Evolution Questions

[SkepticalScience]

A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses have stopped by my house the other day, and we got to talking about all kinds of religious stuff. As I was explaining evolution to them – they came up with a few question I couldn’t answer properly.

After explaining how evolution doesn’t mean “Chimps eventually will give birth to humans� they said:

“The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn’t have an experimenter.�

I couldn’t think of a good answer to those statements.

The second question they brought up was “Why haven’t we ‘seen’ any evolution where you start with one species of animals, bacteria, etc, - have them breed independently – and have an end result of new species that are unable to mate with the original pairs.�

Some Help??

[wollery]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience
A pair of Jehovah?s Witnesses have stopped by my house the other day, and we got to talking about all kinds of religious stuff. As I was explaining evolution to them ? they came up with a few question I couldn?t answer properly.

After explaining how evolution doesn?t mean ?Chimps eventually will give birth to humans? they said:

?The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn?t have an experimenter.? Evolution isn't an experiment, just as most of what occurs in the Universe isn't an experiment. In science we conduct experiments in which we attempt to mimic events that occur in the natural world, under controlled conditions. The Universe is anything but a controlled laboratory!

I couldn?t think of a good answer to those statements.

The second question they brought up was ?Why haven?t we ?seen? any evolution where you start with one species of animals, bacteria, etc, - have them breed independently ? and have an end result of new species that are unable to mate with the original pairs.?

Some Help?? See the thread on speciation here (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48892). Speciation is not an issue in species which breed by asexual reproduction, such as bacteria. We haven't yet observed speciation in extant creatures because the genetic mutation processes take a great many generations to occur. We have observed bacteria mutate and adapt, that's what the MRSA superbug is. There are also plenty of viruses which are constantly mutating, HIV being one of the most obvious that comes to mind.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

But we have observed speciation events:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

~~ Paul

[Benguin]

We see natural selection acting to eliminate species all the time. That is only a small part of the evolutionary process, but it is a part which demonstrates creationism as fundamentally flawed.


We also see that acting to demonstrate survival of the fittest in a competitive environment.

For what reason did Jehovah create imperfect species?

[Crossbow]

Originally posted by wollery
Evolution isn't an experiment, just as most of what occurs in the Universe isn't an experiment. In science we conduct experiments in which we attempt to mimic events that occur in the natural world, under controlled conditions. The Universe is anything but a controlled laboratory!

Just to chime in,

I entirely agree with this statement!

Another good example is on the field of Astronomy where all sorts of extremely rare and/or high energy events occur that are carefully observered (as opposed to being created in a laboratory), then later the attempts are made to determine the "whats", "whys", and "hows" of the event in question.

[wollery]

Originally posted by Crossbow
Just to chime in,

I entirely agree with this statement!

Another good example is on the field of Astronomy where all sorts of extremely rare and/or high energy events occur that are carefully observered (as opposed to being created in a laboratory), then later the attempts are made to determine the "whats", "whys", and "hows" of the event in question. Actually that description covers just about everything in Astronomy, with the exception of some planetary and Solar science!

[pupdog]

“The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn’t have an experimenter.�
This comment is really pointless. There have indeed been experiments in evolutionary science--e.g., experimenters have modeled natural selection using computer programs; experimenters have investigated the evolution of blindness in conjunction with morphological properties in certain cave-dwelling species; experimenters have investigated the evolution of bird beak morphology by manipulating genes and gene products. These experimenters have found supporting evidence for evolutionary processes.

It sounds to me like another case of the ignorant pontificating on matters about which they know nothing.

[John Bentley]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience
“The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn’t have an experimenter.�

I couldn’t think of a good answer to those statements.

The second question they brought up was “Why haven’t we ‘seen’ any evolution where you start with one species of animals, bacteria, etc, - have them breed independently – and have an end result of new species that are unable to mate with the original pairs.�

Some Help??

The first one didn't even make sense to me until I considered it from their point of view. Their world view requires that everything have a purpose. You could explain that evolutionary theory does not require the presence of an experimenter. It has no purpose, no designs, no end point. It is a purely natural process with no one and nothing overseeing its operation. The random mutations have no purpose, they just occur. The ones that are retained in the DNA are the ones that make the organism better able to breed, or are neutral and just happened to occur in the organisms that were lucky enough to pass on their DNA. The mutations are not experiments, they are natural events.

The second one is easy. The answer is that we have seen this occur. Some lizard species or other somewhere, if I recall rightly, was seen to mutate into another species during the time that scientists were studying that particular brand of lizard. Happened in just a few generations - giving encouragement to saltatory evolutionists everywhere. Their response would probably be along the lines - "But they were still lizards. Their kind hadn't changed".

The flippant answer would be that the evidence is all around us, because everything evolved from one-celled organisms. But the time necessary for this to happen required billions of years. Unfortunately, they refuse to believe that the earth has been here for around 4.5 billion years, and that life has been evolving for probably 3.5 billion of those years. Even if they are willing to concede that, they probably have no concept of what that span of time means.

[fishbob]

The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Science is observation and explanation - science has observers and explanators. Experiments are intended to produce controlled observations.

Just because you could not respond when put on the spot does not make them right.

[Eos of the Eons]

Not only that, but in living creatures today you can map the whole evolutionary process in plants and animals. They like to say all the "links" are missing. Well, amphibians are the link from bony fishes to reptiles if you want to think in a huge leap from one to the other. Amphibians even start out life like a fish (tadpoles), then end up breathing air as adults.

If they were willing to read some books...but they are forbidden to read books on that subject. Their whole religion requires them to only know what their religion is about. Heck, in grade school a teacher had to chop off parts of pictures before the classroom Jehova was allowed to color it. It wasn't allowed to contain things from holidays or etc. etc. I think the snowman had holly on it, so the teacher had to cut its head off. It was bizarre.

[CurtC]

I was trying to come up with my own answer like almost everyone else here, but John Bentley has it right - the experimenter question wasn't asking any question that I would think to answer. It was saying that the universe is an "experiment" and that implies that god exists.

[athon]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience
A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses have stopped by my house the other day, and we got to talking about all kinds of religious stuff. As I was explaining evolution to them – they came up with a few question I couldn’t answer properly.

After explaining how evolution doesn’t mean “Chimps eventually will give birth to humans� they said:

“The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn’t have an experimenter.�

I couldn’t think of a good answer to those statements.

The second question they brought up was “Why haven’t we ‘seen’ any evolution where you start with one species of animals, bacteria, etc, - have them breed independently – and have an end result of new species that are unable to mate with the original pairs.�

Some Help??

I must admit, I still don't quite understand what they mean by 'experimenter'. Do they mean somebody who conducts an experiment?

To understand how to answer questions, we have to learn how to ask them. This is easier said than done. The second thing, which is downright impossible for some, is where to look to find 'answers'.

Asking the right questions (the right way) means understanding the form the answer will come in. There are no answers in science, per se. There are observations, and from that data (facts), but the 'answer' is a speculation which uses the data as evidence.

It is difficult for many people to really grasp what evidence is, or more importantly, what it is not. Skeptics spend their whole lives explaining what it means to people and often getting frustrated in the process. Any observation can provide evidence. However, the context of evidence is more easily observed in a controlled situation. In other words, an experiment.

As it has been said, observing events in the universe is not an experiment. The evidence provided by this is significant but can often be difficult to put into a context. In the lab, if we mate two organisms and come up with a third which cannot interbreed, we can take this observation and make assumptions about why it is so. Seeing it in nature, on the other hand, introduces variables that we may or may not have taken into account. The data remains solid, but the role it takes as evidence is more dubious.

Hence there is not always an experimenter, but there is always an observer, and a speculator, before we get to those 'answers'.

Secondly, we have indeed witnessed speciation events in the course of one or two generations. It is rare because genetic drift tends to produce offspring which are mostly (but not entirely) identical to their parents in terms of their genes. If each generation is 1% different to their parents, and it takes a 10% difference in genes to prevent hybridisation, then it will take a few generations to produced an isolated individual (isolated from great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma, that is). Wallaby families in central Queensland have been observed to have become isloated over one or two generations as a result of a transposable element (jumping genes) spread by a virus. So it can happen.

Athon

[epepke]

Originally posted by SkepticalScience
[B]A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses have stopped by my house the other day, and we got to talking about all kinds of religious stuff. As I was explaining evolution to them – they came up with a few question I couldn’t answer properly.

After explaining how evolution doesn’t mean “Chimps eventually will give birth to humans� they said:

“The one thing I notice with all these science experiments, is that there is always an experimenter. Your whole evolution theory could be right, but you are still going to need that experimenter. Show me an experiment that doesn’t have an experimenter.�

This doesn't even make sense.

The second question they brought up was “Why haven’t we ‘seen’ any evolution where you start with one species of animals, bacteria, etc, - have them breed independently – and have an end result of new species that are unable to mate with the original pairs.�

Well, this has happened within a human lifetime many dozens of time, most impressively with wildflowers imported to North America and wallabies introduced to Hawaii. These are sexual species, so it's easy to see when speciation has occurred.

So the question is not why haven't "we" seen it, but why haven't Jehovah's Witnesses seen it. There are a number of possible reasons for this, none of which are problems for evolution except inasmuch as Jehovah's Witnesses are products of evolution.

[Soapy Sam]

Why answer a statement at all? Especially a meaningless one.

Of course there is no experiment without an experimenter.

That he saw this as a profound observation , instead of a trite banality tells you a lot about his debating skills. You were stuck for a response to a statement of no relevance whatever to the debate. You should have asked him what flavour of fishing rod he uses.

Your doorstep. Your rules.