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| Misconceptions about evolution.; Some myths that should go extinct | |
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| Topic Started: Mar 18 2018, 04:47 AM (401 Views) | |
| LλmbdaExplosion | Mar 18 2018, 04:47 AM Post #1 |
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Vieja Argentea the oscar cichlid
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As i was talking with someone about evolution ,i found several wrong beliefs in this. One of them was that evolution has has a goal.No it hasn't any goal.In fact evolution has no direction at all.Look at you for example,you are just a giant bipedal hairless monkey.The odds for that were quite small.But it happened.Again look at the comical flatfish.The ancestors of these were normal looking fish. Another thing that is wrong,and he used these words in a very wrong way are advanced and primitive. As much as they are used today as derogatory in the tech world or even in society,these words in biology have a very different meaning. I told him that primitive means something that appeared first and advanced means a species evolved from the first.He said that is not true I hate when someone is patronizing animals by apparence or abilities. What is annoying you when you are talking with someone who isn't in biology and says some myths? |
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When life give you lemons.............Don't make lemonade!Make life to take the lemons back!Get mad and than.........Yell,demand and burn down their homes. Prepare for unforeseen consequences,Mr. Freeman! | |
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| Yiqi15 | Mar 18 2018, 08:27 AM Post #2 |
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Prime Specimen
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Technically evolution does have a goal, albeit a crude, short-term goal - to help an organism adapt optimally to its environment. Another problem I have is that creationists often say that evolution and the bible are incompatible, that if evolution did occur then it somehow means God isn't real (and that's somehow a bad thing). Another problem is when we see evolution as an explanation for how life started in the first place. While both are peripherally related, the latter study is called abiogenesis. |
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| Tartarus | Mar 19 2018, 01:15 AM Post #3 |
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Prime Specimen
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The whole misconception about evolution being a march of progress is a pretty common one. It is especially prevalent in discussions of human evolution. For example, all too often older non-modern humans such as Homo erectus are seen as if they were just some evolutionary has beens, as undeveloped beings just holding a position that modern humans were destined to take over. In reality non-modern humans were generally quite successful beings doing quite well for themselves. Likewise, it is often speculated that in the future humans will evolve into some sort of superbeings with a superintelligence and abilities that are never actually explained but just hand waved as being "cause they're so advanced". In reality while humans will certainly become quite different in the far future (assuming we don't go extinct before that) there's no reason to think far future humans will be any better or worse than today's humans. Technology could advance, but having fancier tech says nothing about how "great" a being is in a purely biological context (e.g. someone living in a hunter-gatherer tribe is no less intelligent than someone living in a modern industrial civilisation, nor for that matter any less intelligent than some hypothetical person living in a futuristic super "advanced" civilisation). |
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| Empyreon | Mar 19 2018, 12:29 PM Post #4 |
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Are you plausible?
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Much of the myth and misconception surrounding evolution has to do with connotative attachment and misconstrued semantics. You brought up "primitive" and "advanced", which carry the connotations of "stupid/barbaric/basic" and "smart/higher/complex". It can be confusing when someone uses the phrase "primitive species" because we're not sure if they're speaking colloquially, and really mean to refer to the species as somehow lesser, or if they're using the more scientifically rigorous terminology to refer to the "primary" or "prime" species from which other creatures radiated. Likewise with advanced. And many won't give voice to their doubts about the word's usage because they don't want to sound pedantic or abrasive, so the misuse goes on uncorrected. So a person can think that they're using words correctly, and be completely ignorant of the nuance and connotation of the word, missing that there's a finer (as in more narrow and specific) definition in the scientific community. Unfortunately, colloquial meaning will outweigh discrete terminology any day. The same happens when discussing whether or not evolution is "fact" or "theory". Colloquially speaking, those two terms are more or less opposite, with "fact" being an objective, indisputable truth or datum, and "theory" being an educated guess. It's a bit of a shift, and an uncomfortable one for many, to wrap your head around evolution being both fact and theory. A scientific theory is not a guess based on prior knowledge; in the appropriate parlance, that's called a hypothesis. A scientific theory only comes about after the hypothesis has been tested repeatedly and rigorously, to the satisfaction of experts in the field to declare that hypotheses regarding that concept are strongly reliable. So if people say that the theory of evolution by natural selection is "just a theory" they're using the colloquial definition, and often misconstruing the concept. Those who argue for evolution being a fact fall into a trap as well, albeit in the opposite direction. They often cite the abundant mountains (sometimes literal) of evidence to support the claims of the evolution theory, which are indeed observable and objective. A person would have to be a fool to point to a fossil and say it doesn't exist. However, many will use the facts to claim that evolution itself, the concept as a whole, is indisputable. "Evolution is a fact, and you can't say otherwise!" This is wrong thinking too. Such proponents are pointing to the facts, and therefore claiming that their explanation is factual as well; this is a logical fallacy. A scientific theory, in a very fundamental sense, is disputed every time someone performs an experiment to test one or more of its aspects. The fact that it holds up to those disputations is a measure of its conceptual strength and reliability in the scientific community. As an example, take Einstein's theory of relativity. It made leaps and bounds in scientific knowledge, but even Einstein himself couldn't use it to resolve some strange phenomena proposed by the scientific community. Enter quantum mechanics. Today we have two theories-- or explanations of observable data-- to help us understand what we see and make predictions based on that knowledge. Physicists work doggedly to develop what's called the unified field theory, which combines the two theories into a single understanding of the cosmos at both large and small scale. But try explaining any/all of that to a layman with little actual interest in the topic at hand, and you will get glazed eyes and dismissive tones. Hence, colloquialism trumps rigorous and nuanced conceptualization...
This is another example of connotation bleeding into rigorous intellectualism. If people, to use this example, refer to a religious text as indisputable, literal fact, then no amount of evidence can dissuade them from this assertion. If people hold evolutionary theory as indisputable, literal fact, then, again, not a shred of evidence can dissuade them. And you're right, using evolution theory to explain the origin of life is as wrong-headed as thinking that evolution proves the non-existence of divinity. They're separate questions, requiring separate lines of thought and supporting evidence (even if peripherally related). To demand that one theory answer the questions of another is as absurd as demanding that you inserting a screw using a hammer: perhaps possible, but very difficult, and potentially damaging. Edited by Empyreon, Mar 19 2018, 12:40 PM.
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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