So, this evolution "debate"...

[Inspirational ANON]

Actually I read an interesting article about organisms on other planets (small, not aliens). Scientists have been studying them and have discovered that evolution might just be unique to our own planet.

[PUSS KING]

Inspirational ANON

Actually I read an interesting article about organisms on other planets (small, not aliens). Scientists have been studying them and have discovered that evolution might just be unique to our own planet.

Humans are the only organism we are currently aware of that have existed on another celestial body.

Any theoretical organism that uses a system of

1. heritable
2. mutative

chemical encoding - that is, genes - will be subjected and responsive to selective pressures.

[The Intellayman]

Im sorry to break it to you but evolution has very little if anything to do with chemistry and is more of a biological scientific theory. An animals anatomy changes through evolution too but its never called an anatomical science... Understand? Anyways though you seem to get the basic idea and im glad that you understand that it is gradual change over a huge amount of time.

[Vannak]

PUSS KING

Inspirational ANON

Actually I read an interesting article about organisms on other planets (small, not aliens). Scientists have been studying them and have discovered that evolution might just be unique to our own planet.

Humans are the only organism we are currently aware of that have existed on another celestial body.

this isn't exactly true, we know we've sent microorganisms to other bodies through contaminants on our probes and such.

[LeLoupDesSteppes]

I am fascinated by people's propensity to ascribe supernatural elements to such a process. Citing the eye and the heart and so forth as examples.
Forgetting of course factors such as time and mutations/changes over generations. Over millennia.

Not something that occurs overnight. Like, I will not wake up suddenly sprouting wings or some silly nonsense.

[Nomad of Nowhere]

Exoth XIII

FutureofScience

Vannak

FutureofScience

Macroevolution is often the issue during these debates. Although we have witnessed mutations and adaptations, we have yet to witness a change of kind. By this, I don't mean observing one kind of bird adapting to have a different color or beak, but a bird changing into another kind of animal. The theory behind this fact is that we haven't observed animals for a long enough period of time.

Your theory is wrong. The reason that we don't see one kind evolving into others is because evolution and the way animals are named is funny. We name animals according to a few hierarchies, when we should really be talking about the family tree. When birds came from dinosaurs they didn't stop being dinosaurs, they were just the bird kind of dinosaur. Like when humans "came" from apes, we didn't stop being apes. We didn't stop being vertebrates, either. Or eukaryotic.

Yes, that's the theory. And before anyone asks, yes, I do understand that "theory" has a different scientific meaning. haha What I mean is that the debate still persists because we have yet to witness a change of kind.

The problem here is, the word "kind" is really ambiguous. Exactly what constitutes a "change in kind?"
We're more closely related to chimps, than horses are to zebras. And yet, horses and zebras are the same "kind," whereas humans and chimps are not.

Are cats and tigers the same "kind" of animal?
By failing to define a "kind," creationists are being dishonest; they can always move the goalposts.

This is exactly the same example I have used in previous debates. Creationists claim to use a common-sense guideline for phylogenetics (e.g. it's just common sense that humans and chimps are different, but big cats are the same because they look the same.) Yet "common sense" phylogenetics would also tell us that ferrets are rodents and whales are fish. You can't just glance at an animal and say "it's the same kind" or "not the same kind" because that's how it *looks* to you. This seems to be their guideline.