| OooSnap said: The evolution story goes something like this: life arose from goo and evolved to you by the way of the zoo. Is there any empirical, observational documentation of an organism population evolving camouflage abilities on the fly like an Indonesian Mimic Octopus or Anole Lizard? Or an organism evolve special clawed feet to walk vertically and upside down on all walls like an ant? Is their documentation of any creature population evolving feathers or a blow hole or gills? How about a fruitfly evolving glands to produce silk or a spineret or bioluminence abilities or anything of that sort? How about an organism evolving antennas, a blow hole, gills, a shell, eyes, baleen plates, fluke, arms, legs, trunk, claws, ink dispersal abilities etc. ? Just any radical novel feature or ability would suffice. You see, it takes radical changes to get a cell from goo to all the diversity of life we see today. But I have yet to see any documentation of at least one example of any organisms observed while occuring evolve such novel abilities or features. It seems that it is an assumption it happened but without the empirical evidence to back it up. And if you didn't know, empirical, observational evidence is part of the scientific method. Thus if there is no empirical, observational evidence then it is not scientific: " The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. *To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical* and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." Rules for the study of natural philosophy", Newton 1999, pp. 794–6, from Book 3, The System of the World Moreover can the story really be scientifically tested and repeated? So is the evolution story really scientific? |
As has been pointed out, yet glossed over, evolution by natural selection has nothing to say about the origin of life, only changes to life forms over time.
A fundamental problem with asking for empircal evidence of macroscopic evolution in large animals is that you are ignoring the timescales over which evolution is said to occur.
The example changes you list are highly unlikely to occur as a single mutation and would likely require a series of mutation over many, many generations, i.e. a protracted timescale. In no way does the theory of natural selection suggest that complex, completely novel traits are a common by-product of single DNA mutations, merely that mutation occurs which may or may not be beneficial. Very generally speaking large-scale changes to DNA are often incompatible with life, so we are left with small changes that accumulate over TIME. In fact, if completely novel traits were observed to evolve frequently, it would actually be evidence against the theory of natural selection in its current form.
Fundamental shifts in the fossil record which show novel traits are not cited as evidence of the form of evolution that you describe, they are evidence to show how the small changes described above can accumlate over time and lead to fundamental changes in form or function. One has to remember, fossil generation itself is punctuated, not continuous. Two fossils laying close to one another may have been lain down many thousands or millions of years apart, so a drastic change from one form to another may represent a series of many thousands or even millions of accumulated mutations.
What we are left with in terms of direct observation and testing is creatures that live on a very short timescale and hence provide a window into how natural selection as a whole works for other life forms. An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution, and it's worth reading the whole article, not just dismissing it because you think you know the 'story' Additionally there is a whole host of evidence, some already cited, regarding evolution in microbes and whilst not as exciting as spontaneously generated baleen plates, it is nonetheless relevant and valid.
Finally, the fact that you start the OP with the expression "Evolution Story" shows bias, so your request for honest discourse comes off somewhat disingenuous. If you have spent 20-30 years forming this bias I don't believe that 30 minutes on a message board is going to change your mind. One thing I would suggest is making a greater effort to understand the actual theory of natural selection, not your own version of it, if for no other reason that being better able to argue against it.
