By its definition does "The theory of evolution" apply universally or is it an earthbound theory? As all things are relative in one way or another and the universe being as large and old as it is I wouldn't be suprised if a species furthered themselves just for the desire of it and not adapting to a change.
>>1250496
Once species reach a certain level of scientific ability, genetic engineering or AI might become more common.
We aren't far enough along to say.
>>1250496
Yes it does if there are biology and shit on the other planets.
>>1250539
evolutionists btfo
It's likely that other life would evolve with some similarity to the way life on earth does, but if it's not based on DNA then there would be differences. Non-random survival and transmission of whatever the equivalent of DNA is seems likely though.
>furthered themselves just for the desire of it
Evolution doesn't have desires, and of course it isn't all adaptive change.
>>1250539
holy fuck i think i just contracted cancer
>>1250544
Is your education from sci-fi books mostly?
Evolutionary theory's data is for earth-bound life. It is probable that similar extraterrestrial environments could produce similar lifeforms but this is not necessarily to be expected. Completely different environments could produce radically different life. Personally, I'd say natural selection likely applies anytime there is life and finite resources though mutation could be crazy different.
>>1250496
Why is this not on /sci/?
>>1250714
fail
>>1250684
It's just a theory bro.
>>1250757
Your grade in biology class?
>>1250829
>>1250874
Your grade in reading class?
>>1250496
The scope of the theory of evolution applies to living things, i.e. things that have DNA or RNA
If we found other living things that encode their own building blocks in some other way I'd imagine evolution would still apply, although this is pure speculation
>>1250764
>>1250764
>there are millions of these
most recent common ancestor of chimps and humans are actually extinct
>where
in the ground
>>1250874
>nearly all experts agree lucy was a chimpanzee
no
https://iho.asu.edu/about/lucys-story
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/australopithecus-afarensis
>find remains of a monkey with down syndrome
>le missing link!!!1
S'pose well be waiting awhile for an answer for this one.
>>1250496
>By its definition does "The theory of evolution" apply universally or is it an earthbound theory?
I would be very surprised if it was the first one. The way evolution works her has a lot to do with how cells are structured, their information storage molecules, the way we reproduce, etc. The very idea of different "species" may not apply universally for all we know, it all depends on how and if life on other planets reproduces sexually, and if individuals can become sexually incompatible in the same way they do here. We may find whole worlds made up of multi-cellular creatures who reproduce asexually, making a lot of those ideas we have about "speciation" irrelevant. Or whole worlds in which sexual reproduction is possible between almost any creature on the planet,.
>>1250539
>this is what christfags actually think science class is like
explain to me why whales have hip bones
>>1251648
>broad generalizations about a diverse group with very different beliefs
>>1251498
You do know that evolution also applies to nonsexual organisms like bacteria, right?
>>1251739
Yes. It applies slightly differently. Sexual reproduction allows successful traits to be combined with others to try out different combinations. Asexual reproduction relies directly on the individual organism surviving to to create more of that exact genetic code, and any variations are directly linked to mutations, rather than any "reshuffling". So there's no meaning to the idea of speciation in a group of organisms like that.
>>1250539
lyings a sin anon, you're damning yourself to hell
>>1251849
Most bacteria are capable of horizontal gene transfer as well.
>>1251916
I've heard of that. Why do you say "most" though?
>>1251943
I think he means all of them as well but I'm not sure.
There are 3 ways for bacteria to gain DNA that is not native to it.
But first I will clarify that whenever I say recombine I mean a recombination in the manner of homologous recombination or a similiar manner because DNA is not a stable construct.
The first and most simple one is "Transformation". The bacterium absorbs random DNA from the environment and that DNA has a chance to recombine with or otherwise alter the host chromosome or host plasmids.
A second is "Conjugation". Bacteria have plasmids, these are smaller rings of DNA aside from the main DNA and typically contain snippets of situationally useful DNA. One such Plasmid is the F-Plasmid.
The F-Plasmid allows for one positive (Containing the plasmid with relevant recombination genes) and one negative bacteria (That does not contain them) to link up and the F-Plasmid is transfered.
The F-Plasmid can recombine with other DNA so that it can contain additional genes or it can recombine with the host chromosome. Both of these allow significant horizontal gene transfer.
The third method is "Transduction". Bacteriophages inject foreign genetic material into the host bacterium in order to replicate themselves. The foreign genetic material results in the host assembling more bacteriophages to be expelled from the cell at a later date. Due to the process not always functioning perfectly this can result in a new resulting bacteriophage carrying genetic material from the bacterium with itself, ready to dock with another bacterium, completing the transfer.
>>1250539
So is there any actual truth in this? I've always believed in evolution but that stuff about the fossil records is shaking me up
>>1252096
>is there any actual truth in this?
Of course, ignore the atheist damage control.
>>1250496
If you have a population that:
1: Reproduces
2: Has heritable Traits and
3: Has differential Reproduction
Then that population will evolve
>>1252096
>So is there any actual truth in this
Only that nebraska man and piltdown man are not good evidence. Piltdown was a hoax and nebraska was a mistake, both were discovered and corrected by other anthropologists
>>1250496
>By its definition does "The theory of evolution" apply universally or is it an earthbound theory?
Earthbound, because it is an empirical theory and thus based only on the facts we have access to. OTOH, it would be extremely surprising if it wasn't broadly true of life generally.
>>1252096
No. Chick tracts are the very definition of bullshit.
>>1251943
just insurance really
>>1252096
It's written by a Christian, so you know it's pure lies. Those cunts lie like it's their religion.
>>1250714
/thread
>>1251648
Not a marine biologist but I think it's because they were terrestrial animals before returning to the sea
>>1252096
>fossil records
Don't believe the lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk8UdV7GQ0
>>1250496
Evolution is an application of the property of emergence to the medium of life.
the principle of evolution seems to be universal. it also applies to the formation of the universe itself. if there's life elsewhere, it's probably best explained by evolution as well.
the why question has a different answer.
>>1250496
The theory of evolution always applies when the following conditions are met
>there are some "things"
>those "things" create copies of themselves
>the copies are imperfect and differ slightly from the original
>some copies are better suited to reproduce themselves than others
>>1250714
Uncritical christcucks btfo
>>1252716
This guy gets it.
>>1252096
I'm no expert, but "vestigial" doesn't mean "useless".
It just means that an organ or bone or whatever comes from something that had a totally different function.
>>1250539
Is it just me or does the professor look extremely Jewish.
>>1252859
It's you. To me he looks like a fat Sigmund Freud with less beard and a monocle.
>>1250539
>Dr. Kent Hovind
>Doctor
Laughing every laugh
>>1250496
it doesn't even apply in the sense you are imagining to intelligent life on earth
this whole civilization thing's changed the game a little
>>1252895
>Freud
So, Jewish?
>>1252859
yeah, it's pretty disgusting that the author draws the teacher as a stereotypical "atheistic, arrogant jew" and the boy as a pious aryan boy. kind of reminds me of this copy pasta:
>A liberal muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor was teaching a class on Karl Marx, known atheist
>"Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Marx and accept that he was the most highly-evolved being the world has ever known, even greater than Jesus Christ!“
>At this moment, a brave, patriotic, pro-life Navy SEAL champion who had served 1500 tours of duty and understood the necessity of war and fully supported all military decision made by the United States stood up and held up a rock.
>"How old is this rock, pinhead?”
>The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “4.6 billion years, you stupid Christian”
>"Wrong. It’s been 5,000 years since God created it. If it was 4.6 billion years old and evolution, as you say, is real… then it should be an animal now"
>The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Origin of the Species. He stormed out of the room crying those liberal crocodile tears. The same tears liberals cry for the “poor” (who today live in such luxury that most own refrigerators) when they jealously try to claw justly earned wealth from the deserving job creators. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, DeShawn Washington, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than a sophist liberal professor. He wished so much that he had a gun to shoot himself from embarrassment, but he himself had petitioned against them!
>>1252987
>The students applauded and all registered Republican that day and accepted Jesus as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Small Government” flew into the room and perched atop the American Flag and shed a tear on the chalk. The pledge of allegiance was read several times, and God himself showed up and enacted a flat tax rate across the country.
>The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the gay plague AIDS and was tossed into the lake of fire for all eternity.
testad
>>1255548
this lad
>>1255550
me too...
>>1251739
>You do know that evolution also applies to nonsexual organisms like bacteria, right?
Not Darwinian evolution, that is to say natural selection of inherited traits with a "tree" of common descent.
Or at least recent research strongly suggests this the assumption of the universality of Darwinian mechanism for evolution was just baseless 20th century dogma and (at least outside the Eukaryota) horizontal gene transfer is the dominant evolutionary mechanism with a network instead of a tree of life.
This article is a nice basic intro on this:
http://mmbr.asm.org/content/73/1/14.full
t. bioinformatician working in microbial genomics
>>1251498
>life on other planets
hahaha
>>1255594
>informatician
Isn't this a fancy way of saying "CS major?"
Not shitposting, just curious.
>>1255610
It's a fancy way of saying "computational biologist".
I have a BSc in Biotechnology, MSc in Computer Science, and PhD in Genetics.
>>1255648
Coolio.
>>1255648
And you still don't know that evolution is just a theory?
>>1250496
we do not know if it is actually applied to anything. Though there is what one calls "strong evidence" nowadays, that the theory of evolution might be somewhat fit as an description of a devolopement of species that might have taken place, as "strong evidence" suggests.
So does it in this sense apply to other planets?
It definitely would if there was reproducing life somewhere out there since it is not linked to any place in space but to the reproduction of beings.
>>1250539
>isn't losing something the opposite of evolution?
lmao ya got me there
>>1250714
nice
>>1250496
What's the significance of 1748?
>>1256788
Sorry, 1718.
>>1250714
/thread
>>1252096
I don't see how any of those discoveries threaten the theory of evolution, especially as scientists themselves discovered it to be false.
A better case wpuld be if theu actually found something that dissaproves evolution at its very core, like Humans having a different amount of chromosomes than chimpanzees. ((we sort of do, but that's because two couples of ours molded))
>>1255757
The thing is that in popsci terms evolution is often defined either so vaguely that it's tautological and useless or very specifically and wrong.
For example Dawkins is a horrid dogmatist whose understanding of evolutionary mechanisms is stuck in the 1970s and he continues to stick to enshrining his outdated understanding as inviolable while scoffing at heretical new research trying to investigate the real mechanisms.
His books like "The Selfish Gene" were fair enough when he was an active academic and we didn't have modern techniques; "The Greatest Show on Earth" from 2009 belongs in the fucking trash can.
>>1251648
google "ambolucetus"
>>1257198
What's the difference between 1970 and now?
>>1257670
I think I'd say that gene sequencing is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was back then and Protein/etc structure is far more discernable now than it used to be thanks to modern techniques.
But aside from that I'm drawing a blank on what could have so significantly advanced.
>>1257198
How would you define these new mechanisms as opposed to the 1970s mechanisms that Dawkins explains to someone who has never read or so much as heard more than a few spoken sentences from Dawkins?
I want to know how much second hand shit, if any, I'm picking up without knowing it.
>>1257712
bump
>>1257712
>>1257670
The received popular view of evolution is one of populations of individuals with well-defined lineages whose variance in traits drives evolution by determining their reproductive success resulting in a branching tree of life.
This was evidenced by the fossil record which is largely limited to higher organisms (most prominently animals) but it was extrapolated to life in general. For most of the 20th century those who didn't completely gloss over this leap of logic reassured us that it wasn't a big deal. The science was settled. It was just a matter of molecular biology techniques becoming advanced enough for us to study whole genomes in detail. Then the evidence of Darwinian evolution would become clear in the genomic sequences and we would be able to retrace the universal tree of life predicted by our theory.
The problem is in the early 21st century the techniques finally became good enough and the microbial world defied predictions.
>>1260473
There is no evidence of individual lineages among microorganisms and thus no universal tree of life. Horizontal gene transfer (i.e. transfer of genes between unrelated individuals - even across species* lines!) is ubiquitous and seems to overshadow vertical (parent -> offspring) transfer, making gene pools largely communal (again, even across species* lines) in populations and environments. Rather than an universal principle of life Darwinian evolution seems more like an Eukaryotic quirk - and even among Eukaryotes there is now molecular evidence for non-Darwinian mechanisms having a role.
We don't really have a new, thorough framework of non-eukaryotic evolution yet (we're getting the hang of the individual pieces like horizontal gene transfer mechanisms), but Darwinian natural selection as currently formulated is clearly inadequate.
Reactions to this have ranged from wonder at the new-found challenges, through attempts to formulate new frameworks, to staunch denial of the likes of Dawkins who continues to preach old dogma about the science being settled and the molecular age just filling in gaps.
(*The concept of "species" among microorganisms is also in something of a definitional flux though that's a tangential point.)
>>1260479
>Rather than an universal principle of life Darwinian evolution seems more like an Eukaryotic quirk - and even among Eukaryotes there is now molecular evidence for non-Darwinian mechanisms having a role.
This was my main objection: though evolution is incomplete or even just plain wrong for almost all life on Earth, for life people think of as "life" (plantae and animalia) it seems true to the point of of being axiomatic.
Of course, whether one holds to the old understanding of Darwinism or not, anything not YEC is anathema to people like >>1250539.
