Some of these may already have been answered, but I am starting with addressing the OP, "from scratch" (without reading through the thread), first.
premio53 wrote:I have never been to this forum before. I just happened to stumble on it and noticed a couple of threads concerning God, evolution etc. Here is a list of questions for someone who considers himself an athiest or agnostic.
Faith in evolution is as much a "religion" as judaism, Hinduism or any other system.
STOP NOW!
It is not "evolution VERSUS faith". Sorry, but in the real world, as opposed to the fictitious world in which the Dr's Morris and the folks at the Creation Institute live.... its faith with or without evolution. Evolution is based upon scientific fact, though there are many things not fully understood yet. Religious is based on tradition, experience and some few independent facts (not enough to convince anyone without faith from other sources).
Nothing in the Bible refutes evolution, Most Jews absolutely accept evolution, most Christians have up until very recently -- but to get a bunch of kids convinced evolution is false basically requires, as you nicely demonstrate, that they remain utterly ignorant of real science and most scientific facts. HInduism is so diverse its hard to make any real statements about it, but I have not met any Hindus who don't accept evolution.
premio53 wrote:1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
2. Where did matter come from?
None of these have to do with evolution.
Evolution is about how life got to be where it is on Earth, not how the universe was created, how Earth was created or even, really how life first got here on Earth.
(that is, it concerns the last a bit, but there is no set answer to which evolution leads)
premio53 wrote:3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
People, scientists wrote them down.
premio53 wrote:4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
These, again, have nothing to do with evolution, unless maybe the "organized" part.
The real answer is that it IS NOT truly organized in a fashion easy for humans to understand or detect. There are patterns, but they are so complex that whole new realms of mathematics and physics (chaos math, quantum physics, etc. ) still don't really give us answers.
Still, to get to the "answer" you think you want.... there are multiple.
One option is that God did it all... set up the pattern and directly steered everything into what we see today. This actually not specified in the Bible, but a lot of people want to think so. In fact, I would argue that the Bible specifically says this is NOT what happened, because it would indicate a complete lack of free will, but that require going well off the topic of evolution and science. I suggest you review one of the "free will" threads or even the "proof of God" thread before getting more into that... and make it another thread unless you want this particular thread to go all over carnation.
The one I personally believe is that God set up a series of systems which eventually resulted in what we see. He can intervene, how much he has is debatable, except as outlined in the Bible -- which, you should not, refers solely to modern species (even Noah.. note the references to sheep, goats, etc, etc... these are not primitive dinosaurs, but species we can see on Earth even today)
Another Is that the structure and systems are essentially inherent, self-creating/fulfilling. I don't really believe this, nor do most scientists.
But, oh.. just to head you off "at the pass", whether you say "God did it" or not... you still have to answer where from came God and where did the initial matter come from.
In other words, saying "God did it" is not an answer any more than saying "it just happened".
(And scientists tend to not say either bit.)
premio53 wrote:6. When, where, why, and how did life come from dead matter?
None of these answers are truly known for sure, but the best estimates are
When -- Simple Life appeared on earth about 3.6 billion years ago. Where -- we worry mostly about Earth, though recent evidence shows that there might have been some kind of very primitive life on Mars. We have no idea about life in other parts of the universe. Why? That is a question for philosphers and theologens, not scientists. Its not truly answerable through experimentation or evidence.
How -- apparently the conditions were exactly correct for a few basic proteins to come together... etc, etc, etc. Its all really theory, though.
premio53 wrote:7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
No l earning involved. It happened essentially on its own (or steered by God -- as noted, science is mute on the "why" and "God" bits, since they are just not provable or disprovable).
premio53 wrote:
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
First came self-replication. Then at some point there came a sort of quasi sexual reproduction whereby cells or groups shared DNA... then later came something like true sexual reproduction.
premio53 wrote:9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
Its a question without an answer. Science just sees that it does happen.
The philosophical guess is that there is an inherent desire to replicate one's genes. Beyond that, there is a biological benefit to combining genes.
premio53 wrote:10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
HMM.. but combining English letters produces many, many books, as does combining Chinese characters. AND... the truth is that Chinese have adopted some English style-characters.
However, its really just the kind of "question" that has no bearing on anything to do with evolution, like most of your questions.
premio53 wrote:11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
A creator cannot be proven or disproven.
Further, you assume a dichotomy that doesn't exist. Its not "evolved from a common creator" OR "God" . In addition, evolutionary theory does not depend on a single common ancestor, though you are not alone in assuming that is the case.
premio53 wrote:12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
Your assumptions are incorrect.
So, the question has no answer.
What actually happens is that species tend to be stable when the environment is stable, then natural selection occurs very, very slowly. Only when there is significant out ward change, changes to the environment (either an actual change or a relocation of the animal, such as to an island) does natural selection accelerate.
To see how it specialization has happened, just look at a coral reef. You see a whole range of species that are very, very specialized, very highly "evolved" -- and that cannot survive anywhere else.
That is the real corollary. The more specialized, per some ideas the "more evolved" a species is, the less resilient it tends to be and the harder a time it has when conditions change. Horeshoe crabs and sharks have survived for a very long time becuase they are able to survive changing conditions.
premio53 wrote:13. When, where, why, and how did: a) Single-celled plants become multicelled? (Where are the two- and threecelled intermediates?)
Already answered this one. You are repeating yourself.
premio53 wrote:b) Single-celled animals evolve? c) Fish change to amphibians? d) Amphibians change to reptiles? e) Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!) How did the intermediate forms live?
Go to a site that specializes in explaining evolution for real, instead of a young earth site that pretends to address "problems" in evolution (problems that often don't really exist) and you will find the answer.
So far, you are just putting forward the same basic garbage that young earthers teach their kids... but that have little to do with real science.
premio53 wrote:
14. When, where, why, how, and from what did: a) Whales evolve?
[sigh]
OK, I will tackle a few of these.
Whales --- evolved from land creatures. For a more full explanation, but still pretty short, read here:
(for more details, just do your own search... its all been researched and reported)
link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libra ... 34_05.html Call it an unfinished story, but with a plot that's a grabber. It's the tale of an ancient land mammal making its way back to the sea, becoming the forerunner of today's whales. In doing so, it lost its legs, and all of its vital systems became adapted to a marine existence -- the reverse of what happened millions of years previously, when the first animals crawled out of the sea onto land.
Some details remain fuzzy and under investigation. But we know for certain that this back-to-the-water evolution did occur, thanks to a profusion of intermediate fossils that have been uncovered over the past two decades.
In 1978, paleontologist Phil Gingerich discovered a 52-million-year-old skull in Pakistan that resembled fossils of creodonts -- wolf-sized carnivores that lived between 60 and 37 million years ago, in the early Eocene epoch. But the skull also had characteristics in common with the Archaeocetes, the oldest known whales. The new bones, dubbed Pakicetus, proved to have key features that were transitional between terrestrial mammals and the earliest true whales. One of the most interesting was the ear region of the skull. In whales, it is extensively modified for directional hearing underwater. In Pakicetus, the ear region is intermediate between that of terrestrial and fully aquatic animals.
Another, slightly more recent form, called Ambulocetus, was an amphibious animal. Its forelimbs were equipped with fingers and small hooves. The hind feet of Ambulocetus, however, were clearly adapted for swimming. Functional analysis of its skeleton shows that it could get around effectively on land and could swim by pushing back with its hind feet and undulating its tail, as otters do today.
Rhodocetus shows evidence of an increasingly marine lifestyle. Its neck vertebrae are shorter, giving it a less flexible, more stable neck -- an adaptation for swimming also seen in other aquatic animals such as sea cows, and in an extreme form in modern whales. The ear region of its skull is more specialized for underwater hearing. And its legs are disengaged from its pelvis, symbolizing the severance of the connection to land locomotion.
By 40 million years ago, Basilosaurus -- clearly an animal fully adapted to an aquatic environment -- was swimming the ancient seas, propelled by its sturdy flippers and long, flexible body. Yet Basilosaurus still retained small, weak hind legs -- baggage from its evolutionary past -- even though it could not walk on land.
None of these animals is necessarily a direct ancestor of the whales we know today; they may be side branches of the family tree. But the important thing is that each fossil whale shares new, whale-like features with the whales we know today, and in the fossil record, we can observe the gradual accumulation of these aquatic adaptations in the lineage that led to modern whales.
As evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin points out, "In one sense, evolution didn't invent anything new with whales. It was just tinkering with land mammals. It's using the old to make the new."OH.. please note the "some details still fuzzy" bit, because a lot of young earth sites try to claim that the story of whales is somehow "the" foundation of evolution, one of the key points and that dispelling current theories regarding whales means dispelling all of evolution. It just doesn't work that way. If you want a "foundation" to evolution theory, it would be the slothes or finches. Even so, they are just examples that allowed Darwin, initially, to describe the theory in a way people could understand.. and later have proven stepping stones for further research into all of evolution.
And, while on the subject. Darwin got a LOT of the tale wrong. He did live over 200 years ago, before the advent of modern technology and most modern knowledge.
premio53 wrote:b) Sea horses evolve?
From pipefish
premio53 wrote:c) Bats evolve?
Not fully known:
The Chiropteran fossil record
Although bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals today, they are one of the least common groups in the fossil record. Bats have small, light skeletons that do not preserve well and we have little information on the early evolution of this group.
The earliest fossil bat (shown here) is a remarkably well preserved animal from early Eocene rocks in the Green River formation of Wyoming. Given the name Icaronycteris, it comes from a species that is clearly microchiropteran6. The oldest known megachiropteran, Archaeopteroptus transiens, is Oligocene (38-23 mya) in age. It and a Miocene (23-25 mya) fossil from Africa make up the entire known fossil record of megachiropterans.
Icaronycteris index
When did bats evolve?
The inability to link bats to any other mammalian group in itself suggests a very early origin. Some fossilised eggs of noctuid moths, with the ablity to detect echolocation calls of bats and trigger escape responses , have recently been discovered dating back to about 75 MyBP5 implying that the bats themselves arose substantially earlier, about 80 to 100 m.y.a.6. If so, they would have shared their world with dinosaurs, watched their extinction at the end of the cretaceous and remained, relatively unchanged, to this day.
Why did bats evolve?
At the time bats are thought to have been evolving, the flowering plants were in the first stages of their massive diversification. By the end of the Cretaceous, the insects supported by these plants were abundant, and insectivorous mammals were becoming well established4. But so were the predators of small mammals, posing a serious threat during daylight hours. For these reasons, it is presumed early species of bat were nocturnal, evolving from small, arboreal mammals16. From here they literally launched themselves into flight, becoming the highly successful aerial hunters we see today.
Over thousands of years of jumping around after insects, from tree to tree, the ancestors of bats first evolved gliding membranes similar to those of colugos (order Dermoptera) . Less energy is expended in gliding from tree to tree than running down the trunk, across the ground and back up the next tree. And if an animal doesn't come down to ground, it doesn't have to face terrestrial predators either.
The Modern Debate
Significant differences have arisen between the two suborders since their divergence causing some confusion as to whether they are related at all. There have been numerous studies using biochemical, molecular, and/or morphological data to analyse the relationship between megabats, microbats and other taxa.
The 'bat monophyly hypothesis' states these two groups are each others' closest relatives in an evolutionary sense (i.e. they form a clade). In contrast, the diphyly hypothesis states that megabats and microbats evolved independently from two different groups of non-flying mammals. It has been suggested that megabats are more closely related to dermopterans and primates than to microbats10,11.
The bat controversy has raised some interesting questions and forced us to question long-held beliefs. Systematists have learned that important phylogenetic questions can only be answered with input from a wide variety of fields - taxonomy is a truly multidisciplinary subject!
Link:
http://www.nhc.ed.ac.uk/index.php?page=493.169.177 premio53 wrote: d) Eyes evolve? e) Ears evolve? f) Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?
I answered a few of these. Most of these characteristics appeared in various primitive forms first, then eventually got to what we know as the modern forms. In some cases how it happened is well known, in other cases not.
If you want to get into why you are asking this, other than the generic and obvious "I have been taught that all believers in evolution are just idiots ignoring the real facts, so all I have to do is ask a few questions and they will instantly see how stupid the whole thing is", then maybe we will answer.
premio53 wrote:15. Which evolved first (how, and how long, did it work without the others)? a) The digestive system, the food to be digested, the appetite, the ability to find and eat the food, the digestive juices, or the body’s resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)? b) The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce? c) The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat, or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs? d) DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts? e) The termite or the flagella in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose? f) The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants? g) The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move the bones? h) The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system? i) The immune system or the need for it? (Taken from "The Evidence Bible")
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HUH.. you assume that they all have to evolve together. The real story is too complex to detail in a couple of paragraphs, particularly when you clearly have not bothered to even check for the truth yourself... even the internet can give you some decent info on this. Try it!
Please provide a link for this "The Evidence Bible". Its definitely not presenting evidence!
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