The Origin of the Human DNA

[edd]

How would the bird evolve wings (and probably feathers first) provided that their rudiments would be a burden for those mutated species and would decrease their ability to survive. How would the bird "know" to continue to evolve wings until the point it can actually fly and take advantage of that?

Birds wouldn't evolve wings if they decreased their ability to survive. Birds (or proto-birds) don't need to "know" anything.

Riddle me this: If wings that couldn't provide flight weren't advantageous, why do we have so many species of flightless birds?

Then why don't we see those flightless birds to eventually get rid of the wings completely in the process of evolution? Why doesn't evolution optimize for that?

Evolution doesn't have any "optimal" designs that it's aiming for. The only thing that's required for a trait to be passed down to future generations is...future generations.

If a mutant survives long enough to reproduce, it has succeeded, evolutionarily speaking. As long as ostriches continue to have baby ostriches, the ostrich genotype will survive. If a mutant ostrich without any wings somehow manages to utilize its mutation to its advantage and passes it down to its offspring, you may eventually see birds without wings.

I wonder how birds teach their "chicken" to fly?
Consider the first capable-of-flight bird has everything in place for a flight and we can imagine that she learned to fly by an accident. But how do then other birds start to fly? Do they all learn it by accident? Can they pass their knowledge and experience to other generations genetically?

Flight doesn't "just happen" one day to one member of one species.

Here's a pretty good read covering just this topic: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/evolve.html

Also why don't we see more random species, that the evolution must have produced, like animals with 5 legs, 2 heads or 3 wings, some really random messy stuff like that? Yes, they would have died out, but nonetheless those "random mutations" must have produced a lot of those things, yet we only see the result of what I would call a "guided mutation".

Species don't mutate, individual members of species do and you do see lots of them. Try googling "five legged dog."

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[pedrog]

Whenever I ponder evolution, I can never get my head round the basics. People always debating the finer technicalities of it, but the simple question of 'can something come from nothing?' always baffles me. Any evolutionist I have spoken to has attempted to explain it but always leads to me asking...where did that come from? to which he answers and I reply, and where did that come from? eventually it comes to the point that the evolutionist states 'we don't currently know the answer to that yet, but technological advancements will explain that one day', which leads me to the conclusion that the foundation of evolution right now is based on blind faith that technology will one day answer how 'something came from nothing'. That's why the finer details of macro and micro evolution are immaterial, why discuss the finer details when there is currently no foundation for the theory?

I'm very willing to entertain good explanations for this, as I would genuinely like to learn....not anti-evolution here...

You just described the God of the Gaps Fallacy.

And Evolution doesn't try to explain the beginning of life nor the beginning of the Universe.

Check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

[Ekaros]

Whenever I ponder evolution, I can never get my head round the basics. People always debating the finer technicalities of it, but the simple question of 'can something come from nothing?' always baffles me. Any evolutionist I have spoken to has attempted to explain it but always leads to me asking...where did that come from? to which he answers and I reply, and where did that come from? eventually it comes to the point that the evolutionist states 'we don't currently know the answer to that yet, but technological advancements will explain that one day', which leads me to the conclusion that the foundation of evolution right now is based on blind faith that technology will one day answer how 'something came from nothing'. That's why the finer details of macro and micro evolution are immaterial, why discuss the finer details when there is currently no foundation for the theory?

I'm very willing to entertain good explanations for this, as I would genuinely like to learn....not anti-evolution here...

On other hand the explanations offered by creationist and such are worse. And don't really answer a the questions either...

[Rassah]

And males have nipples.

Yeah, but those do actually have uses 

[wtfvanity]

I think it's called "irreducible complexity" if I remember correctly and there are other examples of it.

That's also such a Phrase, but Creationists always think new species just pop into existence. That's not how it works.

Let's go with you example of the feathers.

1. Dinosaurs had no skin like we, but scales. Now their where warm bloods, just like mammals. And like mammals have hairs their scales evoved into something to keep them warm. This where the first feathers. We know today that many Dinosaur species had feathers, of course by then they weren't as complex as the birds feathers today more like the feathers of the Ostrich



2. Dinosaurs on two legs (like all birds today are on two legs) where all hunters. They became very fast runners and jump attacked their prey. Like the Velociraptor. We know (from finds in China) that the Velociraptor didn't look like in Jurassic Park but more like this:


see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor
http://www.sdnhm.org/archive/exhibits/feathered/

3. From there on the Creature evoked to make longer and longer and more precise jump attacks using their feathered arm to navigate the jump. And the feathers evolved with it.

4. Eventually this leads to the point where it was able to make short glides. From there real flight evolved.


Birds evolved from Dinosaurs and are their direct descendants. In Fact a T-Rex is more closely related to a Turkey than to a Stegosaurus.

Did he just try to prove that modern birds all came from the velociraptor?

[Ekaros]

And if evolution doesn't try to explain the beginning of life, why does it try to explain anything at all? Why start explaining a subject half way through it's time-line?

Because it's useful? That is like saying that Newtonian physics are not good because we don't know where mass comes from...

[Mike Christ]

And if evolution doesn't try to explain the beginning of life, why does it try to explain anything at all? Why start explaining a subject half way through it's time-line?

Because that's where we are; evolution is studied through how animals came to be in their current forms by running backwards through the timeline, from the concrete, observable now to the increasingly mysterious past.  If you ask anyone to explain the beginning of life, they will only ever give you theories; nobody was around to see it and no records exist of its happening, so all we have is our imagination and reasoning.

[Akka]

Did he just try to prove that modern birds all came from the velociraptor?

Not necessarily the Velociraptor but dinosaurs. And not prove but simplified explain.

The Velociraptor is just the one where good feathered Remains have been found.

[Rassah]

Then why don't we see those flightless birds to eventually get rid of the wings completely in the process of evolution? Why doesn't evolution optimize for that?

Penguins used to have wings, but have evolved them into more like fuzzy flippers instead, since in their environment they get more food by "flying" under water than flying through the air. If you ever get a chance to see them doing that at a zoo, do it. They are quite amazing to watch.

Whenever I ponder evolution, I can never get my head round the basics. People always debating the finer technicalities of it, but the simple question of 'can something come from nothing?' always baffles me. Any evolutionist I have spoken to has attempted to explain it but always leads to me asking...where did that come from? to which he answers and I reply, and where did that come from? eventually it comes to the point that the evolutionist states 'we don't currently know the answer to that yet, but technological advancements will explain that one day', which leads me to the conclusion that the foundation of evolution right now is based on blind faith that technology will one day answer how 'something came from nothing'. That's why the finer details of macro and micro evolution are immaterial, why discuss the finer details when there is currently no foundation for the theory?

I'm very willing to entertain good explanations for this, as I would genuinely like to learn....not anti-evolution here...

Species evolved through random genetic mutations, which were selected by their environment (viable mutations reproduced, bad mutations died off). Birds, mamals, and reptiles all came from the same fish ancestors. Insects came from crustasians like crabs and trilobytes. Plants came from seaweed, which came from algae. All three of those classes came from complex sponges and from single-celled organisms, some photosynthetic in nature, some predatoreal. Those came from even more basic single-cell life, which came from proto-life consisting of very basic proteins, which was created in gasy bubbly pools of water, mud, geothermal activity (volcanoes), and air. Those things came from planet Earth, which formed when dust clouds from a prior star (or a number of stars) congealed with gravity to form the big round balls we call planets, and the giant ball of gas we call the sun. Of those previous stars, some were formed from the most basic element hydrogen, and some were formed from more complex elements, but their enormous pressure and fusion was what transformed the basic elements and gasses into the more heavier elements, like calcium, carbon, iron, oxygen, sillicon, and other elements that we and our planet are made of. Those stars, in turn, were formed from gravity pulling together very basic elements which originated from the big bang, which until recently was theorized to have come from nothing. When measuring the mass of the universe by observing how things move and gravitate around each other, we discovered that the parts we are able to see only make up half of the universe. The theory was that our universe is composed of matter that we can see (electrons around protons) and anti-mater which we can't (protons around electrons) which nonetheless has gravitational mass, and that our universe is composed of equal parts matter and anti-matter. As such, if you take all of the stuff in universe and put it together, it will all cancel each other out (matter canceling out anti-mater), meaning our universe is still technically a sum of nothing. The theory also claimed that an event that can spontaneously create a bunch of matter and antimater (in exactly equal parts so as to maintain that "energy can not be created or destroyed") could happen randomly, at any time, completely on its own. This theory was completely confirmed with the Large Hadron Colider, when we observed exactly that happening many times on a tiny scale - essentially numerous tiny big bangs creating mater and antimater, popping spontaneously into existance - though they were too tiny to survive in our already existing universe.

So, there's your answer. A big sum of nothing spontaneously popped into existence out of nothing.

[neurobox]

Just some food for thought...

Multiverse theories are proposed to counter the anthropic principle, suggesting that the reason the universe is so specifically suited to life as we know it is that life as we know it is suited to *this* universe out of many.. An argument against that idea might be that life is extremely unlikely even in this universe, yet came about in a shockingly short time frame, making this also an unlikely multiverse.

Some suggest life as we know it couldn't have evolved even if the universe were filled with primordial soup, yet we see it thriving on a planet that was too cool for life at the time it's been claimed to have begun, thanks to a faint young sun (a problem which "is not yet solved" according to Nature & Nature Geoscience)

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going - Francis Crick

Suppose a dozen sharp-shooters are sent to execute a prisoner by firing squad. They all shoot a number of rounds in that direction, but the prisoner escapes unharmed. The prisoner could conclude, since he is alive, that all the sharp-shooters missed by some extremely unlikely chance. He may wish to attribute his survival to some remarkable piece of good luck. But he would be far more rational to conclude that the guns were loaded with blanks or that the sharp-shooters had deliberately missed. Not only is life itself overwhelmingly improbable, but its appearance, almost immediately, perhaps in as short a period as 10 million years following the solidification and cooling of our once molten planet, defies explanation by conventional physical and chemical laws. - William Lane Craig

"Everything in physical science is a lot of protons, neutrons and electrons, while in daily life, we talk about men and history or beauty and hope. Which is nearer to God-beauty and hope or the fundamental laws? To stand at either end and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is a complete understanding, is a mistake." - Richard Feynman

[maz]

This theory was completely confirmed with the Large Hadron Colider, when we observed exactly that happening many times on a tiny scale - essentially numerous tiny big bangs creating mater and antimater, popping spontaneously into existance - though they were too tiny to survive in our already existing universe.

So, there's your answer. A big sum of nothing spontaneously popped into existence out of nothing.

But it didn't. It took the Hadron Collider, 30 years of man made effort, $6 billion in materials and labour, the worlds greatest scientific minds to create an atmosphere to prove that you need a Hadron Collider to make something come from nothing?

[Rassah]

This theory was completely confirmed with the Large Hadron Colider, when we observed exactly that happening many times on a tiny scale - essentially numerous tiny big bangs creating mater and antimater, popping spontaneously into existance - though they were too tiny to survive in our already existing universe.

So, there's your answer. A big sum of nothing spontaneously popped into existence out of nothing.

But it didn't. It took the Hadron Collider, 30 years of man made effort, $6 billion in materials and labour, the worlds greatest scientific minds to create an atmosphere to prove that you need a Hadron Collider to make something come from nothing?

The Hadron Colider doesn't actually create anything. It's a large sensor that senses stuff happening in our universe, or things our universe is composed of. Essentially, "30 years of man made effort, $6 billion in materials and labour, the worlds greatest scientific minds to create" a really damn good microscope, which was able to see things come from nothing.

Did you know black holes form all around us all the time too? We don't notice them, because they are too tiny, burn out too quickly, and exist for too short a period of time for us to notice them (like, tiny fractions of a nanosecond). We could use things like the Hadron Colider to detect them, but that doesn't mean they exist only in its tube. They're everywhere... o.o

[Rassah]

Say we've got these self-replicating proteins that have combined into this incredibly complex, cooperative organism. Then it evolves a bit more and a living being with his or her own first-person sense of self emerges into that machine? I don't buy it. If mutation 'X' provides the special sauce for becoming basically alive and conscious, then I'll eat my hat!

Consciousness likely evolved in gradual stages as well. To survive, animals have to be aware of their surroundings, of where their own limbs and bodies are, of things happening to and inside of their bodies (pain, illness, etc), and to predict where things will go in the short term, either to catch prey, or to avoid predators. Just from that you have all the basic building blocks of self awareness.

[interlagos]

Then why don't we see those flightless birds to eventually get rid of the wings completely in the process of evolution? Why doesn't evolution optimize for that?

Penguins used to have wings, but have evolved them into more like fuzzy flippers instead, since in their environment they get more food by "flying" under water than flying through the air. If you ever get a chance to see them doing that at a zoo, do it. They are quite amazing to watch.

That's the point. The penguins are amazing, the animals in general are cute and beautiful. They all make sense beyond just being able to reproduce. It seems that there is an idea behind each type of species.

Why didn't horses or cows or even pigs start to evolve wings?

Just some food for thought...

Multiverse theories are proposed to counter the anthropic principle, suggesting that the reason the universe is so specifically suited to life as we know it is that life as we know it is suited to *this* universe out of many.. An argument against that idea might be that life is extremely unlikely even in this universe, yet came about in a shockingly short time frame, making this also an unlikely multiverse.

Some suggest life as we know it couldn't have evolved even if the universe were filled with primordial soup, yet we see it thriving on a planet that was too cool for life at the time it's been claimed to have begun, thanks to a faint young sun (a problem which "is not yet solved" according to Nature & Nature Geoscience)

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going - Francis Crick

Suppose a dozen sharp-shooters are sent to execute a prisoner by firing squad. They all shoot a number of rounds in that direction, but the prisoner escapes unharmed. The prisoner could conclude, since he is alive, that all the sharp-shooters missed by some extremely unlikely chance. He may wish to attribute his survival to some remarkable piece of good luck. But he would be far more rational to conclude that the guns were loaded with blanks or that the sharp-shooters had deliberately missed. Not only is life itself overwhelmingly improbable, but its appearance, almost immediately, perhaps in as short a period as 10 million years following the solidification and cooling of our once molten planet, defies explanation by conventional physical and chemical laws. - William Lane Craig

"Everything in physical science is a lot of protons, neutrons and electrons, while in daily life, we talk about men and history or beauty and hope. Which is nearer to God-beauty and hope or the fundamental laws? To stand at either end and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is a complete understanding, is a mistake." - Richard Feynman

Great quotes, thanks!

[neurobox]

Consciousness likely evolved in gradual stages as well. To survive, animals have to be aware of their surroundings, of where their own limbs and bodies are, of things happening to and inside of their bodies (pain, illness, etc), and to predict where things will go in the short term, either to catch prey, or to avoid predators. Just from that you have all the basic building blocks of self awareness.

For something to appear self-aware is a completely mechanical notion. But as for you, sitting there in your body, aware of yourself and others, mechanics alone cannot begin to explain what "you" are doing "in there," as opposed your absence (in that you are absent from the experiences of others).

[wtfvanity]

Did he just try to prove that modern birds all came from the velociraptor?

Not necessarily the Velociraptor but dinosaurs. And not prove but simplified explain.

The Velociraptor is just the one where good feathered Remains have been found.

It sounds like you've read up a bit on dinosaurs but have some stuff confused. Birds descended from theropoda, okay. Not all dinosaurs.

Birds evolved from Dinosaurs and are their direct descendants. In Fact a T-Rex is more closely related to a Turkey than to a Stegosaurus.

I'd love to see some scientific journals or something backing up such a bold claim. Or is that merely your conjecture?

[Rassah]

Why didn't horses or cows or even pigs start to evolve wings?

Because their style of life, consumption, and reproduction does not require them to fly? They went the run fast and be big enough to fight things off route, instead of the fly away route. Plus they are not carnivores, and birds evolved from carnivorous dinos that needed to swoop down on top of their prey.

[Rassah]

Consciousness likely evolved in gradual stages as well. To survive, animals have to be aware of their surroundings, of where their own limbs and bodies are, of things happening to and inside of their bodies (pain, illness, etc), and to predict where things will go in the short term, either to catch prey, or to avoid predators. Just from that you have all the basic building blocks of self awareness.

For something to appear self-aware is a completely mechanical notion. But as for you, sitting there in your body, aware of yourself and others, mechanics alone cannot begin to explain what "you" are doing "in there," as opposed your absence (in that you are absent from the experiences of others).

Why not? Why can't mechanics alone explain what is it that I am sensing and describing to myself?

[MrHempstock]

As to the origins of everything, see Asimov's "The Last Question"

http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm


And as to evolution through natural selection - it's easy to say "Prove it!" when the complexities of understanding a process that exceeds one's own span of existence in time by a magnitude of a great many shitloads is tedious at best. An easier way is by looking at much shorter (time-wise) examples, like the fruit fly study, or how elephants are losing their tusks due to a certain gene and their only predator's affinity for ivory: http://sector9evolution.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-evolution-of-tuskless-elephants-due_22.html

Dawkins is all about the athiesm these days, but everyone should read The Selfish Gene, the book that put him on the map. Genes are the closest thing to immortality this planet has ever seen.

[pedrog]

That's no where near far back enough for me....where did all that come from? the big bang, which came from where? the singularity that was created by radiation and gasses in space, which came from where? black matter which collided with some other thing, where did that come from? see how that can just keep going....

And if evolution doesn't try to explain the beginning of life, why does it try to explain anything at all? Why start explaining a subject half way through it's time-line?

Those are the "million dollar" questions...

It's not enough for you nor for everyone else and there are a lot of people working hard trying to find those answers...

Theory of Evolution explains how life evolves, that's it.

Why didn't horses or cows or even pigs start to evolve wings?

Really?