Macro Evolution Epihpanypy.

[CORed]

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Are there any scientists who disagree with the theory of evolution on any non religious wholly scientific grounds?

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I imagine there are some somewhere. Science has as many crackpots (maybe more) as any other field of endeavor. But most of the "scientists" who disagree with evolution that I've run across seem to disagree primarily on the basis of religious belief and then try to find evidence to support their faith-based disagreement, which, IMO is not science at all.

[NotReady]

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certainly..but whether it happens (or had happened or can happen) is NOT one of the issues.


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This is true. Evidence doesn't matter on this issue.

[Prodigy54321]

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certainly..but whether it happens (or had happened or can happen) is NOT one of the issues.


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This is true. Evidence doesn't matter on this issue.

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If scientists disagree on something like...to what extent populations must be isolated (not exactly the easiest thing to measure) in order to speciate rather than converge genetically through "inter"breeding (inter is in quotes because it refers to populations that may become separate species), does this mean that there is insufficient evidence that sufficiently isolated populations can speciate at all?

[ZeeJustin]

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Do the scientific world as a whole support macro evolution?

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Yes. From Wikipedia: [ QUOTE ]
While details of macroevolution are continuously studied by the scientific community, the overall theory behind macroevolution (i.e. common descent) has been overwhelmingly consistent with empirical data. Predictions of empirical data from the theory of common descent have been so consistent that biologists often refer to it as the "fact of evolution" (Theobald 2004). Nevertheless, macroevolution is sometimes disputed by religious groups. Generally speaking, these groups attempt to differentiate between microevolution and macroevolution, asserting various hypotheses which are considered to have no scientific basis by any mainstream scientific organization, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science[8].

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[tpir]

I have posted this before, but srsly, everyone should just read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution

[ZeeJustin]

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I have posted this before, but srsly, everyone should just read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution

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Lol creationists are stupid. Those are some of the worst arguments I've ever read.

[NotReady]

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There's Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis and plenty of Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals.


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The Aus.'s are no mostly longer considered in man's family tree. Cro-Magnon IS man. Neanderthal was not an ancestor of man.

See if you can find anything on the next latest direct ancestor of man. Or the next before that.

[qwnu]

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See if you can find anything on the next latest direct ancestor of man. Or the next before that.

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You keep saying things that demonstrate your cluelessness about the theory you think you're debunking.

As with most things related to evolution, we are talking about a slow and gradual process. There is not a binary distinction, going back in time, where we say, "This species ends precisely here, and this one begins here.

I forget where this thought experiment comes from, but think about your mother holding hands with her mother, who's holding hands with her mother, etc., back for, say, 6 million years. While it will be clear that the women on either end of the chain belong to different species, there's not a single place along the chain where you could say, "a-ha! here's a mother of species x who gave birth to a daughter of species y!" It doesn't work that way, and this is perfectly in line with the theory. So your request to come up with the precise 2 species that preceded our own is nonsensical.

Having said all that, maybe the simplistic answer you're looking for is H.erectus and H.habilis. The wikipedia page on Human Evolution is pretty good. Have a look.

[vhawk01]

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See if you can find anything on the next latest direct ancestor of man. Or the next before that.

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You keep saying things that demonstrate your cluelessness about the theory you think you're debunking.

As with most things related to evolution, we are talking about a slow and gradual process. There is not a binary distinction, going back in time, where we say, "This species ends precisely here, and this one begins here.

I forget where this thought experiment comes from, but think about your mother holding hands with her mother, who's holding hands with her mother, etc., back for, say, 6 million years. While it will be clear that the women on either end of the chain belong to different species, there's not a single place along the chain where you could say, "a-ha! here's a mother of species x who gave birth to a daughter of species y!" It doesn't work that way, and this is perfectly in line with the theory. So your request to come up with the precise 2 species that preceded our own is nonsensical.

Having said all that, maybe the simplistic answer you're looking for is H.erectus and H.habilis. The wikipedia page on Human Evolution is pretty good. Have a look.

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I don't know where it originally comes from, but this example was used in The Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins.

[NotReady]

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I forget where this thought experiment comes from, but think about your mother holding hands with her mother, who's holding hands with her mother, etc., back for, say, 6 million years. While it will be clear that the women on either end of the chain belong to different species, there's not a single place along the chain where you could say, "a-ha! here's a mother of species x who gave birth to a daughter of species y!" It doesn't work that way, and this is perfectly in line with the theory. So your request to come up with the precise 2 species that preceded our own is nonsensical.


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That's a beautiful theory. Too bad the facts get in the way so badly. If it happened like you say there should be many, many fossils that are mostly similar but with notable differences. What we actually have is a relatively few "species" into which all of the fossils fit with little difference between individuals. And we have individuals of distinct "species" (for instance, erectus), spanning 1 million years or more with little or no changes. In other words, what the fossil record actually shows, and I believe this is mostly true for all macro evolution, not just humans, is long periods of stasis with inexplicable radiations interspersed, appearing suddenly, almost as if, oh, I don't know, somebody had magically caused them to appear, like a Creator, for instance.

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Having said all that, maybe the simplistic answer you're looking for is H.erectus and H.habilis.


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I think it's mostly accepted now that erectus did not evolve from habilis, which means habilis isn't our ancestor if erectus is.


"Their co-existence makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved from H. habilis," says Meave Leakey, one of the lead authors of the paper. Says a Leakey