat an herbivore's diet, they would take ill and die, likely without reproducing. Their teeth and gut are not "adapted" to plants for exclusive consumption. Some organisms are better than others at adaptation; evolution depends on the transmission of adaptable genes. If a plant-eating carnivore were able to survive and reproduce, and those offspring were viable and also able to eat a plantalicious diet, then that's evolution: descent with modification.

So, the coworker is mostly wrong. :geek:

Eeek! Beaten to it.

[Sola]

Do we have any YEC's here?

[CanadianHippie]

I'll get you started. MYTH: there is no "Missing Link" between early primates and modern humans.

Pick one (may not be a complete list):

Sahlanthropus tchadensis

orrorin tuenesis

adipithecus kadabba

ardipithecus ramidus

autralopithicus anamensis

australopithicus afarensis

australopithicus africanus

austrolopithicus garhi

paranthropus aethiopicus

Homo hailis

homo rudolfensis

australopithicus sediba

Paranthropus boisei

Paranthropus robustus

Homo erectus

Homo Sapiens (us)

[emmiedahl]

Another thing to consider re: are we still evolving is that we are certainly still getting random mutations in individual genomes BUT these are only going to be selected for on a large scale (causing evolution) if our environment changes. Humans are well-adapted to our environments and we also are very good at controlling our environment. This means that it will take some pretty extreme changes in order for real evolution to occur. Also, one of the underlying principles of evolution is that more organisms are born than survive long enough to reproduce, which is not really true in developed nations anymore. The vast majority of our population will survive even if they are poorly adapted, which stops the natural selection from occurring.

For example, if something happened and our world was suddenly 20 degrees hotter, a lot of populations would just turn up the AC--but in developing nations, we would see massive deaths. But some people would be fine because they are better adapted to heat than others, because of mutations in their cells that have just been sitting around for thousands of years. Suddenly those mutations would be selected for and more heat-adapted humans would come to dominate those regions. This rapid change in response to extreme events is known as punctuated equilibrium, and you can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

[Angri-la]

Do we have any YEC's here?

Oooh, I hope we do. If so, and you are comfortable talking about/defending your beliefs, because, yes, you will need to be strong enough to be asked questions, please open a "I am a YEC, ask me anything" thread on Quiverful of Chatter, and link here!

[doggie]

You can't really debunk it since it has never been proven. You also can't debunk a belief. no matter what you find you can never change a fundies mind.

[CanadianHippie]

Here's one to debunk.

"God made the banana to fit perfectly in our hands so they are easier to eat, see? Everything was created by God."

[CanadianHippie]

Also because it is often thought to be the case: "You can't believe in God creating the world and evolution at the same time. They are mutually exclusive."

[debrand]

Here is one. If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

[Constance Vigilance]

Other examples of humans still evolving:

+ Lastose tolerance is a mutation which arose in the dairy-farming peoples of Europe/Middle East around the same time they domesticated dairy animals. It had probably arisen before by chance but there was no advantage to having it so its frequency didn't increase. Once you have dairy animals the advantage of being able to drink milk for nutrition after toddlerhood are obvious -- a significant selective advantage during times of drought or famine, and a nutrition boost even during times of plenty, so the milk-drinkers passed on their genes preferentially. Now it's so common in many populations that being lactose INtolerant is seen as unusual. But lactose intolerance is the ancestral state, and still the predominant one in many Asian/African populations.

+Cystic fibrosis. Two CF mutations is still not great, but it used to create a child who unfailingly died before reproducing. So why did the gene hang around? And why is it so ridiculously common? (In Scotland and Ireland 1 in 20 people is a carrier.) Same reason as emmiedahl explained for sickle cell anaemia -- there must have been some huge advantage to being a CF carrier during a period of selective pressure (i.e. when lots of people were dying -- probably due to epidemic disease). First they thought maybe black death, then maybe cholera. I think now they're thinking maybe tuberculosis. But people with CF mutations preferentially survived some disease, with the result that many many people in Northern Europe carry those mutations still.

+There are gene variations that make people immune to HIV infection, and others that control the virus once its in their body so that in health terms they might as well not have it. Those people have a HUGE selective advantage in Africa right now. Give it a few generations, and these mutations will be many times more common than they were 100 years ago.

[fakepigtails73]

"If humans evolved, why aren't we still evolving?"

I never believed in creationism, but that (what I quoted) was my main beef with evolution before I started reading about it.

[Constance Vigilance]

Here's one to debunk.

"God made the banana to fit perfectly in our hands so they are easier to eat, see? Everything was created by God."

This is a wild banana. Note non-hand-fitting shape and many hard, inedible seeds:

HUMANS made bananas fit perfectly in our hands, by selectively breeding them (a form of forcable evolution, over a much shorter time scale) until they were how we wanted.

The banana argument is one of the single stupidest I've ever heard.

Edited again because I figured out how to smallify.

[emmiedahl]

Here is one. If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

It is really an over-simplification to say we evolved from monkeys. It's like saying huskies evolved from chihuahuas. They didn't, and we didn't. Humans and modern monkeys share a common primate ancestor who is no longer in existence, but we have dug up the skeletons and can prove a sequential evolution process from common primate ancestor to both humans and other primates.

When people bring up the monkeys evolved to humans argument, I consider it a strawman. But anyone with a grunting toddler can see a little common ancestry with other land-bound primates certainly. My one year old has not developed all of the skills that will later make him seem more human, but the primate instincts are definitely present.

[Constance Vigilance]

But anyone with a grunting toddler can see a little common ancestry with other land-bound primates certainly. My one year old has not developed all of the skills that will later make him seem more human, but the primate instincts are definitely present.

LOL. Very well said on the "Why are there still monkeys?"

Also, embryos from monkeys, primates and humans (and lots of other animals) look remarkably similar early on in pregnancy, and follow many similar pathways of development. You can literally see the similarities in how we evolved.

It's incredibly hard to disbelieve evolution if you pay even a little bit of attention (or to think evolution is something you can disbelieve, instead of something that just is). But fundies are very dedicated to being ignorant.

[AnnoDomini]

I'm curious what debunkers have to say about the 'loss of genetic information' argument. The common ancestor of apes and humans would have had to contain genetic information both for apes and humans, and its descendants (us) would have less genetic information because it would have had to lose some to make apes and humans.

I'm not interested in me trying to debate one over the other, everyone's got their beliefs and what they see as scientific evidence, but I am interested in hearing Creationist theory explained from evolutionary standpoint. I try to keep an open mind.

[debrand]

I'm curious what debunkers have to say about the 'loss of genetic information' argument. The common ancestor of apes and humans would have had to contain genetic information both for apes and humans, and its descendants (us) would have less genetic information because it would have had to lose some to make apes and humans.

I'm not interested in me trying to debate one over the other, everyone's got their beliefs and what they see as scientific evidence, but I am interested in hearing Creationist theory explained from evolutionary standpoint. I try to keep an open mind.

An open mind is good. :)

[browngrl]

"If humans evolved, why aren't we still evolving?"

In fact humans are still evolving.

see: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-hum ... lving.html

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... -evolving/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 162933.htm

http://listverse.com/2009/01/05/top-10- ... odern-man/