What you are talking about is adaptation. Get a grip. No creationist will ever reject adaptation/micro evolution.

If you want to join the fray, at least sharpen your sword.

I can't believe slate let someone post such a shallow and disinformed article...

I don’t understand-

Evolution is microevolution. A mutation in a gene (or more often a mutation that alters the expression level of a gene) followed by natural selection (is the mutation advantageous or not?). Blamo- evolution. As for blind salamanders, living in a cave there is no selective pressure against loosing genes to mutation that affect sight (and because sight requires lots of energy there is probably an advantage to salamanders living in caves to loose genes involved with sight), the consequence is that sightless salamanders are able to live and reproduce. Over time, you have anew species of salamander. Terrestrial salamanders never loose sight because there is significant selective pressure against it. Biological evolution (there is also evolution of non living things, the universe is different than it was 100 billion years ago, the Earth is different than it was 300 million years ago ie. Grand Canyon) is simply the result of infidelity in DNA replication combined with the selective pressure of the environment.

Mutations is not an accurate description of how evolution occurs as far as I am concerned. It shows the fundamental disrespect these morons have for intelligence. I have seen only morass after morass of explaining nothing but ignorance from these undeveloped monkeys.

Baselessgull,

If you can accurately state some part of evolutionary theory and then debunk it I would love to hear it.

“What you are talking about is adaptation.”

>>The example given regarding blind salamanders represents evolutionary change, not adaptive change. in the context of the biological sciences adaptation and evolution refer to two different things. Adaptation occurs at the level of the individual, does not involve a change in genetic composition, and is not inheritable (think acquired immunity, or the physiological changes an athlete undergoes training at high altitude.) Evolutionary change occurs at the level of the population and always involves a inheritable change in the population’s genetic composition (think industrial melanization or antibiotic resistance in bacteria.)

“Get a grip. No creationist will ever reject adaptation/micro evolution.”

>>Evolution is evolution, micro or macro--the distinction between micro and macro-evolution is only at what taxonomic level an evolutionary change occurs (micro refers to evolution occurring below the level of the species, while macro-evolution refers to evolution at or above the species level. We have in fact directly observed macroevolution occurring, in real time in living populations, in the form of speciation events.

Baselessgull,

You are right, mutations are not evolution. Mutations that have been sorted into beneficial, neutral, and harmful categories by selective pressure is what evolution.

I commend you on your eagerness to let people know that you don't know what you are talking about.

That is impossible. A theory must be true to be a theory. A theory is not guessing, the theory is known to be true. A bogus theory is simply nonsense.

Yes. A bogus theory is simply nonsense. Although a scientist would never use the word "theory" to describe nonsense. Nonsense never could rise above a discarded postulate.

The word "Theory" at least as used by scientists means something that has been repeatedly tested that ties together smaller facts into a larger narrative. That doesn't mean it needs to be perfect, or that it can't be a work in progress.

So do you have a hypothesis that doesn't rest on some variant of "The aliens made it happen"?

Blanchy:

So do you have a hypothesis that doesn't rest on some variant of "The aliens made it happen"?

If you consider a snotball of some sort to be an alien, count me out of that one. Perhaps you are an alien and caused evolution to some degree. I think the Bible says He always knew you.

ID proponents when they tried to push their ideas into schools said that it may not have been "God" so to speak that seeded this planet with life or guided it along the way. They of course meant God, but they implied that some other alien may have been responsible. So by alien it could have been God, the Romulans, Jedi Knights, or whoever the race du jour is.

Quite the opposite--theories by definition can never be proven true.

A theory is a unifying and self-consistent explanation of fundamental natural processes or phenomena that constructed of corroborated hypotheses, which comprehensively, predictively, and tentatively explains all observations within its scope. Theories derive confidence not from the possibility that they might at some later time be proven to be true, but from that existing ability to explain all observations within their scope comprehensively and predictively.

JGC:

Quite the opposite--theories by definition can never be proven true.

That's only a democrat definition. I evolved from the apes.

It’s not a political definition of any sort—it’s a scientific one. If by ‘apes’ you’re referencing hominids like A. afarensis, etc., you’re correct. If instead you mean you evolved from any of the great ape species now extant you’re in error.

BaselessGull:

JGC:

Quite the opposite--theories by definition can never be proven true.

That's only a democrat definition. I evolved from the apes.

I'm still hoping to see you put together a cogent explanation of something wrong with evolutionary theory, beginning with evidence that you have a clear understanding of the theory you discuss. Is that just being naive?

Why would I believe a non-scientific observation of what a fossil consists of? Is it evidence that I evolved from snotballs?

Evolution is a matter of how everything evolves in a circle or, if you prefer, just any ol way.