Top misconceptions of Theory of Evolution you had to deal with

[Anomalocaris]

It is possible to be quite accomplished in a craft without much understanding of the science by treating it as a craft rather than a science.

[robvalue]

I don't know why people find natural selections so hard to understand, at least on a very basic level.

Their objections are often the equivalent of saying you can't get to a billion from zero just by adding 1 each time.

0, 1...

Yeah but 1 is still a small number!

2...

Yah but 2 is still a small number, it's still a single digit number!

....58...

But that's still a small number! It's nowhere near a billion!

I don't see them as misconceptions any longer.

I call them deliberately lies and ignorance.  There's more than enough evidence and sources now for anyone with an open mind to see the information for themselves.

Indeed. I can forgive ignorance when someone first shows up on this forum. But once they've had it explained to them two or three times (or even for years...) and they still produce strawmen, it is pure dishonesty.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Hmmm... only genes can be passed on through natural selection, which is one of the reasons why I don't have a lot of stock in the tenured university authorities who insist that human behavior is so plastic that the Homo Sapiens infant is born with absolutely no proclivity to do anything other than suck at Mama's tit. There's plenty enough plasticity, but it's not all that plastic! This is an example of why I believe "Social Science" deserves to have its right to the "Science" part revoked.

It's sex that passes on genes, not natural selection.  The behaviors we teach our children, regardless of any genetic disposition, are passed from parent to child; and are thus heritable.  There's no "american gene" and yet there is a heritable american culture.  

Try telling that to a Native American.

Germans, Scandinavians, Russians - all have the traits of cold-climate cultures, but typical facial features are less divergent within than across cultural boundaries.

Divergence happens of a physical nature, and then when it comes to behavioral traits, they, like everything else, are very much physical.

We refer to this larger collection of traits as a phenotype.  We tend to see behaviors as having a genetic component (for example, our learned behaviors are inextricably linked with the genes associated with our "learning apparatus") but there's no requirement that they be in order to be acted upon by natural selection.   

Consider this, all other things beings equal, which portion of the human population do you think would become over-represented in time....the portion which teaches their children to look twice before crossing the street, or the portion which does not?  There is no clear cut indicator in the genotype for this behavioral difference, this is not to say that there couldn't be, but it is a difference in phenotype regardless...... it is also an efficient cause for changes in the genotype all the same.  Unrelated variations in the genotype would piggyback on this variation in phenotype, even if it turned out that there was, in actuality, no genetic marker for the behavior upon which individuals were selected.

I believe the genes which ensure we teach and protect our young was long ago decided with, or prior to our lower ape ancestors, therefore not sure why this is interesting. Altogether, it sounds a bit too Lamarkian to say that changes in phenotype (if I understand your use of that in a non-genetic sense) cause changes in genotype. Those which already have the right genotype learn how to care for their offspring, and consider teaching them survival skills.

Genotypes happen through mutation, and they survive when they influence a physical culture. If the new genotype influences the behavior of teaching offspring survival behaviors, then it's still the genotype which is responsible for this. Learned behavior may be genetically influenced in some, and with others it may be through intense cultural programming, and nobody at this point seems to understand clearly the limits of genetic influences, but what is sure is that what you learn the hard way is not going to be passed on to your offspring unless you are alive and present to teach it to them, which was not necessarily the case when the human life span topped out at age 30.

As regards men killing their mates previous children -any wondering on those counts would be lost on me - I only brought it up to show that the statements were -clearly- a thought experiment, and not an observation regarding known human behavior.  I doubt Dawkins is or was under the impression that people did that, when he made those statements.  Rather, describing a situation in which the relationships involved in natural selection would or could favor homosexuality.  If he did or does think that absurd non-behavior explains homosexuality, particularly in the present supposing there -was- a "what if" moment that we did engage in that in the past, then he's a fucking nutball.

On Dawkin's and any hypothesis on homosexuality: let's keep in mind that The Selfish Gene was first published in 1976, when world governments still believed that homosexuality was a mental disease.

[The Grand Nudger]

Try telling that to a Native American.

Germans, Scandinavians, Russians - all have the traits of cold-climate cultures, but typical facial features are less divergent within than across cultural boundaries.

Divergence happens of a physical nature, and then when it comes to behavioral traits, they, like everything else, are very much physical.

Populations can be reproductively isolated based upon behavior -alone-.  I'm not sure why you thought that anything you mentioned above was a response to the quoted portion of my statements.  Care to elaborate?

I believe the genes which ensure we teach and protect our young was long ago decided with, or prior to our lower ape ancestors, therefore not sure why this is interesting. Altogether, it sounds a bit too Lamarkian to say that changes in phenotype (if I understand your use of that in a non-genetic sense) cause changes in genotype. Those which already have the right genotype learn how to care for their offspring, and consider teaching them survival skills.

Do those genes ensure -what- we teach our young?  They may, but I don't think we're anywhere near a point where we could say that with any certainty even if they do..meanwhile, some strategies are better than others, and if you teach your offspring a superior survival strategy it won't matter how well or how much others teach inferior survival strategies.   Natural selection acts upon phenotype as efficiently as it acts upon the more limited set, genotype.  If, by lamarckian, you mean the notion that we can pass attributes on to our children which we've picked up..we clearly can.  I plan on teaching all of my children to read...I assume you do as well.  If reading is a survival advantage, despite there being no gene that confers the ability to read, natural selection will favor the readers.  If you had twins and taught one to read while leaving the other illiterate, what would your expectations be?  

Genotypes happen through mutation, and they survive when they influence a physical culture. If the new genotype influences the behavior of teaching offspring survival behaviors, then it's still the genotype which is responsible for this. Learned behavior may be genetically influenced in some, and with others it may be through intense cultural programming, and nobody at this point seems to understand clearly the limits of genetic influences, but what is sure is that what you learn the hard way is not going to be passed on to your offspring unless you are alive and present to teach it to them, which was not necessarily the case when the human life span topped out at age 30.

Genotype influences phenotype, ofc.  Phenotype also influences genotype.  You think that "what we learned the hard way" wasn't passed on?  Where did all of this -looks around him-  come from, then?  Is there a gene that confers the ability to start a fire, to make a clovis point and haft it to a spear?  A gene that tells us which plants are safe to eat and which are not?  Is there such a thing as a "born physicist" who falls out of the womb with a piece of chalk and begins to scribble quantum equations on the floor of the delivery room?  The different behaviors we've learned, and that we teach, have influenced our genotype. To use your example above...there aren't many native americans left round these parts. Bang bang. This would be an example of what Dawkins was referring to with "extended phenotypes". Natural selection, in that instance, appears to have favored the more proficient metalworkers in the same way that it favors the beavers who build better dams. The populations were -somewhat- reproductively isolated in that those favored metalworkers were notoriously racist...and now, today...you'll see a much larger concentration of european genes here in the states, than native genes. Sure, resistance to disease was a clincher - but it was the presence of attributes in one population not determined by genetics (or at least not determined in any way that we can work out) that ultimately decided the genetic makeup of todays Murica. Even within that subset, the ratio of "native genes" left today are largely the result of those native populations absorbing and coopting the europeans non-genetic attributes. You'll find more collaborater left than resister. The latter is disproportionately represented in our population. This is a crystal clear example of phenotype influencing genotype.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Genotype influences phenotype, ofc.  Phenotype also influences genotype.  You think that "what we learned the hard way" wasn't passed on?  Where did all of this -looks around him-  come from, then?  Is there a gene that confers the ability to start a fire, to make a clovis point and haft it to a spear?  A gene that tells us which plants are safe to eat and which are not?  Is there such a thing as a "born physicist" who falls out of the womb with a piece of chalk and begins to scribble quantum equations on the floor of the delivery room?  The different behaviors we've learned, and that we teach, have influenced our genotype.  To use your example above...there aren't many native americans left round these parts.  Sure, genotype accounts for some of that, resistance to certain diseases, for example.  Phenotype accounts for yet more.  Bang bang.

Hard-learned behaviors can be passed on to others through the same means, but it doesn't pass down the genotype which makes such behaviors more natural. Nor will it drive a duck's ducklings to protect their own ducklings, in a world where duck mothers abandoned their eggs as soon as they were laid.

[The Grand Nudger]

The "naturalness" of a behavior is irrelevant with regards to whether or not the behavior works.  If you don;t teach your kids something, if they don't learn it, obviously natural selection can't act on it...but since we're only discussing those things that they have been taught, that they did learn, of what relevance is an abandoned duckling?  

Lets say you taught your kids how to build a fire.  In a world where your kids are the only kids with the knowledge to start a fire, would it surprise you to find your genes all over the place after a few generations? Would you think it had something to do with your genes, rather than the fire, and the learned behavior of firestarting, if you did find them all over the place?

Successful learned behaviors help to perpetuate -whatever- genotype they are associated with, even if the learned behavior is not specific to or determined by the genotype of the owners. Que the natives.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Has anyone mentioned theists arguing that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics? This is normally along the lines of entropy and disorder always increasing.

Regarding the discussion regarding homosexuality, remember that it is seen in all other animals as well. Not just humans and apes. It may or may not be an evolved trait. If it isn't then I'd argue that it's merely a by-product of need to have genders specialising in different ways. There is never a one to one mapping from genotype to phenotype.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Has anyone mentioned theists arguing that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics? This is normally along the lines of entropy and disorder always increasing.

Regarding the discussion regarding homosexuality, remember that it is seen in all other animals as well. Not just humans and apes. It may or may not be an evolved trait. If it isn't then I'd argue that it's merely a by-product of need to have genders specialising in different ways. There is never a one to one mapping from genotype to phenotype.

I'm curious. How exactly does one counter that?

[The Grand Nudger]

Neither earth nor life are closed systems.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Or to put it another way, order and complexity increases locally at the expense of entropy and disorder increasing globally.