[Squid]

yea... it is possible... it is called

MICRO EVOLUTION

now something like apes goin and changing to humans is called
MACRO EVOLUTION...

THEIR IS A DIFFERENCE

MICRO = REAL
MACRO = FALSE

If I were to explain this to you, would you actually read and understand what I would post?  Or would my explanation be ignored?

[SteveS]

Not the old macro/micro thing again?   :bang:

[crazycycoclown]

you see... i tolerate athiests (now before you get all pissy about me saying that by that i mean... i dont have problems with you guys)

but one bird changing its beak size does not prove apes went to humans... whales to cows  or anything... its beak got shorter... not that big of a deal...

it is not one species turning into another now is it...

it is still a bird... in fact it is the same bird... me and my sister are different hights... we didnt evolve

humans have changed average lenght throughout the years... eyt we are not a different species

oh yea and spell clown right

[Reasoner]

you see... i tolerate athiests (now before you get all pissy about me saying that by that i mean... i dont have problems with you guys)

but one bird changing its beak size does not prove apes went to humans... whales to cows  or anything... its beak got shorter... not that big of a deal...

it is not one species turning into another now is it...

it is still a bird... in fact it is the same bird... me and my sister are different hights... we didnt evolve

humans have changed average lenght throughout the years... eyt we are not a different species

oh yea and spell clown right

Oh, yeah, and spell "psycho", "yet", "length", "height" and "didn't" right. Also, the phrase is "my sister and I", not "me and my sister" (you would not say "Me am 5 foot 8 inches tall). Your message will have far more impact if your spelling and syntax make sense.

[Squid]

you see... i tolerate athiests (now before you get all pissy about me saying that by that i mean... i dont have problems with you guys)

but one bird changing its beak size does not prove apes went to humans... whales to cows  or anything... its beak got shorter... not that big of a deal...

it is not one species turning into another now is it...

it is still a bird... in fact it is the same bird... me and my sister are different hights... we didnt evolve

humans have changed average lenght throughout the years... eyt we are not a different species

oh yea and spell clown right

Well, I’m not sure if this will be worth the effort but I’ll try anyway.

First, let’s examine what the definition of what evolution actually is.  Audesirk, Audesirk, and Byers (2002) define evolution as:

the descent of modern organisms with modification from preexisting life-forms; strictly speaking, any change in the proportions of different genotypes in a population from one generation to the next. (G-9).

Therefore, strictly speaking (as Audesirk et al. have put it) a change in the allele frequency of the finch population is, by definition, evolution.  It must be understood that a speciation event need not take place for this process to occur.  It must also be understood that individuals do not evolve, populations do.  You and your sister being different heights is not evolution â€" it’s you and your sister being different heights as determined your genetics.  Now, if a population were to see a shift in the frequency toward a certain height, now you have something.  You must not confuse evolution with development - they are two different things.

Earlier you had mentioned a distinction between micro/macro evolution.  Let’s take a look at what these specifically are.  Microevolution is defined by Mayr (2001) as "evolution at or below the species level" (287).  And macroevolution is defined as "evolution above the species level" (287). Both macro and microevolution work the same.  Both involve change in species due to selection.  The event that sets macro apart from micro is the speciation event.  Such an event occurs when two groups from a parent population become isolated from each other and change to the point where they can longer interbreed and produce viable offspring.

So, therefore, the population did not experience a speciation event but it still evolved.  The criticism toward this is often due to the misunderstanding of what it is to “evolve” in the scientific, context-specific sense of the word.

Secondly â€" “apes to humans”.  Speaking taxonomically, we are apes.  We are bipedal primates.  Our taxonomic assignment is Homo sapiens sapiens.  We are a sub-species of Homo sapiens.  Our immediate ancestors were Homo sapiens idaltu (White T., Asfaw B., DeGusta D., Gilbert H., Richards G., Suwa G. et al., 2003) from which our lineage experience what is known as anagensis as opposed to cladogenesis.  Anagenesis is phyletic change.  That is, the entire population experiences a change in gene frequency instead of a speciation event (cladogenesis).  Cladogenesis also takes place more rapidly than anagenesis does (Minkoff, 1983).  However, this change was not significant enough to warrant a new species designation and therefore, the sub-species assignment.

We and the other apes share common ancestors at different points in our lineage.  The last common ancestor between us and chimpanzees was approximately 5-7 million years ago.  This estimate is in accordance with fossil specimens in the record and as well as biochemical and genetic analysis.  Our closest living relatives are the Bonobo chimps â€" also called the Pygmy chimps.

The ancestors we all evolved from millions of years ago are extinct, they went extinct millions of years ago.

Thirdly â€" “whales to cows”.  Whales did not evolve into cows.  Whales belong to the order Cetacea.  They have a lineage traced back to the terrestrial organisms in the order Artiodactyla, which are even-toed ungulates such as goats, cattle, camels and hippos.  Sequencing of mtDNA has shown that whales are close, genetically, to cows â€" “The general similarity between the mtDNA of the fin whale and the cow is greater than the similarity between the fin whale and other species…” (Arnason, Gullberg and Widegren, 1991).  Another damning piece of evidence was the discovery of a whale ancestor and intermediate between the more terrestrial ancestors and the more water-adapted progeny.  In 2001, Gingerich, Haq, Zalmout, Khan, and Malkani published a paper detailing the finding of two fossil whales which had “virtually complete fore- and hind limbs” (2239).  Earlier, in 1994, a piece was also filled in with the discovery of Ambulocetus natans which was a mammal with fully functional limbs but spent much time in the water (Thewissen, Hussain and Arif, 1994).  An even cursory appraisal of the evidence shows the evolutionary lineage of whales from terrestrial ancestors is well supported.

Lastly, we need to give a quick examination of what constitutes a speciation.  In sexually reproducing organisms, as we are discussing here, it would go along with the biological species concept.  The biological species concept outlines the criteria for determining what constitutes a species.  Mayr (2001), comments on the BSC, stating:

(1) species are composed of populations, and (2) populations are conspecific if they successfully interbreed with each other.  This reasoning resulted in the so-called biological species concept (BSC): ‘Species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.’  In other words, a species is a reproductive community.  Its reproductive isolation is effected by so-called isolating mechanisms, that is, by properties of individuals that prevent (or make unsuccessful) the interbreeding with individuals of other speices (167).

With the “kind” taxonomical approach we have a very simplistic and superficial methodology which does not take into consideration any scientific information such as population ecology, genetics, et cetera.  The “kind” concept is ambiguous and biologically useless.

If need be I can elaborate on the information in this post, if and only if you wish to learn more.

References (In order of appearance):

Audesirk, T., Audesirk, G., & Byers, B. (2002). Biology: Life on earth. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Mayr, E. (2001). What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books.

Minkoff, E. (1983). Evolutionary Biology. Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing.

White T., Asfaw B., DeGusta D., Gilbert H., Richards G., Suwa G. et al. (2003). Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature, 423, 742-747.

Arnason, U, Gullberg, A., and Widegren, B. (1991). The complete nucleotide sequence of the mitochondrial DNA of the fin whale, Balaenoptera physalus. Journal of Molecular Evolution, 33, 556-568.

Gingerich, P., Haq, M., Zalmout, I., Khan, I. and  Malkani, M. (2001). Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science, 293, 2239-2242.

Thewissen, J., Hussain, S. and Arif, M. (1994). Fossil evidence for the origin of aquatic
locomotion in Archaeocete whales. Science, 263, 210-212.

[Tom62]

I always wondered why chimpanzees share nearly 95% of our genetic material. For me that is a very clear indication that we are related to them.

[Squid]

It's actually more like only a ~1.23 difference between us and them according to the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium (2005).  The 95% thing comes from one paper published which focused specifically on INDELs or (insertion/deletions) back in 2002 I believe - the Chimp genome comparison with the Human genome was a base by base comparison of the entire sequence which is much more detailed than the paper given by Britten (2002) which examined only several sequenced parts.  His analysis was based on one million bases of which there are over 3 billion bases.

So technically he is right and wrong. He simply focused on a smaller part of the genome which amplifies the differences.  When the entire genome is examined and compared, we get ~1.23 difference which was independently estimated by another group of researchers. Chen and Li (2001) found the divergence between humans and chimps to be less than that of chimps and gorillas:

The average sequence divergence was only 1.24% ± 0.07% for the human-chimpanzee pair, 1.62% ± 0.08% for the human-gorilla pair, and 1.63% ± 0.08% for the chimpanzee-gorilla pair.

Ebersberger, Metzler, Schwarz and Paabo (2002) calculated the divergence to be 1.24%, the same as the calculation found by Chen and Li and only .01% different from the consortium’s findings.

I'd say that qualifies as independent verification.

Just thought I'd toss that information out there for everyone and to help combat the accusation when it comes up in debates.  Evolution opponents like to toss that paper out having (most likely) only read the title and not understood the work, methodology or how it relates to the genome sequences at all.

But yes, we share such similar genetic makeup because we only diverged from our common ancester ~5-7 million years ago.  This date is one of the reasons why there was so much fanfare around the Toumai (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) specimen because it is estimated to be around 6 and 7 million years old placing it close to our lineage's divergence time from the chimp lineage.  As well there was some salience to the Orrorin tugenensis specimens which are approximately 6 million years old and some researchers claim to have found evidence of bipedality.

References:

Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium (2005). Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome.  Nature, 437, 69-87.

Britten, R. (2002). Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5% counting indels. PNAS, 99, 13633-13635.

Chen, F. and Li, W. (2001). Genomic Divergences between Humans and Other Hominoids and the Effective Population Size of the Common Ancestor of Humans and Chimpanzees. American Journal of Human Genetics, 68, 444-456.

Ebersberger, I., Schwarz, C., Metzler, D. and Pääbo, S. (2002) Genome wide DNA sequence comparison between humans and chimpanzees. American Journal of Human Genetics, 70, 1490-1497.

[McQ]

Chen and Li (2001) found the divergence between humans and chimps to be less than that of chimps and gorillas

That was the thing I found so interesting when it was first noted.

[Tom62]

Cool! And I was already happy with a 95% similarity.

[SteveS]

I always wondered why chimpanzees share nearly 95% of our genetic material. For me that is a very clear indication that we are related to them.

Yes.  The fact that we can even draw phylogenetic trees, and the fact that the underlying DNA shows the relations the way the trees do, seems just on the surface to be strong evidence for evolution.

Speaking of phylogenetic trees, there's a really cool example of one on the Wiki:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/ITOL_Tree_of_life.jpg

That's just plain neat in my book.

[sinhater]

http://www.dailymorality.com

[McQ]

http://www.dailymorality.com

Well, thanks for all that. Welcome to the forum. Good luck with the Web Page.

Care to elaborate in this forum a little? You're more than welcome to share your ideas and thoughts without just posting a website.

[Whitney]

Nice huh, a random link posted which is aparently a site about morality via god and has nothing to do with the topic.....apparently "sinhater" thinks it is a sin to accept evolution.  Too bad he can't be bothered to use his own thoughts ( or her)

[SteveS]

I will elaborate on the details of how seriously erroneous the theory of evolution is later. Check back for updates.

Sort of makes me want to "check back for updates" --- whatever shows up is bound to be entertaining....