The fail… IT BURNS.

The usual Fundie misconception – individuals don’t evolve, populations do.

I told him that back in comment #3. That’s why he’s gone. If he can’t get his facts straight after all this time, he’s hopeless. If he had actually absorbed any of the information we were giving him, I would have let him stick around.

Sorry, I didn’t see your last post to Joe/Bob/Bill/Al White.

I can’t believe I’m arguing with you. There’s no point to it… That said:

Your notion about no other members of a new species to bread with ignores the way in which genes move through and accumulate in a species.

When a new gene appears in a (diploid) organism, there’s a 50/50 chance that gene will be propagated into the next generation for each offspring of the original carrier of that gene. That new gene can have one of 3 impacts on its recipients: disadvantage in current environment, neutral, advantage in current environment.

A single gene is relatively unlikely to instantly cause an offspring to be a new species and by your (wilfully idiotic) thinking unable to bread with its progenitors. A new species is the result of the accumulation of many genes. It happens over extensive periods of time.

I’ve already discredited everything you wrote in your prior comments. Your comments today are just repeating what you said earlier. You need to go back and read what I wrote, and then follow up with some serious outside reading. Only when you’ve done that will you be allowed back here.

But, separation or no, the first member of a ‘new species’ has a distinct problem. There is no other member with which to breed.

FAIL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopatric_speciation

I know, it requires a litle thought and a little reading, but I think you can do it!

You’re going to have to get your story straight. I responded talking about geographic separation because YOU said:

“One species branches off from another because the populations separate, usually geographically.”

But, separation or no, the first member of a ‘new species’ has a distinct problem. There is no other member with which to breed.

So, while the green diagrams are clever, they don’t address the issue.

If he is a ‘new species’ then the family line is doomed for lack of a second member, but if he can still breed with the ‘old species’ then he isn’t a ‘new species’ after all, dig?

OtherRob said:

There is nothing in evolution that disproves religion.

Actually that’s wrong. Evolution disproves lots of religions. It is more accurate to say:

There is nothing in evolution that disproves a god.

Yes, I agree. Perhaps I expressed myself poorly in my last comment. What I meant to say was that evolution — or any scientific theory really — cannot disprove the fundamental idea underpinning religion in general. The idea that there is some sort of supernatural or spiritual or mystic or “other” world beyond the purely naturalistic, physical world we inhabit. Of course evolution is real, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old and there is almost certainly a purely physical explanation for every phenomimon we’ve ever observed. But none of that eliminates the possibility that a god exists or that there is a world we will inhabit after our physical bodies dies.
These scientific realities do — as I mentioned in my last comment — do eliminate the possibility that, for example, Genesis is the literal truth and much of science goes on to disprove the literal truth of most religious text. I won’t say all since I’m not familiar with all religious texts.

However, for most people – yeah, I think that varying levels of cognitive dissonance are in evidence – when they even bother to think about it at all, which probably isn’t much.

There is nothing in evolution that disproves religion.

Actually that’s wrong. Evolution disproves lots of religions. It is more accurate to say:

There is nothing in evolution that disproves a god.

Even though I think the probability of a god existing is quite low and I therefore assume there isn’t one, and even though I truly despise many religions and the behavior of many religious people, I have no problem with somebody who is able to reconcile a god and evolution in their mind. If their religious beliefs are compatible with both, I’m completely fine with that, because nothing in that belief contradicts known facts.

Science does lead many people away from religion, because it is incompatible with their religion. Once people get in the nasty habit of thinking logically, they have a harder time sticking to the religion thing.

I credit my early interest in evolution with my eventual realization that I didn’t believe in a god. Science itself is rife with non-believers, especially in the biological branches. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but I recall reading that something like 95% of the members of the National Academy of Science have no religious beliefs. The Royal Society of England produced similar results. This is nearly perfectly inverted from our country’s population as a whole. If something other than an extensive career as a scientist is responsible for this, I’m at a loss to identify it.

So I must disagree. I think evolution IS incompatible with nearly all religious doctrines, unless you happen to lean toward a deist position. As a practical matter, if you are steeped in the science of evolution, the scientific method and critical thinking, your mind has almost certainly become immune to the nutty beliefs other human have invented.

To put it another way, if Genesis is bullshit (and it is), then there is no original sin for which Jesus supposedly died in an act of atonement for all of humanity, and no danger of eternal damnation. Christianity is suddenly exposed for what it is: the greatest scam in human history. Creationists certainly aren’t the brightest bulbs, but they absolutely know that evolution is their mortal enemy, and will never stop fighting against it in defense of their religion.