I find it odd how people jump to conclusions about the theory of evolution.

@Axeroberts Yes, that's called abiogenesis... a different topic.

Evolution is what happens [i]after[/i] abiogenesis

@newjaninev2 another "theory". But has not been successfully done in a lab. Nevermind 4 billion years ago in a swamp. Don't forget to add multiverse to this list 🙄

@Axeroberts What Theory are you referring to?

Are you talking about abiogenesis? I thought we were discussing evolution.

@Axeroberts The 'micro and macro evolution' that, as I have shown you, is a distinction without a difference.

There's just evolution.

You're quite right that nobody can say how many distributions have to change, because it's completely indeterminate. Species are neither fixed nor immutable.
There's no 'magic moment' when a species diverges. The divergence may become evident only across tens of thousands or even millions of years.
Everything is fluid, driven in large part by a constantly-changing environment, so genes, in turn, are in constant flux.
"endless forms most beautiful"

@newjaninev2 you are wrong. look at the definitions and what they mean. micro is a specie adapting. macro is changing to another specie which i personally do not believe

@Axeroberts So your happy with seconds and minutes, but you don't accept hours, because apparently they're something 'different'?

Perhaps you need to understand evolution, and perhaps this will help... [i]evolution is change in the frequency and distribution of alleles[/i]

That's it.
That's evolution.

If you want to deny that evolution happens everywhere every second of the day with all living organisms, you'll need to show that the frequency and distribution of alleles [i]never[/i] change.

Which would mean that every single living thing on the planet would be totally identical to every other living thing on the planet.

@Axeroberts Yes, that's an ill-worded quote.

We know that abiogenesis occurred... or there would be no life on Earth.

The only exploration around abiogenesis is the [i]pathway[/i]

@newjaninev2 we can never be 100% sure

@Axeroberts Well, that's characteristic of science, of course. Nothing is ever proven in science, and abiogenesis won't be any different.

As always, we can be guided by, and informed by, the evidence.

@Kwek00 There is no need to swear in an otherwise civilised discussion, but I do take your point. It was only a couple of decades or so ago that the Vatican finally admitted the Church of Rome had been wrong to silence Galileo Galilei some four hundred years ago.

I have noticed the rise in hard-line right-wing extremism, though I think the religious element in less important in Europe than in the USA.

The appeal in many European countries is led mainly by resistance to the large numbers of both refugees and "economic migrants", some legal but many illegal though desperate, from Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and many parts of Africa.

I know the USA is facing somewhat similar problems with immigrants from South America and Mexico, but I have the impression the religious fundamentalist groups were active long before immigration became a major matter there.


They are though, well-organised and desperate to push their causes - they even tried to muscle in on British schools when these became semi-privatised via so-called "Academy Trusts". They failed largely because the UK's education system has to meet certain standards with a minimum level of a coherent national curriculum; and this mitigates to a large extent against take-over attempts by self-interested groups like those I call the "Commercial Creationists".


I wonder though, why are such bands so determined? What drives them? With their minds not far removed from those of the Iranian mullahs and the warring factions in India, I can't help feeling the American fundamentalists are at heart, similarly terrified of anyone questioning or not following their blind, uncomprehending faith in one scripture they use as their prop and shield.

Is there though, something else? The theocracies are not so different from any dictatorship: different ideology but still run by cabals of like-minded, petty, cruel and often basically ignorant men with a naked love of power; but is the "religious right" in the USA of similar mind?

Can they say what they hope to gain by controlling schools and school libraries, and building so-called "museums" to their cause? Do they announce their aims for a nation that unlike perhaps Saudi Arabia, Constitutionally guarantees religious freedom?

I have sometimes challenged religious literalists to tell us from their own knowledge of the dogma, what those groups want; but none are willing to explain their motives. Perhaps they genuinely cannot, genuinely do not know.

@ArishMell I'm swearing, because it feels like you are just saying things. Have you ever took the time to think about this? To look at what the historical evolution is when it comes to religious folk pushing back to scientific discovery. How many times science has been denied and people have been threatened. Not to mention, permanently silenced. Even this webpage have bites and bites and bites of discussions stored in it's databank, because figures like Godspeed and Axeroberts keep pushing back and strawmanning theories that actually have evidence in favor of them... while theology has nothing of the sorts. It frustrates me to no end that people can just say these simplistic things that these arguments only relate to the private sphere, when you have entire movements in diffrent countries constantly pushing back against measured conclussions. It's happening all around us... and you have failed to pick up on it or just rationalise it away by forgetting our own western bloody history. Which is mind boggling to me.

[quote]The appeal in many European countries is led mainly by resistance to the large numbers of both refugees and "economic migrants", some legal but many illegal though desperate, from Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and many parts of Africa.[/quote]

Yes... And where does this pushback come from? You know... I'm going to serve it in the most blatant way... because conservatives don't dare too usher the foundation on which their arguments are build anymore. To say it in the words of Alexander H. Stephens, the vice-president of the confederacy, in a speech given in march of the year 1861: [b][i]"They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal."[/i][/b]. They is referring too people that followed the principles of the enlightenment, which has culliminated in an ideological stance called: "Liberalism". These liberals are going against "the natural order". Who made the natural order? For any religious person, it's God. That's where a lot of xenophobia today has it's roots. And it goes all the way back too the 18th century. These ideas persist in the conservative zeitgeist. They get repackaged, they get sold in all kinds of variaties... but at the end of the day it's about "me being better then you because God made it so". As Burke said:

[quote][i]You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that[/i] [b]we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them.[/b] [i][u]We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.[/u] Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved.[/i][b] Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.[/b]

- Edmund Burke, [i]Reflections on The Revolution in France[/i], 1790[/quote]

If you missed all that too... It's time to start reading philosophy and espescially reading up about conservatism. This isn't a secret, it's not a smear, people just don't read what these people are selling. The only thing they see, is the polished product that has been packaged in a way so that their voters either don't understand what it is in the box OR a way that they can avoid being called a "racist". At least these ideologues embrace the terms, but I guess the people against political correctness still are in conflict with the political stance that they are buying into.


[quote]Is there though, something else? The theocracies are not so different from any dictatorship: different ideology but still run by cabals of like-minded, petty, cruel and often basically ignorant men with a naked love of power; but is the "religious right" in the USA of similar mind?[/quote]

Why all these questions? These things have been and are still being discussed at length by philosophers and political scientists. Heck, in the last 10 years, with the resurgence of the far-right in the USA, there has been a bulk of studies done. If you want to start somewhere? Start with Zeev Sternhell and his book on the "Anti-Enlightnement". I don't agree with everything he says, but he delivers a monumental work when it comes to conservative thought that challenges enlightenment principles.

[quote]Can they say what they hope to gain by controlling schools and school libraries, and building so-called "museums" to their cause? Do they announce their aims for a nation that unlike perhaps Saudi Arabia, Constitutionally guarantees religious freedom?[/quote]

Because people know, almost on an instinctive level, that individuals are formed inside a data-set. If you want to form individuals in a particulair way... then the only thing you have to do is to control the data-set that is being consumed. And when a small number of people do question the data-set, you remove them or reeducate them. That's how you create fundamentalists and loyal followers. All cults do it, all fundamentalists do it, all totalitarian authoritarian regimes do it, ... because they are all based on similair characterists. As the saying goes: "you are what you eat" ... well that is deffinatly true when it comes to the data you consume.

And again... the literature is out there. These phenomena have been studied over and over and over and over again... no one needs to reinvent the hot water by being online and just wondering how these things work. No, you should be in a library reading historians, philosophers and political scientists that have developed their work in an academic setting.

@Kwek00 obviously you have me wrong

@Pikachu and I agree that God created it to evolve. And as you say the debate is more about the ways it's happening. And how it effects life overall

@Diotrephes 😀

@newjaninev2 Creation of life argument simply put. It's Order vs Chaos. Planned vs Random. Forceful vs Effortless. Meaningful vs Meaningless. I'm with the former, the theory of evolution endorses the later.

@SoulKey
How things are today isn't order... it's just how things are today. If things were not as they are today, they would be different. That's so self-evident as to be trivial.

Planned implies intent. What was intended, and what had the intent?

I have no idea what you mean by 'forceful vs effortless'. Please clarify that for me.

'Meaningful' defined by who? About what? Are you saying that you find some sort of 'meaning' about the universe as a whole, or your part of it in particular, or your transitory existence therein, or... what?

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection endorses nothing.
The Theory [i]completely, consistently, and coherently,[/i] describes what happened on Earth following the appearance of life.
It is evidence-based and demonstrably accords with observed reality.

@Axeroberts There's obviously a physical mechanism, because here we all are 😀

There are several evidence-based possibilities being explored, and as always in science these will be vigorously and robustly debated. That's a natural and necessary part of science, and one of the reasons it's so vibrant and exciting.

We might never know for sure, and I'm OK with that.

@newjaninev2 exactly. But there is this division that seems to make people take sides and it impedes progress in many ways I find

@Axeroberts The best way to handle it is to simply remove the division... whatever is unnecessary and unhelpful can be dropped into the bin and need trouble us no more.

Identifying that is, of course, guided by [i]evidence[/i]

@walabby 👍. And you know how God puts something physical into the world. Through physical means that seem to go on into infinite

@newjaninev2 if my vision of God was like yours I would not believe either.

@Axeroberts I don't have a vision of your god, or any other, come to that.

Such postulations about magical entities are unnecessary

@newjaninev2 that's what I mean

@Axeroberts No it doesn't. Even a badly functioning flagellum is better than not having one. Didn't you read the section about the supposed irreducible complexity where it pointed out that flagella deficient in several proteins still function?

@ninalanyon it has nothing to do with how well it functions. It means each protein has a purpose and then came together to make a more complex organism. But each protein on its own serves no purpose

@Axeroberts You have utterly misunderstood how evolution works. It is simply the differential survival, and therefore breeding, of entities that differ in how well they cope with the environment in which they live.

That is, it very is to do with how well it functions. It has much less to do with the 'original purpose' of any of the component parts. Evolution does not have a purpose.

@Axeroberts
Hardly. I actually understand it.

@newjaninev2 i don't know. i didn't post it

@Axeroberts
Shows you how little the “experts” know about evolution.

@EmosaurThe idea of 'links in a chain' is not... never has been... a part of the theory of evolution. it's simply not needed, not to mention just plain wrong. It seems to be something that's found mainly in creationist indoctrination pamphlets... they often contain that ridiculous image of some sort of monkey slowly morphing into another figure which morphs into yet another figure, ending with a human. Of course, that has nothing to do with evolution. It’s a specious straw-man.

In short... that's simply not how evolution works. As you will be aware, different species share common ancestors, so that there is a series of divergences between any two species... and the evidence for that process is overwhelming.