The fight over Darwin - Teaching evolution in schools

[The_vagabond7]

appolose said:

Khuutra said:

appolose said:

Khuutra said:

appolose said:

Finding a bird fossil the predates dinosaurs (dating methods being another unfalsifiable thing) would not disprove that birds evolved from dinosaurs.  It could simply mean that it happened to evolve from something else during that time frame, and not contradict the current belief that the fossil record shows that todays birds are descendents of dinosaurs.

As for evolution being observed today, yes, I would agree that that is science (not that I think it is actually evolution, mind you).

Sadly, I do not know of any good 90's music :(

Whoa there

Slow down

If evolution being observed today isn't evolution, then what the Hell is it?

Yeah, I've caught a lot of flack for this in the past :/

Basicially, by evolution, I'm not referring to the overly-broad "descent with modification" - we've know that a child will look different from its parents for a good while now.  Nor do I mean by evolution even natural selection combined with random mutation (I acknowledge both of those as true).  By evolution, I mean the idea that, given natural selection and random mutation, a bird could eventually have a fish for a descendent.

Okay hold up

Hold up

Let's say I take a breed of dog and from these dogs over hundreds of accelerated generations I breed them into animals the size of deer, which bear no outward resemblance to their ancestors and require very different kinds of nutrition in order to function.

Is that evolution?

Likely not (although the different nutritional needs may imply something more than just little outward resemblence).

I do think that, given your scenario, you can get an animal to have considerably different looking descendents.  What I do not think is that random mutation of a gene can produce every other genetic blueprint (bird-to-fish, for example).  In other words (perhaps less accurate ones), I believe there is a "limit" to what random mutation can do.

Why is there a limit?