Evolution in Action 266
An anonymous reader writes "A new species of plant came into existence about 30 years ago. It is a fertile hybrid which cannot breed with either of its parent species."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Evolution in Action
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life. -- Schulz
Non-Biased reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the part where I imagine Anthony Browne, the columnist, doing a little dance, and thumbing his nose at those bad ol creationists. News Bulletin to Mr Browne, this can be construed as further proving the validity of an already accepted idea in Evolution theory, but finding a weed, no matter how genetically shiney, in a field does not disprove the existance of God, nor the notion that the universe was created by the afforementioned entity.
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it does disprove creationism. People who think that Creationism = Christianity = God are rather stupid to begin with, unfortunately, so I'm afraid it won't help that much overall, but at least it's nice for the feel-good factor of people with brains
Daniel
Science vs Journalism (Score:1, Insightful)
Very poor wording here. There could be dozens of other new species. This is the only one noted in the last 50 years.
Re:Hah! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:1, Insightful)
You are welcome to your shortsighted opinion of the stupidity of creationists, but you yourself seem to completely ignore the fact that evolution is a theory, one disputed by a lot of scientific evidence. The laws of thermodynamics for instance.
In any case, your words are just that. Replace creationism with evolution and the tables are turned:
No, but it does disprove evolution. People who think that evolution = discredit of Christianity = no proof of God are rather stupid to begin with, unfortunately, so I'm afraid it won't help that much overall, but at least it's nice for the feel-good factor of people with brains :-)
See how you didn't really say anything important, you only unfairly attacked people who think different from you.
Pretty awful article, really. (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, Yeah, right. There are probably dozens if not thousands more; the only way to prove this statement is to catalog every single living organism in Britain. It may be the first new species known to have been created by unintentional hybridisation. It shows nothing of the sort. There are many flavors of creationism, and some believe that creation is ongoing through divinely ordained natural processes such as hybridisation. Further, Charles Darwin believed that women were mentally inferior to men - how exactly does this new plant species prove or disprove that part of his belief system? No, new species typically are created in a single breeding cycle. Think about it, does the first member of a new species stay in the womb for millenia? The generally accepted doctrine of "Punk Eke" or punctuated equilibrium (for which the late S.J. Gould can claim half of the credit) states that species evolve in rapid bursts due to strong environmental pressures such as geologic upheavals, overpopulation, human destructiveness, population isolation or mass extinction events, etc. etc. etc.. This bit about "creation of new species taking thousands of years" is straight out of Darwin, and it's one of the things that this discovery could be said to disprove.
No, hybrids are often sterile, and many of those that are not often de-hybridise and revert to parent forms in the wild. Nonetheless, fertile hybrids abound.
Most "scientific" articles written for non-scientists sacrifice some precision for accessibility. But this article has more false statements than real information, by a rather large margin.
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't think the official meaning of creationism includes the idea that all species are static and will never change"
Creationism certainly did mean exactly that, until science showed, beyond any reasonable doubt, that species do go extinct, species do adapt, species do evolve. Then the Creationist changed their tune, started talking about species "changing, but only within their kind". They conceded "microevolution", but not "macroevolution" (phrases which they coined, and have absolutely no meaning in the real world).
"just that the first species were created, rather then evoloved"
Of course, by the definition of the word "first", this statement must be true. The first species could not possibly have evolved from a previous species. It's an empty statement.
Anyway, your definition of Creationism is much more limited than the more virulent strain that's been repeatedly disproven by findings like this. Believe it or not, there are people who refuse to believe that new species can evolve, period. According to them, all species that ever existed, or will ever exist, were created during Genesis.
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:3, Insightful)
Your troll was going quite well up to ths point, then you gave the game away.
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:3, Insightful)
Odd, that sounds amazingly like the Scientific Method.
I believe that God created the universe that we live in. My current (nonscientific) theory on how he did this is through evolution and a "fast foward time", up until about 8,000 years ago when he made a man from scratch that just happened to be genetically compatbile with the super-apes that were walking around. Of course, God having created everything else 8,500 years ago is also a possibility, but unlikely given the extra effort needed.
Re:unobjective (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you concluded incorrectly. Evolution has been observed in nature and is an established fact. It is as scientific as the laws of physics. The details can still be argued but that's all.
Sure, I'll agree with that, both creationism and evolution are models. The problem is that creationism is a religious belief and evolution is a science. All the outrage in the world cannot change that.
Re:Non-Biased reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, exactly! Except the part where they claim it's what they believed all along, and the part where they they claim their answer is THE ANSWER, END OF DISCUSSION, not the best answer available, subject to change on discovery of new evidence.
A Creationist knows the answer already. To him, "science" is the search for data that fits the answer, and the attempt to explain away all evidence that doesn't fit. Real science presumes that the answer is *not* known, and tries to guess an answer based on what is actually evident in the world.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you misunderstood. What I meant was that the extremes of both viewpoints are extremist. You are correct in asserting that the extremist evolutionists maintain a "religious" belief. It shocked me when I started listening and realized that these "scientists" talked about evolution with much the same reverence as I talked about God. However, there are vast shades of gray in the middle.
There is no science in creationism; it is religious belief.
Actually, if you think of it from the viewpoint that our universe is finite (meaning constrained by time) and that it MUST have had a beginning because of this, then you begin to approach a point where you must admit that the universe was created (don't worry with "created by who", just think if it is possible for our universe to exist without some kind of creation event). Even Stephen Hawking admits this, with the ironic remark "this makes most of my colleagues very uncomfortable". It's been quite a while since I read that, but if I can turn it up, I'll send you the link.
For quite a while, I was unwilling to accept that evolution (in this context I mean speciation) could in fact exist. It didn't jive with what I believed, so I tossed out the science in favor of what I believed. However, I've realized that this is foolishness. It didn't serve me any use to throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, I decided that perhaps I wasn't working with all of the knowledge that I needed, so I decided that I had to accept both, and see if there wasn't some way I could reconcile the two apparent disparate views.
In point of fact, if you're not a rabid supporter of either viewpoint, then you can come to a different, non-conventional understanding. Kind of like Galileo and the solar system.
The fault in your statement here is that you're giving equal value to evolution and creationism
Not at all, I maintian that they are actually the same, one cannot exist without the other. Simply because they look diametrically opposed doesn't me they really are. Which, I'll be the first to admit, sounds like absolute insanity, at least on the surface. It's like sayingn 1+1 = 1. In point of fact, it may not be.
The real problem that extreme evolutionists have with creationism is that it is founded in a religious faith, and this is anathema to a scientist (that being blind acceptance of anything without proof). The real problem that the extreme creationists have with evolution is that it's not based on faith (generally, and incorrectly in my opinion, considered to be blind belief in something one cannot begin to understand, but that God said was true), and that is anathema to a fundamentalist Christian creationist.
However, there might just be a way to reconcile both of these viewpoints. If I can convince the evolutionist that there is at lest some amount of support for creationism, then they might be willing to admit the necessity for a creation event. Conversely, if I can convince a creationist that even if all of the science is true, it doesn't disprove the Word of God, then they might be willing to admit the necessity of some form of evolution.
There's a whole lot more to the debate than this, but I can't type all of it out. I gotta work. I look forward to reading what you think.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Insightful)
With a degree in genetics I would have thought you'd have understood that evolution says nothing about the creation of the universe.
I think it's misleading of you to imply that creationism is simply a "non-conventional understanding" and then equate it with Galileo's heliocentric model. Creationism is a fundamentalist religious belief. The tenets of creationism are well defined. The second [icr.org] tenet is "the Bible is inerrant". Creationism isn't science; their own tenets prove this. By comparing it against Galileo's model you falsely imply a scientific basis for creationism.
Evolution doesn't deal with creation of the universe nor with the creation of life. Evolution deals with a very specific problem: the origin of species. Where the "first species" came from is pure conjecture. Some people support abiogenesis which is unproven though still a science. Some people support creationism which is unprovable and therefore not a science. You are fooling yourself and misleading others by conflating the two.
Re:No, you are confused. (Score:3, Insightful)
Science and religion can coincide perfectly with one another.
Sure, as long as you don't try to provide religious answers to scientific questions. Something like, "what was the mechanism for biological adaptation?"--well, god is not a scientific answer, no matter how you slice it. And that's what most creationists, as they call themselves and are generally known to the world, would have you believe. So sure, have your religion, but like I said, keep your peanut butter out of my chocolate. Or was it chocolate out of my peanut butter? Don't remember...you get the picture.
So you are saying that creationism means different things depending on the context? Is this the same for evolution?
Creationism: yes, evolution: no (although the word evolution itself means different things itself in different contexts, and possibly even scientific contexts). We're talking the difference between pseudo-science and science here, remember. People who engage in pseudo-science, or religion, can change terms at will as suits their objectives...like you've been doing with this thread. Scientists are required to maintain a common language so they can actually communicate and forward the progress of learning. Big difference there.
Got the philosophy part down.
Sorry, I didn't express myself very well there. When I said tackle philosophy, I meant something like: "solve" philosophy. Can't do it? Didn't think so. There's the beginnings of the problems of introducing god(s) into science; people can't agree upon basic terms well enough to even solve the problems of whether or not god(s) exist. And because science is essentially pragmatic, we can't really introduce god(s) into it if 1) we can't prove the existence of said entity(ies), 2) (and perhaps more importantly) we can't even agree what god(s) is(are). Follow me? I would think you'd be able to, with all your high-falutin philosophical knowledge!
This also goes back to answer your question about why science and god are a bad mix, if you didn't figure that out already.
Otherwise, check a handy dictionary for the words 'sarcasm' and 'symbolism'.
Hmm...yes...sarcasm...