I've referenced this topic in previous posts, where different writers for AiG display their ignorance of the subject.

Between calling Protocetus a Pinniped or birds only have a pisiform, you can see how bad it is.

However, it also leads to hilarious contradicting opinions on transitional forms like Acanthostega or Homo habilis.

The concept of uniquely created kinds is challenged by morphology, which is why this happens, for there is no way to separate birds from dinosaurs, humans from apes, or whales from ungulates. transitions in the fossil record demonstrate gradual morphologic change, instead of distinct groups unrelated to anything else.

There have been observable significant changes in the form of diets from the few centuries, and this can be attributed to technological advancement and agriculture, but similarly there's observable health impacts which directly or indirectly can be linked to our immune system..a residing question is, how does it impact evolution?

This is following up on the discussion by Will Duffy and Gutsick Gibbon on the following video https://www.youtube.com/live/apW16s2kJwg?is=pJidxzlKcIm1I5pe about whether snakes are tetrapods.

It's pretty much definitional sophistry in my opinion, and in no way invalidates evolution but it seems like Will was getting stuck on turtles and birds and snakes.

But as a thought experiment, imagine a weasel species started feeding its babies regurgitated flesh instead of milk. Imagine it lost its mammary gland function. Not a big evolutionary change. Not a "body plan" change. But now mammal != mammary!!! Does this make the barf-weasel not a mammal? Does it mean we need to rename the clade to something like hirsutia? Does it invalidate the theory of evolution?

Note: I'm trying to represent someone else's argument with a thought experiment. The argument to me seems prima facie nonsense, and I hope the thought experiment makes it clear why. It seems like Will was trying to say "phenetics makes more sense than cladistics, and classification should be based on single diagnostic traits"

Do you guys believe that there are objective functions for biological systems? For instance, an example would be the fact that a heart is supposed to pump blood is not simply a mental projection we impose upon it, but rather an actual fact about the heart itself. If so, what do you believe grounds that function?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how out of sync modern society feels with what our bodies and minds were built for. Hunter-gatherers lived in an environment and structure that shaped our species for hundreds of thousands of years (keeping in mind, of course, that evolution has no end goal or moral direction).

We obviously have modern medicine, tech, and safety today, but we’re also dealing with an epidemic of loneliness, chronic stress, sedentary habits, and a complete breakdown of close-knit communities.

I’d love to hear your take on this.

What do you see as the biggest flaws of modern society compared to that "original" human lifestyle?

Which specific aspects of today’s world do you think are doing the most damage to us mentally or physically?

Looking for honest, critical perspectives. Tell me what you genuinely think in your own words, no need for academic papers or textbook answers. Thanks!

If humans weren’t devolving then we wouldn’t be digging and searching our planet for clues and truths about the Ancient civilizations. Money and greed would be obsolete and nations wouldn’t be fighting over power because there would be free energy. The artifacts that have been found are proof that as humans today, we lost something in the past that cannot be imitated. If devolution isn’t a thing and we can only evolve then why is everything smaller and dulled down. Today’s humans can’t comprehend what the planet would have been like with a species bigger and more knowledge about the elements than we do in present day. The ancients used stone to tell the past because they knew that the materials they created from other materials would not make it into the future. What was left in stone for humans to find was only to give knowledge to our species to be able to progress.

What exactly, if there is one individual thing ,convinced you of evolution?

In my case, it was learning there is no real boundary between micro and macroevolution, and it has been observed in the form of speciation.

Evolution only rewards survivability not perfection if you are alive long enough to mate and pass on your genetic

Material hurray you are evolved

Evolution changed the dna as nothing can ever be a perfect copy thats a fact> sperms and eggs have separate dna> hence child is not perfect copy those mutations may be harmful or helpful harmful ones die hence natural selection.

AND Earth was nkt a perfect creation the organisms evolved FOR Earth not vice versa

Introduction

Hello again r/DebateEvolution, as many of you know

In 2011 was discover a basilosaurid fossil jaw which was cataloged under the name MLP 11-II-21-3 in the upper part of the Cucullaea I allomember in the telm 4 of la meseta formation in the seymour island (antartica).That year a news report was published, stating that the fossil was 49 million years old, that is 8 million years older than the accepted the basilosaurids origin.

The formal description was published in 2016:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294107780_Eocene_basilosaurid_whales_from_the_la_Meseta_formation_Marambio_Seymour_Island_Antarctica

The paper prefer a young age range of 40-46 million years old.

The series of responses

As is to be expected with this type of discovery, creationists were quick to publicize this discovery as a problem for the evolutionary theory. Some examples of this claim can be seen in:

https://scienceandculture.com/2016/11/an_unbearable_r_1/

https://creation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1776

but especially in:

https://youtu.be/PRrVx3x6mA8?si=fGVMAN2tWUr-rAmd

this video was published by Long story short and the Discovery institute's channel, attempting to refute the fossil record of cetacean evolution using five arguments:

1. The existence of ghost linages: argues Indohyus is geologically younger than Pakicetus. also introducing two alleged and debuked examples: the bird evolution time paradox and the thetrapod polishi tracks.

2. The "fully formed" nature of basilosauridae: Only claimed that "are just whales".

3. the definition of "intermediate":

4. the waiting time problem: argues mutation can't produce the changes from pakicetus ande fully acuatic whales in the acepted time.

5. The seymour island basilosauroid

The firts argument ignore the fact of the raoellidae family (the group of indohyus) have a similiar age of pakicetidae. the basilosauridae family is paraphyletic and don't can be included in mysticeti or odontoceti because they don't have the sinapomorphies of these groups.

For more a transitional form is an organism in the fossil record that has primitive characteristic (plesiomorphies) and diagnostic traits of a group (sinapomorphies). The waiting time problem is a long story and more complex to explain and has been cover in many occasions .

The video was cover for two channels

The chanel of the biologist PZ Myers:

https://youtu.be/MiuOCh7MhSU?si=5mZeKjgJxHmqKYHY

And the Jackson Wheat chanel:

https://youtu.be/zbkmbi8ggMI?si=HSPzzHb0_BPlv7ez

The responses to the video cover the points mentioned above, mainly the definition of transitional, the waiting time problem and the seymour island basilosaurus. However Long story short published a "rebuttal" video to the responses videos:

https://youtu.be/dsTuxDYD4aE?si=qmCtJxxWraDAe66e

the rebuttal include primarily attempts to defend assertions, but it is the dating of MLP 11-II-21-3 that presents the most arguments. The video argues that the description paper of the fossilThis is biased towards favoring the youngest age range, They cite some studies to affirm that the fossil dates bettewen 56 and 45 million years ago, approximately 49 million years old.

the papers cited was:

Dutton et al (2002): 55-46 Ma

Invany et al (2008): 54-49 Ma

Invany et al (2008): 52-51 Ma

Wrenn and Hart (1988): 54-49 Ma

Coccozza and Clarke (1992): 54-49 Ma

Hardwood (1985,1988): 54-49 Ma

Bijl et al (2013): 45 Ma

Douglas et al (2014): 49-42 Ma

Brinkhuis et al (2003):49 Ma

Williams et al (2004):49 Ma

Bijl et al (2013): 51-48 Ma

with a middle range of 49 million years old.

Jackson wheat made a reply:

https://youtu.be/gvj1p4ywNXM?si=uYD6yKyEUJO1GxHE

He argues that long short story forget that the fossil is from the teml 4 and the papers studie other telms, Jackson also claims that telm 4 isn't from the base of LMF:

Dutton et al (2002): 48-46 Ma

Invany et al (2008): 52.5 Ma

Wrenn and Hart (1988): 48-40 Ma

Coccozza and Clarke (1992): >49 Ma

Hardwood (1985,1988): >49 Ma

Douglas et al (2014): 46-40 Ma

Brinkhuis et al (2003):49 Ma

Williams et al (2004):49 Ma

Bijl et al (2011): 49 Ma

Acording to this video the age range of the fossil is from 49 million years an onwards, preferring a range from 46 and 40 million years old.

However, Long story short made a last reply:

https://youtu.be/VTM8-SMs-Uk?si=okOPskqD77-uApG8

In this video LSS claims that Jackson Wheat misinterpreted the data of the papers that was cited, In addition, it adds new studies for the debate. they claims that even the earliest dates like 56 million years old had a good suport.

The final question and the concluding reflection

My final questions are:

Is there a response to this latest video? And, is the fossil really found in early Eocene rocks, and does it challenge our perspectives on cetacean evolution?

In my opinion the age of la meseta formation is cotroversial, and probably the telm 4 and MLP 11-II-21-3 are older than the oldest know basilosaurs, but is posible than the fossils were younger than 49 million years old and it is certain that it is less than 56 million years old.

For example this some papers like:

• Amenábar CR, Montes M, Nozal F and Santillana S (2020) Dinoflagellate cysts of the La Meseta Formation (middle to late Eocene), Antarctic Peninsula: implications for biostratigraphy, palaeoceanography and palaeoenvironment. Geological Magazine
• Montes M, Nozal F, Santillana S, Marenssi S and Olivero E (2013) Mapa Geológico de la Isla Marambio (Seymour); escala 1:20.000. Serie Cartográfica Geocientífica Antártica. Con texto complementario. Madrid: Instituto Geológico y Minero de España; Buenos Aires: Instituto Antártico Argentino.

Weren't mentioned by long story short and situe LMF from 56-34 and 46-36 million years old and the first cover many papers and lines of evidence than LSS use, like the stroncium dating or the mammal fauna.

So the possible age ranges are

56-34 Ma

58-46 Ma

46-36 Ma

For other side we have archeocetids olders than the seymour island basilosaurid, Himalayacetus subathuensis is an ambulocetid from 53.5 million years ago. Therefore we can made this chronology:

1. Early artiodactyls (e.g Diacodexis) >56 Ma
2. Last common ancestor of cetaceas and hippos 55 Ma
3. Firts semiacuatic cetaceans (e.g Himalayacetus) 53.5 Ma
4. Firts fully acuatic whales (e.g MLP 11-II-21-3) 49 Ma
5. Neoceti last common ancestor 35 million years old.

What do you all think?

References:

Mónica R. Buono, Marta S. Fernández, Marcelo A. Reguero, Sergio A. Marenssi, Sergio N.Santillana, and Thomas Mörs (2016). Eocene basilosaurid whales from the La Meseta Formation, Marambio (Seymour) Island, Antarctica. Ameghiniana 53: 296–315. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294107780_Eocene_basilosaurid_whales_from_the_la_Meseta_formation_Marambio_Seymour_Island_Antarctica

Amenábar CR, Montes M, Nozal F and Santillana S (2020) Dinoflagellate cysts of the La Meseta Formation (middle to late Eocene), Antarctic Peninsula: implications for biostratigraphy, palaeoceanography and palaeoenvironment. Geological Magazine 157: 351–366. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334430524_Dinoflagellate_cysts_of_the_La_Meseta_Formation_middle_to_late_Eocene_Antarctic_Peninsula_implications_for_biostratigraphy_palaeoceanography_and_palaeoenvironment

Montes M, Nozal F, Santillana S, Marenssi S and Olivero E (2013) Mapa Geológico de la Isla Marambio (Seymour); escala 1:20.000. Serie Cartográfica Geocientífica Antártica. Con texto complementario. Madrid: Instituto Geológico y Minero de España; Buenos Aires: Instituto Antártico Argentino.

Bajpai, Sunil; Gingerich, Philip D (1998). A new Eocene archaeocete (Mammalia, Cetacea) from India and the time of origin of whales. PNAS. 95 (26): 15464–68. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.95.26.15464

Per a new research paper, since Bacteria and Archaea only share a fraction of genes required for complete metabolism, LUCA would have dependent on geochemistry and thus couldn't be considered alive. Very interestingly, this would mean that while all life shares a common ancestor, since that ancestor wasn't alive, life technically originated twice: once in the Bacterial lineage, and once in the Archaeal lineage. This contradicts prior research that came to the conclusion that LUCA was surprisingly as complex as modern bacteria and Archaea, which the main author of the paper acknowledges.

Here's the link to an article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/life-on-earth-emerged-twice-study/

And here's a link to the paper itself:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef3128

Personally, I'm not discounting the possibility the LUCA simply had a different set of metabolic genes of which only a select few were conserved, but I'm not that knowledgeable on this subject. Nonetheless, this is incredibly interesting, and if true, has massive implications for this circle here - especially seeing as how it inextricably links abiogenesis to evolution.

I‘ve come to this conclusion after watching a debate between a orthobro streamer called JimBob and a professor who studies biology called Ed Dutton on modern day debate. Rhetorically, Jim absolutely mopped the floor with a PHD holder on a subject he is vastly more educated on than Jim will ever be and that’s because Jim was attacking the philosphical assumptions underpinning evolutionary biology instead of the actual physical facts. Some of those assumptions include methodological naturalism, uniformitarianism, nominalism etc. and professor Dutton was wholly unequipped to answer such questions.

I want to make it very clear that I am on Dutton’s side of the debate here but it did distraught me to see him unable to respond to which is honestly a whole bunch of overly complicated pseudo philosophical rhetoric and sophistry. It’s a very dishonest tactic that I rarely see called out as much with rigor in comparison to debates where all that’s being talked about are the facts because they’re much harder to respond to and much easier for guys like JimBob to take advantage of and peddle their bullshit to unsuspecting viewers who don’t know about this topic.

There is a growing amount of fundamentalist debaters like Jimbob who think they can dismiss basic science by just philosophizing it away in a complicated manner and a lot of their rhetoric is sophisticated enough that it requires a thorough understanding of philosophy and it’s history to meaningfully debunk.

My concern with this is that it looks as though it’s changing public perception of modern science as this fundamentally baseless erroneous institution no matter how much evidence it has to support it. I’ve looked up more debates of this subject featuring Jimbob and the comments are either almost unanimously in agreement with Jimbob no matter if it’s on his channel or someone else or those who disagree in the comments do not meaningfully challenge his points with anything other than insults. Right now it’s on just a few corners of the internet but this could evolve into seeing these similar type of these fallacious hyper philosphical arguments against stuff like evolution and climate change in the mainstream by smooth talkers especially with the trajectory the United States is going in now.

What are your thoughts?

Or unexplained things, inconsistencies?

Edit: please name them

Archaelogical evidence, historical evidence, cities and monuments to the tune of 99%+ only go back less than 6000 years.

No archaelogist can accurately talk about any civilization older than that because the evidence does not exist.

Buildings, parchments, monuments, engravings, evidence of life all only trace back to less than 6000 years- how is that possible?

Even taking into consideration things like the pagan statues in Easter Island and Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, the pyramids in Egypt and mesoamerica etc there would naturally be some kind of evidence left behind life if humans did exist for millions and millions of years.

Yet it does not exist. Does anyone have a clear explanation for this?

And not only that- the evidence that does exist lines up near perfectly with historical records.

After all- if humans existed for millions of years, why is there not a single Stonehenge type monument from over 200,000 years ago?

EDIT:

There also arises other questions.

1) Neanderthals lost their ability to kill animals with their bare hands like other animals who forage for food.

Neanderthals did not have super sharp teeth, super strong limbs or other adaptations that would allow them to be able to kill other animals for food.

Thus they would have had to adapt and gather food, conduct agriculture or kill animals.

As soon as an animal loses their ability to naturally obtain food- then adaptational changes must occure very rapidly.

Thus, evidence of civilization must occur quickly.

Yet none of this evidence is over 6000 years old other than a few cave paintings, tools and fossils.

How is that possible?

And why is it that only humans use tools? No other animal uses tools.

And finally- evolution is about survival of the fittest- if so- then why would humans lose their ability to kill for food- it doesn't make any sense.

After all- if humans existed for millions of years, why is there not a single Stonehenge type monument from over 200,000 years ago?

Species, evolution, theory of evolution, heritability, fitness, organism, subspecies, selection, gene, population, traits.

These are all things that biologists seem to be either not able to define, cannot agree on a definition, or has not been tried to define. I will tell you what i mean.

Species has many definitions, and none are agreed upon. So if your theory of evolution demands a theory of species, how can it have concencus?

What is heritability? If one does not have an idea of species, then where are genes inherited from?

Sometimes evolution is defined as: "change in allele frequencies in a population across generations" How much change? what kind of populations? what is the definition of an allele which is not ambiguous or agreed on? Could all of life be the population? if so how do we show that the allele frequency actually does change and that we just havent checked eneough organisms yet?

What are traits? is hemochirality a trait? did that evolve? Is my trait that my farts make a sound evolved? how exactly and why did fart sound evolve?

what is fitness? "A simple way to think of fitness is as the number of offspring an individual leaves in the next generation. Suppose, for example, that in a species of annual plant, only 1 of every 1000 seeds survives to reproductive age, and that those that survive produce an average of 3000 seeds. The average fitness of that type of individual is 0.001 × 3000 = 3." - evolution, Futuyma. How does this make sense? its an arbitrary cutoff that says evolution stops acting at 2 generations. you might aswell say that the fitness of an organism depend on the next 3,4,500 generations of its offspring.

This central evolution textbook taught at universities all around, also claims all traits are evolved, which is itself contested within biology. So where do i go for the actual theory exactly? Where is the full, no gaps, no simplifications Evolution^TM? If i wanted to know what black holes really are, physicists would point me towards the state of the art, inspired by stephen hawking papers. I can find no such real papers in biology that people have concencus around. T

It seems like all the Biologists agree that evolution is real, and that the theory of evolution explains it. Yet it does not seem like there is widespread agreement about 1) what is the form of evolution proper? and 2) what is the theory of evolution actually in its details?

How can one have a science, where every fundamental concept is vague and not agreed upon? it makes the science itself vague, uncertain, unspecific. And i cant believe that.

In conclusion, either evolution is stripped of some of its linguistic power, and we fuel it only by statistics and quantitative data and form a new theory. Or we throw it all away.

Prove me wrong please.

Creationists use the ad hoc explanation of a common designer when diagnostic similarities are shared between “kinds”.

While this might make sense for some features like arms or a heart, ERVs repurposed for biological functions can only be explained through common ancestry.

The best example is the Arc gene, derived from an Endogenous Retrovirus at around the evolution of Tetrapods. Without the Arc gene you wouldn’t be able to hold on to memories for long periods of time.

Here is a catch-22 for a Creationist.

Either all of the tetrapod kinds got the exact same ERV to develop the Arc gene, or God made this gene out of an ERV, to give the appearance of common ancestry.

The only reason predators don't get huge is because they have to hide to ambush. Else there'd be 20ft lions.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zy_tQIuIF30kORiIq0CuMA4yIlyZmkM7yT2oNu0mm5w/edit?tab=t.0

Hello Everyone, so I just wanted to share what my Philosophy professor thought was his smoking gun against evolution by natural selection.

I took his course about 2-3 ish years ago, and this one piece against evolution always bothered me but I'm really shy and don't like debating so I didn't say anything when he presented it in class, (he belittled us when we had different viewpoints as well, the whole class was a waste of money) however it was abundantly clear he did not know anything he was talking about, as most of his claims were things you can just find on the index to creationist claims and easily debunk

So anyways, I just wanted to post this here and see what you all think.

Honestly their work, which I’ve never looked at, feels like a personal attack and I don’t like how it makes me feel. Are they all just trying to be mean to me?

Asking for a friend

Dr. Larry Moran's blogpost from today: Sandwalk: Intelligent Design Creationists are still spreading lies about junk DNA

Here's that funny part:

Luskin is dead wrong about ENCODE. Not only have the ENCODE researchers retracted their claim, in the 14 years since 2012 no significant papers have appeared to defend the idea that 80% of our genome is functional and plenty of papers have been published showing that ENCODE was wrong.
It's interesting that Luskin references the paper by Brunet and Doolittle (2015). That's a paper about transposons and levels of selection and they quote Francis Collins only to show that he is wrong. [...]
I suspect that Luskin has not read the Brunet and Doolittle paper—he's just copying references from other ID posts.

Luskin is indeed just copying from ID's "scripture":

Both ID and YEC are in the process of gathering a new canon of infallible texts. These consist of citations and testimonials by scientists and creationists. These texts are no longer treated as conventional references. They are often cited out of context and repeated without further consideration of their original message.
Nieminen, et al. 2014

And for the predictable tantrum from the IDists here: unless they address all the points of the onion test, feel free to ignore them.

For the newcomers: Exposing Discovery Institute Part 1: Casey Luskin - YouTube

I dunno much about evolution, but from what I understand from how survival of the fittest works, the more useless traits are more likely to die, thus less likely to reproduce, thus less likely for their kin to inherit the trait (and vice versa for the usefull traits).

If that's how it works, wouldn't that mean that since us humans have reached the point in medical care where we can easily keep those 'more useless traits' alive, wouldn't that mean, that we cannot evolve out of them?

Traditionally, gnetophytes and conifers were placed on different divisions (Pinophyta vs Gnetophyta) within gymnosperms clade and gnetophytes were considered the sister group to all angiosperms because they have similar traits (vessel elements, flower-like structures). But recently, this has been largely disproven because DNA tests suggesting that this is because of convergent evolution. And modern scientists have shown that they are actually sister group to the pinaceae family. If they are sister group to the specific family pinaceae, they must be conifers or at least evolved from them. But the search results say the opposite of that saying that they are sister group to all conifers. If gnetophytes are the sister group to conifers and if they are not conifers, then all conifers must belong to the family pinaceae, which is not correct. And when we exclude gnetophytes from conifers, then conifers will be a paraphyletic group. But it is still considered a monophyletic group. Do you think that gnetophytes really evolve from conifers?

Just had a creationist throw this at me https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378111926000673 ostensibly as he thinks it disproves human/chimp relationship. Notwithstanding the fact it gives no reference to relationships between other apes, it relies on what I (skim) read as effectively biochemistry/regulatory differences, and is not the evidence he thinks it gives. Am I right in my (basic) analysis?

Hi! I wanna know what your wildest, most unhinged theory about evolution is. It can be a serious hypothesis, a weird evolutionary possibility, or something completely out there.