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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: falcon]
    #1118429 -

There you go.  I never heard of Lamarckism before, but I guess that's basically what I was arguing.  :grin: 


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:smile:  Just stating my thoughts, not trying to offend  :smile:

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: GoBlue!]
    #1118459 -

Regarding the swimming people changing, yes they do change. A swimmer has develops strong lats and shoulders for example, a speed skater has massive powerful legs. If these new traits made it easier for them to mate then "over time" the offspring who more inclined to get big lats and strong shoulders if they were gonna be able to mate. Because the ones who were born who could not get these traits would not mate they would not be passing on that weaker gene. Of course these factors don't really play a part in human evolution so this scenario isn't likey.
I think impatience is a big factor here for people who don't get it :smirk:


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"Little racoons and old possums 'n' stuff all live up in here. They've got to have a little place to sit." Bob Ross.

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Remy]
    #1118656 -

Understand how evolution works yet Remy?

Another example: The brown cats of snowy alaska live in an area full of predators, and often they are eaten as young kittens. In one litter, one kitten is born with a mutation that makes his fur white. When predators come along, they are more likely to eat his brown brothers and sisters, but lil whitey will blend in with the snow and not get eaten. He will grow up to be a big strong kitty and have little kittens of his own, and maybe a few of them will come out with the white fur gene. This is natural selection.

This is how evolution works.

As far as the giraffe's neck getting longer cuz he stretches it a lot, that doesn't make sense to me. Weight lifters aren't born with stronger kids, and a contortionist isn't going to give birth to a more flexible child.

What I don't understand now is how it is that we are evolving now. If natural selection is no longer occuring, has evolution stopped? I'm not clear on the current state of human evolution. Can someone explain it to me?

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1118939 -

- Post History Deleted Upon User's Request -

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: GoBlue!]
    #1119253 -

"What if a group of people decided to spend 8 hours a day swimming, would their bodies somehow change to make swimming easier for them? If their offspring were to swim 8 hours per day, and then their offspring too, would they all eventually start to grow webbed hands and feet?"

No, but the mutant born children of those swimming fanatics, the ones that randomly developed webbed feet, hands, and a dorsal fin, would breed and use their new advantage to dominate the pool!!

LIFEGUARD!!!

(begin surf music now)

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Amber_Glow]
    #1119326 -

You are very right, and falcon asked a good question of Remy. It sounds like he does belive in Lamarckism, which he shouldn't.

Lamarck was the one of the first to come up with any sort of evolutionary theory. It was called the Theory of Acquired Characteristics. It said basically what many people have said in this thread, which makes me think that not many here understand evolution.

It said that giraffes got long necks because certain giraffes stretched their necks really far and then their offspring had longer necks, and they stretched them even further, and their offspring continued to have longer necks until they could eat the leaves from trees.

If you believe this theory is true, that would mean you believe a person who has lost their arm will give birth to a child who doesn't have an arm as well. We all know this is not true, and thus Lamarckism is not how evolution actually occurs.

Whoever explained natural selection using the example of the dark vs. white babies was very correct. That is how evolution occurs. Lamarck was not right in his theory, but he played a very important role in leading people to think about evolution, and thus leading to Darwin's theories.

So far, nobody has answered the question to my satisfaction. Perhaps I will take Swami's advice and make this question multiple choice. Let's see...

Did evolution occur because:

1. Some sort of diety is controlling it all... First it created life. Then it decided to make life better. It kept making increasingly more complex organisms, realizing its mistakes and fixing them, until it came up with the ultimate life-forms.

2. "Life," whatever it is, has a mind of it's own. The first microscopic, multicellular organism subconsciously realized that it wanted to become bigger and better. And so it subconciously developed into algae and sponges and insects, which developed into jellyfish and plants, which developed into fish, which developed into amphibians, which developed into reptiles, which developed into mammals, which developed into birds (yes birds came after mammals), and it was all due to the subconscious desires of "life."

3. Shit, I dont know!

4. Umm, it was the aliens.

5. Jigga what?

6. Cowboys are so sexy. They are the best product of evolution ever.


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Namaste.

Edited by RebelSteve33 (12/07/02 02:52 AM)

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1119683 -

Rebelsteve, you have a very limited view of "time" and a very one sided view (you are stating unproven theories as if they where facts). I am not saying evolution occured in a few generations, im talking about it slowly occuring over countless generations. All Im saying is that it is highly likely that evolution isn't random and their is conscious force acting upon it.

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Remy]
    #1119847 -

You have a terrible misunderstanding of mutations, and how they are stated in the theory of evolution. First of all, there is not just one species of bugs. A bug could that looks like a stick could not be born from a bug that belonged to a species of bugs that didn't resemble sticks. Mutations don't occur that quickly.

Yeah, brilliant observations but I wasn't explaining exactly how evolution works, I was getting across the elementary principle that stick bugs didn't push towards looking like sticks but ended up looking like sticks because any bugs who didn't died. It's good to know that "mutations don't occur that quickly" 'cause here I was thinking that the first human was birthed by a gorrilla.

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Remy]
    #1119862 -

All Im saying is that it is highly likely that evolution isn't random and their is conscious force acting upon it.

Why? I don't see why. How do I know what's good for me as a species? How can I conciously decide the adaptations I recquire when there are so many variables in nature? I could see a lot of grass in a field and conciously evolve to be able to eat that grass and then I find out that a special kind of poisonous snake hides in it and kills anything that touches the grass. Whoops. Or are you talking about a kind of a God directing it all? Why would a God conciousness bother? He certainly hasn't changed life in any way since it began. Sure there's a lot of variety out there, and more complex organisms, but all we do is eat, shit, and fuck, really. Give me a reason why random mutations are highly unlikely.

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Remy]
    #1119879 -

Conscious force? Where'd that come from?

It's not totally random, or even random at all. It follows all the same laws of physics that everything else follows, meaning that it manifests itself in extremely intricate factal patterns.



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"I have no valid complaint against hustlers. No rational bitch. But the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes." -Hunter S Thompson
http://phluck.is-after.us

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1119956 -

Life evolves because the cosmos evolve, and life was born from the cosmos


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Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me.
In addition: SHPONGLE

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1120163 -

I would go with your number 2 it's the closest, but it's not quite it either.

2. "Life," whatever it is, has a mind of it's own. The first microscopic, multicellular organism subconsciously realized that it wanted to become bigger and better. The first organisms were single-celled at least, and it didn't decide in any way that it wanted to become bigger and better. And so it subconciously developed into algae and sponges and insects, which developed into jellyfish and plants, which developed into fish, which developed into amphibians, which developed into reptiles, which developed into mammals, which developed into birds (yes birds came after mammals), and it was all due to the subconscious desires of "life."

I would say don't think of life as "alive." Think of it as an object that makes copies of itself. It's not that it has any desire to replicate itself, it just does. When a single-celled organism flourishes and fills the sea, it does so because its atributes cause it to be unable to do anything else. Even humans don't truly desire to have sex and populate the planet. The reason we have sex drive is because animals without sex drive didn't populate the planet, cause they never had sex.

I guess molecules just have to produce life. That's part of what they do. Their qualities cause them to clump together and replicate themselves. Einstein said "God does not play dice." This can be applied to lots of things but one of them is life. The universe didn't happen to create life, it couldn't help but create it, and we can't help but create more of ourselves whether we want to or not.


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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: ]
    #1120415 -

- Post History Deleted Upon User's Request -

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1120768 -

The reason why life has evolved is because the conditions (temperature) on earth favor a wide array of chemical reactions. Any hotter and everything would break down, any colder and everything would be unreactive. There needs to be enough chemical variety in the "primordial soup" for natural selection to occur (there has to be something to "select" from). Life is a natural chemical byproduct resulting from the cooling down of an earth-type planet.

Remy, i refer you to an interesting case study done on moths. A certain type of light colored moth thrived until its habitat was industrialized. Instead of dying off the population shifted to dark colored moths because they blended in better with the soot on the trees. This is just an example of color but it can apply to many genetically related things. There is also convergent evolution such as flippers on whales (mammals) and fish, two very unrelated organisms.

We can literally watch evolution occur in populations of bacteria because they reproduce so quickley. Why do you think there are elevated levels of drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals? Because they evolve from antibiotic use.


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:egyptian:

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Dogomush]
    #1120789 -

Their qualities cause them to clump together ...

Like shroomerites, we have no choice.


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The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Catalysis]
    #1120865 -

The theory of Evolution was the only way to counter the religious belief of creationism. It's a nice theory, but I think it was a severe perversion of adaptation.


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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: ]
    #1120917 -

Because it is a natural function in order for living things to adapt to their envronments in order to stay alive.

It wasn't that hard of a question.  :smirk:


--------------------
What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is it all you want it to be?


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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: RebelSteve33]
    #1120972 -

In reply to:
If you believe this theory is true, that would mean you believe a person who has lost their arm will give birth to a child who doesn't have an arm as well.



No that doesn't mean that's what I would believe. First of all, evolution is a very slow process. I wouldn't expect to see someone evolve without an arm in only one generation. Secondly, I don't think the body would ever evolve to lose an arm. Instead I think it would gain the ability to grow it back over time. Finally, loss of an arm isn't something that the body works to achieve. If a person attempted to shed an arm on his own, then maybe over the course of hundreds of generations, he would come closer and closer to achieving that goal. I don't know that Lamarckism is correct, its just something that makes a lot of sense to me.

In reply to:
We all know this is not true, and thus Lamarckism is not how evolution actually occurs.



No I don't know that Lamarckism is not true. In fact, I just found out that the scientific community is against you. Take a look at this article:

http://www.sqwark.com/Epigenetics.htm

A quote from the article says "Resisted at first, these Lamarckian findings in bacteria are now reluctantly accepted by the biological community."

The word "reluctantly" was used, because Lamarckism has been doubted by the scientific community for quite some time.

I realize that just because I found this on a webpage doesn't make it gospel, but there's little reason I can see for the author of that website to lie in his post.


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:smile:  Just stating my thoughts, not trying to offend  :smile:

Edited by GoBlue! (12/08/02 12:05 AM)

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: Murex]
    #1121657 -

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Re: WHY has life evolved? [Re: ]
    #1121745 -

Mr. Mushrooms, there seems to be evidence of it everywhere in the mammalian species. Make canines the example. In dogs, Canis familiaris, there are great variation in the characteristics of breeds which are caused by selective mating by humans. This selective breeding can be considered an enviromental factor.
Wolves, Canis lupus, can interbreed with Canis familiaris and coyotes, Canis latrans.
Mutts, not just acouple of crossing between several breeds tend to be small pointed nosed critters with short hair.
Genetically dogs are very similar to wolves, yet they look different . To me this seems to be a case of enviromental clinal variation.
Wolves and coyotes are easy to distinguish genetically yet they can interbreed. This would seem to be clinal variation caused by mutation.
The last question I don't know. I don't understand the diffeerences between them.
Rebel Steve, I don't know, however 1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive. If a deity created life it could have put that desire to change into it, or there is no way to create life without it being effected by its enviroment or the deity is life and so is present in all life.

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