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Slimebeast on 10 September 2010
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highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:
highwaystar101 said:
Slimebeast said:

You assume this and it's a nice theory but there's no evidence of that in the article.

The only mechanism needed to explain the observations presented in the article is the one I provided.

When it's hot you take your shirt off, when it's cold you keep it on.

It is the mechanism, but the mechanism will lead to an evolution. You either assume one of two things with this statement if you believe evolution to be false

1. That successful traits aren't passed on from generation to generation, or

2. Regardless of the advantage a trait gives, the survival and birth rates between the unfit and the fit are the same.

Now you say that I have no evidence on my side. I have plenty of evidence on my side. The unfit do not survive, the fit do. This is a fact of life. All traits are hereditary, and only the fit survive to pass on the traits (link). It's called natural selection (it's a famous idea y'know) and it's an extremely well documented process and the evidence overwhelmingly abundant.

Natural selection is clearly at work here, it's blindingly obvious.

Can you prove to me that genes aren't hereditary? Because that's basically the linchpin your argument hangs on.

So if I retain my clothes on in October when it's cold here in Sweden you take that as a sign of evolution?

It is not blindingly obvious that natural selection is at work here. You are just assuming that.

Your analogy is wrong Slimebeast, why? Because the ability to provide warmth for oneself is an inheritable trait, and those that are able to provide warmth for themselves  better are less likely to freeze to death and not reproduce. (For what it's worth you might as well be arguing that "dogs grow coats, therefore evolution is false", when the dogs with the thick coats in cold climate are more likely to survive). Natural selection is beyond well documented and has been known for over 150 years (and subconsciously even longer, with selective breeding).

I am by no means "assuming" this, I know. And this is just another case of this process, just another case of the peppered moth.

Your whole argument rests on the notion that genetic traits aren't inheritable. So what is it? Are these traits not inheritable?

Again you are putting things that are not needed for the observations in that article.

Pretend these snakes have a sensitivity to temperature in their egg regulating hormone system. The hormone stimulates the spasms of the egg chamber inside the snake. Hot weather triggers an increase in hormone levels and cold weather triggers a decrease in levels.

Natural selection has nothing to do with it.

You theorize about what happens after those snakes get isolated from each other in cold and hot regions. That may lead to unique traits or it may not.

You accept that what we observe here is one step of evolution of egg laying to mammalian-type live birth. Now if that is in fact evolution between egg and live birth right in front of our eyes, then there should also be examples of the other steps (since this supposedly happened several times independently in evolutionary history). Then please show me some other egg-placenta middle forms. Now I am not even sure such creatures exist but I don't think they do and I assume they don't. But according to your theory they should.