7 MYTHS ABOUT EVOLUTION

[PickelledEggs]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFHOLe29hEk

There are some myths about evolution and you should know them.

[Mermaid]

Blasphemy. I ain't no ape.

[Hydra009]

Can you show a cat giving birth to a dog?  Checkmate, atheists.

But aside from the laughable creationist misconceptions of evolution (and just about everything), there are a few pretty bad misconceptions held even by normal people:

There's this idea that evolution is progressive - that it intrinsically produces more complex and "better" species.  No.  Fitness is dependent on environment, as the environment changes so do beneficial traits.  A good example of this are cave fish - they used to be able to see, but now they can't because the ability to see is not particularly advantageous in near/total darkness.  Moreover, this idea implies that there is a goal behind evolution, which clearly isn't the case.

Straightline evolution - a species invariably evolving in a single direction.  Sorry, doesn't happen.  Just ask Darwin's finches, which have different traits to exploit different food sources.  Likewise, this idea assumes an evolutionary goal, which is also wrong.

[Baruch]

Teleology comes from Aristotle, not Darwin.  Progressivism is the political equivalent.  Societies do change, sometimes for the worse.

[PickelledEggs]

Can you show a cat giving birth to a dog?  Checkmate, atheists.

But aside from the laughable creationist misconceptions of evolution (and just about everything), there are a few pretty bad misconceptions held even by normal people:

There's this idea that evolution is progressive - that it intrinsically produces more complex and "better" species.  No.  Fitness is dependent on environment, as the environment changes so do beneficial traits.  A good example of this are cave fish - they used to be able to see, but now they can't because the ability to see is not particularly advantageous in near/total darkness.  Moreover, this idea implies that there is a goal behind evolution, which clearly isn't the case.

Straightline evolution - a species invariably evolving in a single direction.  Sorry, doesn't happen.  Just ask Darwin's finches, which have different traits to exploit different food sources.  Likewise, this idea assumes an evolutionary goal, which is also wrong.

yeah. A few of those misconceptions I know are held by normal people, even people that don't believe in creationism.

[TomFoolery]

Another one I've encountered is the idea that things "devolve." Evolution doesn't neatly work backward. If a species happens to revert to some previous trait, it's due to natural selection and gene flow within a population, but that's not speciation. The odds that all the previous alleles still exist within a population and would be selected for in just the right order and frequency to revert to some previous branch in the evolutionary tree is virtually impossible.

Yet I've had creationists and a few regular people stuck on this idea. Creationists will just ask you, "So you're telling me we could just turn back into monkeys someday?" A knew a guy on a science forum that was stuck on this idea of "saving" the big cat species from extinction by long-term domestication. He believed we could breed them down to roughly the size of domestic housecats, then if we ever came to our senses about the environment, we could just breed them back to a bigger size and turn them loose in the jungles and African savannas. He couldn't grasp the concept that it would take thousands of years and the end result wouldn't just be a tiny leopard or tiger.

He believed that since we've domesticated dogs but dogs are clearly capable of surviving on their own, it would be achievable with cats. A pack of feral dogs is just that: a pack of feral domestic dogs. They won't just magically turn back into wolves in a few generations. Given enough time, they'd evolve into something else.

[Baruch]

Pigs are a counter-example .... they go feral very quickly, and grow hair and stuff.  It also doesn't help in the South, that imported Siberian wild boar are inter-breeding with them as well.  So some species are more ambi-modality than others.  Humans I think would revert to primitive ape men rather quickly, or at least that is what the first Planet Of The Apes movie taught me.  We might even loose practical speech, though not the ability to speak.

[Harassed]

Pigs are a counter-example .... they go feral very quickly, and grow hair and stuff.  It also doesn't help in the South, that imported Siberian wild boar are inter-breeding with them as well.  So some species are more ambi-modality than others.  Humans I think would revert to primitive ape men rather quickly, or at least that is what the first Planet Of The Apes movie taught me.  We might even loose practical speech, though not the ability to speak.

Going feral in a few generations is mostly adaption.  How genes are expressed changes.  Not mutation.  Possibly epigenetic effects also.  Or natural selection for wild traits that increase survival rates.
Reverse evolve? Wrong concept.   

Mennonite BRETHREN cell linked to cocaine | Sarnia Observer
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Mennonites BRETHREN Put Children in Danger By Refusing to Report ...
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[Hydra009]

We might even loose practical speech, though not the ability to speak.

If you ask me, we're already loosing language.

[Baruch]

If you ask me, we're already loosing language.

I blame it on TV, and the decline of reading.  A very serious development!

[Harassed]

If you ask me, we're already loosing language.

Oh ya.  Like loosey goosey…..    a lost geese?
Languages, they evolve.  The future is here.  text away.
With 7 B people, this planet is like a runaway train.

GRATEFUL DEAD CASEY JONES ON COKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcB9wlmnDPY

[Baruch]

Oh ya.  Like loosey goosey…..    a lost geese?
Languages, they evolve.  The future is here.  text away.
With 7 B people, this planet is like a runaway train.

GRATEFUL DEAD CASEY JONES ON COKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcB9wlmnDPY

Back to planet of the inarticulate apes.  Humanity was over-rated.

[widdershins]

Blasphemy. I ain't no ape.

That reminds me of one of my favorite old anti-evolution arguments from my youth.  My pastor used it many times.

"YOU may be a monkey, but I'm not!"