RE: "Counterexamples to Evolution" -- Dumbest page on the internet?
August 15, 2012 at 1:56 pm
(This post was last modified: August 15, 2012 at 2:04 pm by Angrboda.)
1. Evolution cannot explain beauty. Beauty evolved before man. - No it didn't; the capacity for man to find things beautiful evolved in man to fit man's needs.
1. Evolution cannot explain the low genetic diversity in humans. - yes it can; a population bottleneck amply explains it.
1. Evolution of eyes and repetition of elements is impossible because evolution is a random process. - no it's not; mutation is random, natural selection is not.
2. Pleiotropy, the linking of multiple effects to a single gene means any improvement will be accompanied by random detriments. - no it won't; first, only some genes exhibit pleiotropy, and second, not all possible combinations of effect are necessarily negative - evolution only needs some successes, not all successes.
3. Scales could not conceivably have "grown" into feathers. - they didn't "grow" into feathers; the genes controlling the formation and growth of scales changed their form over time, and was preserved and replicated by those specimens for whom the change was either adaptive or not sufficiently maladaptive to outweigh possible other advantages possessed by that animal.
4. For every male dog, cat, horse, etcetera, etcetera there had to accidentally evolve a female form alongside it which co-evolved. - no, only the last common ancestor of any fully sexually dimorphic subset of the animal or plant kingdom had to evolve it. Every organism after that would inherit sexual dimorphism genetically. This is what happens from preaching abstinence.
5. "If you don't believe in evolution. /r/atheism." All right Schlafly. No more child labor for you. This is a list of things that would refute evolution, not proof that you have the emotional maturity of an autistic twelve year old.
6. There are no records of anyone directly observing one species evolving into another. - maybe because, a) it happens at the genetic level, and we can't directly observe genes, b) it happens veeeery slooowly, and c) species are evolving into new species every second of every day - it's just not newsworthy after 10,000 years of controlled breeding of crops and domestic animals to change them into what we want.
7. if evolution were true, then every personality type would be beneficial. - no, that's not what evolution says. Evolution does not say that all traits should be adaptive, nor that all variants of a trait be adaptive. Go directly to school. Do not collect student loans. Pay for being such a stupid bunt.
8. If evolution were true, there would be more than one species under the genus Homo. - there is, you ignorant bunt! They're all dead but us, but there was a time when we coexisted. And, evolution doesn't say this. (I need an acronym for that, as I fashion I'll be saying it a lot. How about, "WRONG!")
9. Evolution should lead to the extinction of homosexuality, as homosexuals are unfit to contribute to the gene pool. - WRONG! (See #8 for the acronym, and #7) Moreover, a trait only has to lead to the individual's genetic variety being passed on, which may happen if a homosexual enables the successful procreation of those with similar genes (kin), or their existence benefits the whole species, directly or indirectly. Evolution is smarter than you! (And besides, evolution doesn't care about what your bassackwards moral system says about the worthiness of fags.)
10. Evolution dictates that all organisms descended from bacteria, since bacteria is and has been the most successful organism on the planet, why would it have been adaptive to evolve into something more complex. - (WRONG!) organisms don't evolve "because" doing so is adaptive, organisms evolve because of mutations, and stay evolved and replicate if the new organism is sufficiently successful.
11. The second law of thermodynamics establishes that matter becomes more disordered over time, but evolution postulates the reverse. - no, the second law stipulates that the total entropy can only increase or remain the same FOR A CLOSED SYSTEM - the Earth is not a closed system, as it is receiving continual showers of energy from this big yellow thing in the sky which funds the R & D departments of those clever little mutants.
12. "The Law Of Large Numbers" states that things become more average over time, whereas in evolution things become more complex and further from the mean. - no, the Law Of Large Numbers states that with enough trials, the average value of a measurement will trend towards its ideal value. Evolution has no ideal value to trend toward, the variation involved is not randomly distributed, and even if the Law did apply, there's no reason why the "ideal value" would necessarily be a measure of complexity, nor the value of least complexity.
LACK OF MECHANISM
Okay, I'm bored. Next entertainment. Somebody take over.