"Evolution is a chance process"

[Bread_of_Life]

I'd like your opinion on the fish with legs that are currently living and running around at the bottom of the oceans.

I don't know of any - probably because they evolved into amphibians about 450 million years ago.

I'm looking at the fossil and looking at the drawing and I'm trying to figure out why they put fingers on it, or limbs or the tail.

As you can see from the drawing of the fossil, the parts that appear on the underside (not pictured) appear in grey. This includes the manual digit of the right forelimb (the "fingers" you were talking about). The Right pedal digits (on the back limbs of the animal) also appear in grey on the right hand side of the drawing.

Any evidence that they were lacking in food in the water? Or having to leave because of their predators?

Yes, the evidence is everywhere in nature - it's called "the struggle for survival". Every animal species lacks food. That is because competition for food is so great. Many animals starve in childhood, and some in adulthood, because they cannot get their hands on the scarce resources compared to their competitors. Therefore, an adaption that allows them to get to an untapped source of food would be greatly advantageous.

Also, unless you are on the top of the foodchain, you will be predated. That means that any adaption that allows you to escape your predators better than your peers will also be advantageous.

Can you imagine a fish today, seeing plant material outside and wanting to get at it? This should be a simple enough experiment, right? Put a fish somewhere where in water where there's no food and put some food outside of the water. What do you think would happen?

Actually, it's an experiment that is already done today, on a worldwide scale, in shallow coastal waters. And yes, when food becomes scarce many fish do go into more and more shallow waters to find food, and to escape from predators such as sharks, who cannot enter more shallow waters because of their size.

However, the first amphibians in the deluvian and carboniferous had the advantage of having limbs to propel them, and therefore would have gotten further onto dry land than their competitors.

Sure you can theorize. Theorize away. It would be good to have evidence to back up the theories though. How do you know the tetrapods are in-betweens anyway? The picture on your link sure looked like it was fully formed - no stumps. I want to see an actual fossil with stumps. No more illustrations.

We would all like to see lots of things from the fossil record - but the answer is we only have the fossils we have. Unfortunately, over the internet, illustrations and photographs is all I can give you. Of course, you could have gone down to the bottom of that page and gotten the references, in which case you could have gone into your local library and looked them up - but again, you'll only get pictures and illustrations. You'd have to go to the museums where these finds are held to get the real thing, I'm afraid.

I thought you said they had stumps. Did you change your mind or did I miss something?

So now fish developed fully formed legs and then crawled out of the sea?

I believe I answer this when I said:

No, I'm saying that it could have happened that way, that you shouldn't simply assume one that it happened one way and not another.

Actually, from what we can see of the fossil evidence, it would seem that limbs we well developed on proto-amphibians when they crawled out of the ocean.

Is there evidence to support the gills to lungs transition?

Apart from the fact that modern amphibians have lungs, and fish gills, no - because soft parts are not captured in the fossil record (actually, they can be, but it is extremely rare).

However, once we have established common ancestry with other evidence, we can be fairly sure that the transition occured. How it occured, or what stages it occured in, will likely remain mysterious to us - but then evolutionary theory is not dependent on cataloging or proving the course of every transition - but rather on proving that animals are all related. How they are related, and how it all happened, is a rather different subject, and some parts of that will always be history's secret.

So it's not so much about observation and evidence.

Well, the fossil record is about observation and evidence, and so is the inference of common ancestry. We know that common ancestry is true from other evidence, and we also see transitional forms in the fossil record, as well as a record of life generally changing over the eons.

However, exactly how this happened - what pressures forced evolution at every stage, what every single transitional form looked like - these things we'll never know. We can only hypothesise as to exactly why our ancestors took their first steps out of the ocean, or exactly how gills adapted to land. But then, as I said, evolutionary theory is not dependent on knowing these things - because the evidence that they did happen is seperate from the evidence of how they happened.

Take a murder. We find a body, dead, with 30 stab wounds in it's back. Clearly they wern't self-inflicted, so we pronounce that a murder was committed. However, what motives did the murderer have? Who were they? What make of knife did they use? Where did they buy it? These questions may never be answered, because we may never find the killer - does that mean there wasn't a murder? Similarly, we have ample evidence of the truth of common ancestry (that we're all related, all animals, plants, fungi). However, will we ever know for sure exactly what selection pressure pushed fish onto land? Or will we ever know for sure how gills turned into lungs? The answer is probably no - but that doesn't mean evolution didn't happen, it means that we may never know exactly how it happened, or exactly why.

Okay, so no. lol.

Correct, as I explained above.

Seems totally backward to me. Evolution seems to be much more about philosophy and using your imagination.

No. What's happened is that we've found a murdered body, and we're trying to piece together from limited physical evidence how it was murdered.

The murdered body is common ancestry - whose evidence ranges from morphological evidence, genetic, embryological, fossil, atavistic, vestigial, bio-geographic etc.

Here we're really arguing about *how* common ancestry happened. How are we related to fish. How did this transition occur. etc etc. Sometimes, that has to be more guesswork than anything else - because the evidence is sometimes lacking (for example, soft parts).

Again, this should be a pretty easy experiment to conduct. I doubt they'll even try it though.

I think you'll find that sea birds and land based predators try that experiment every day at beaches around the world, and they find it very successful

Do you think you might have a certain amount of faith in the theory of evolution?

No. The core of the theory of evolution is common ancestry. This has been proven again and again and again. No faith is required to say that it is the best current theory to believe in.

What we're talking about here is how evolution happened, and in this case, a very specific example of a transition from water to land. It could have happened in a variety of ways, some of which we havn't even thought of. We have limited (but growing) fossil evidence of how this happened, but it will never be complete. We have little evidence of selection pressures, other than the ones that all animals face in modern times (like predation, food, mates etc). In this case, it's really best to be really tentative about things. Provisionally, the evidence points to fish having limbs prior to crawling out of the ocean. However, this could change, so I'm not going to nail my flag to the mast, or really commit myself to one root or the other. Again, it seems likely that predation and food would have been advantages, especially considering the colonisation of plants on land earlier in the fossil record. However, there may be selection pressures we've not even thought of, so I'm not going to come out and say "it was definetely predation/food" - because it might have been a variety of things, and I wasn't around to see it.

But I am willing to nail my colours to the mast on one thing - and that's common ancestry. I'm willing to say that man is close cousins with gorillas and chimpanzees, and less close to old-world monkeys. There is no faith involved in these statements - I didn't have to be there to know - there is modern day evidence to support this. However, on the question of "why did the gorilla and orangutang lineage split?" the answer is "I don't know". And on the question of "exactly why did fish crawl out of the sea?" the answer is "I can only guess at likely reasons why this might have happened?". But crawl out they did, because we are related to them. Do you understand now, the difference between the theory of common ancestry, and theories on how common ancestry happened?

It would be advantageous for predators to be camoflagued. Why do you think most times they aren't - most times, or often, they stick out like a sore thumb?

Firstly, btw, this would count as poor design also, which is rather harder for you to explain given that they were designed by God for the purpose of predation. However.

How do you know that it would always be advantageous for predators to be camoflagued? Perhaps their mode of predation doesn't require camoflague? Have you looked into it? Have you done any research on it? Also, how many predators are not camoflagued? Have you looked into this? Have you studied how they live, and how they predate?

I know I havn't...

What? Still living? Shouldn't these fish have turned into humans by now? What happened? Did some change their mind?

Actually, eventually, they did turn into humans - that's how life got onto the land, and guess what, we're land animals. Everything is related, you see.

Who thought up this idea anyway? And why can't experiments be performed to prove these kinds of things.

I don't know who thought it up. What experiments? Can you think of even one? I mean, we might do an experiment to find out how gills could turn into lungs, maybe some sort of thought experiment - but there's no guarantee that the transition we think up is the actual transition - after all, there might be more than one way it could happen - it could have happened in a way we can't even think of!

Anyway, what evolutionary advantage does a predator have when it sticks out like a store thumb?

Could you give an example?

By the way, have you thought that all predators must have something going for them evolutionary, given that they survive to this day? If they made, for whatever reason, ineffective predators, then they'd die out. That's what natural selection is.

Okay, the fish sees food with its eyes. It wants the food. It needs the food. It grows stumps to go and get the food.

No no no!!! Classic misunderstanding.

Evolution doesn't happen because the animal wants it to happen, or wills it to happen. An animal cannot control its own mutations, they are random. Similarly, plants can't even think - they don't have a will to will mutations, but they evolved also.

Mutation is a random process. It's like getting dealt a poker hand. Once you've got it, it don't change, and you have to play it to the best of your ability. So, you get a set of random mutations, some good, some bad, all played out in a big population. The fish that happened to get mutations for limbs or protolimbs used those appendages to their advantage - beating their non-limbed competitors, or finding a niche away from their non-limbed competitors. But they didn't ask for the limbs. They didn't wish for them. They just happened to get them. You don't ask a dealer for an ace, and you don't ask gamma rays for a good mutation. You either get it, or you don't.

So the fact that the food is on the land and the fish can see it has nothing to do with the evolutionary changes it makes to grow itself some stumps. It is all random???

The changes are random, the selection of changes is not. Yes, the cards you get dealt are random, which cards win is not.

I thought you said the fish holds its breath and goes on land to get away from its enemies, yet the changes required to do this better and better are all random?

Correct, it's trial and error. Some fish will have been real bad at this - not through any fault of their own, but because they randomly got bad mutations, or mutations that made them worse at it. They got eaten, or died of starvation, or befell some other fate. There were lots of them.

Evolution is trial and error, and there's an awful lot of error, and that means a huge ammount of death and suffering in a population, every generation. Mutations don't have to be good, they can be neutral, or even disastrously bad. The ones that get disastrously bad mutations end up with 99.99% of fish offspring, dead before they can have children of their own. Many are called, few survive, even fewer breed successfully. That's trial and error for you.

People often underestimate just how savage nature can be, and just how much death is involved. Fish can have thousands of offspring in a single mating cycle. However, if the population is stable (not growing or decreasing on average), then only one of these offspring per fish will grow old and have children itself, on average. That means that in a population of a thousand fish, millions will die every breeding cycle. For a fish that has 3 or 4 breeding cycles in a lifetime, that can add up to tens of millions of dead per generation, for the sake of the continuance of a thousand. Imagine that sheer scale of death over 1000 generations. Or 10,000. We're getting into figures of hundreds of billions, just for a small population of fish. Now imagine that fish generations last a few years, and that they've been around hundreds of millions of years. Now think how many fish there are, how big the population is (rather than think of a thousand fish, think of oceans teaming with them)

That's trial and error. That's life. It's a whole lot of unlucky fish.

Tell me how the above statement factors into the fish story - where it grows stumps or gets some lungs.

Well, only one problem, I don't know how many generations it took, so I can't really say.

[Bread_of_Life]

Oh, by the way, if you want to find out about other transitional amphibians, you should check out the links at the bottom of the page I linked you into.

Here's an idea scientists should consider. Find some evidence FIRST and then devise your little origins story!

They already have. You're simply confusing the origins story with how the origins story happened. It's like confusing the murder with the motive. We know that animals are related by common ancestry - the evidence is overwhelming. That doesn't mean we'll ever know **exactly** how or why (though we can find good clues - notice also, this leaves lots of room for divine involvement in the process of evolution!!!).

Similarly, we can know a murder happened, but we may never catch the murderer, and even if we do, we may never know his motive. That doesn't mean the murder didn't happen, it means that we're never going to know the whole picture.

[truseek]

When and how was common ancestry proven?

Yours in Christ

Truseek

[Bread_of_Life]

Truseek

That's a very involved topic, and a very long one, because there are many of different sorts of evidence of common ancestry, and they all involve lengthy discussion.

However, if you want to start a new thread on this, I'd be more than happy to go through them with you.

Nik

[truseek]

Most excellent I will start this new thread. Also, my apologies for not resaponding yet to most of the site you have referred me to. They have a lot of info, and it's gonna take me a minute to digest it all Thanks tho

Yours in Christ

Truseek

[artsylady]

http://www.jengajam.com/r/fishlegshorn

(there's a video to click on this too)

Okay. this is really weird. SA asked for more information on the fish with legs and the only thing I can find is the news article with pictures that ran in a few papers. It was caught by an 8 year old girl.

Here's the weird thing. This fish has what looks like a horn and some legs. The article says that researchers say it is a spotted rat fish, but when I looked up the spotted ratfish, it didn't look like this fish, and descriptions of the spotted rat fish don't mention anything about legs or a horn?

I also looked it up by the scientific name and couldn't find anything about these 'legs' or a 'horn'.

Does anyone else find this bizarre?

[Guest LCPGUY]

http://www.jengajam.com/r/fishlegshorn

(there's a video to click on this too)

Okay. this is really weird. SA asked for more information on the fish with legs and the only thing I can find is the news article with pictures that ran in a few papers. It was caught by an 8 year old girl.

Here's the weird thing. This fish has what looks like a horn and some legs. The article says that researchers say it is a spotted rat fish, but when I looked up the spotted ratfish, it didn't look like this fish, and descriptions of the spotted rat fish don't mention anything about legs or a horn?

I also looked it up by the scientific name and couldn't find anything about these 'legs' or a 'horn'.

Does anyone else find this bizarre?

Artsy,

YES!

In His Love,

Bro John

[artsylady]

I just keep looking at these pictures. Clearly, the video shows this 'horn' thing and the legs or whatefver on the bottom, and I've looked at 20 pics of the same supposed fish and definitely no horn or those leg things.

[artsylady]

Yes, the evidence is everywhere in nature - it's called "the struggle for survival". Every animal species lacks food. That is because competition for food is so great. Many animals starve in childhood, and some in adulthood, because they cannot get their hands on the scarce resources compared to their competitors. Therefore, an adaption that allows them to get to an untapped source of food would be greatly advantageous.

Also, unless you are on the top of the foodchain, you will be predated. That means that any adaption that allows you to escape your predators better than your peers will also be advantageous

.

So what is the actual evidence that the fish saw the food on the land?

QUOTE

Can you imagine a fish today, seeing plant material outside and wanting to get at it? This should be a simple enough experiment, right? Put a fish somewhere where in water where there's no food and put some food outside of the water. What do you think would happen?

Actually, it's an experiment that is already done today, on a worldwide scale, in shallow coastal waters. And yes, when food becomes scarce many fish do go into more and more shallow waters to find food, and to escape from predators such as sharks, who cannot enter more shallow waters because of their size.

No. Not the same. We're talking about fish living in the water and seeing food on land, not seeing food in more shallow waters and I think you know that the difference is huge.

QUOTE

Sure you can theorize. Theorize away. It would be good to have evidence to back up the theories though. How do you know the tetrapods are in-betweens anyway? The picture on your link sure looked like it was fully formed - no stumps. I want to see an actual fossil with stumps. No more illustrations.

We would all like to see lots of things from the fossil record - but the answer is we only have the fossils we have.

So there's no fish with stumps. No evidence!

QUOTE

I thought you said they had stumps. Did you change your mind or did I miss something?

So now fish developed fully formed legs and then crawled out of the sea?

I believe I answer this when I said:

QUOTE

No, I'm saying that it could have happened that way, that you shouldn't simply assume one that it happened one way and not another.

I don't want to assume ANYTHING and it seems there's no evidence for either, yet you beleive one of those lil' stories!

Actually, from what we can see of the fossil evidence, it would seem that limbs we well developed on proto-amphibians when they crawled out of the ocean.

QUOTE

Is there evidence to support the gills to lungs transition?

Apart from the fact that modern amphibians have lungs, and fish gills, no - because soft parts are not captured in the fossil record (actually, they can be, but it is extremely rare).

So no evidence again. Thank you.

However, once we have established common ancestry with other evidence, we can be fairly sure that the transition occured.

Well, what evidence???

How it occured, or what stages it occured in, will likely remain mysterious to us -

Because there's no evidence.

but then evolutionary theory is not dependent on cataloging or proving the course of every transition -

or many transitions at all.

but rather on proving that animals are all related. How they are related, and how it all happened, is a rather different subject, and some parts of that will always be history's secret.

Yeah, we're related because we were all created by the same designer.

QUOTE

So it's not so much about observation and evidence.

Well, the fossil record is about observation and evidence, and so is the inference of common ancestry.

Well thank you for starting to use the much more appropriate word 'inference' rather than evidence. I guess we're making some headway here.

We know that common ancestry is true from other evidence, and we also see transitional forms in the fossil record, as well as a record of life generally changing over the eons.

How do you feel about the platypus? Personally, I'm sure God created creatures like these specifically to make evolution look stupid.

We can only hypothesise as to exactly why our ancestors took their first steps out of the ocean, or exactly how gills adapted to land.

With no evidence for any of it. Very sad that it's taught as fact, don't you think???

But then, as I said, evolutionary theory is not dependent on knowing these things - because the evidence that they did happen is seperate from the evidence of how they happened.

Yeah, I know, the evidence that they happened is that the species are now here.

QUOTE

Seems totally backward to me. Evolution seems to be much more about philosophy and using your imagination.

No. What's happened is that we've found a murdered body, and we're trying to piece together from limited physical evidence how it was murdered.

Then why is God created the world and all the species in it so ridiculous. Please tell me that.

QUOTE

Do you think you might have a certain amount of faith in the theory of evolution?

No. The core of the theory of evolution is common ancestry. This has been proven again and again and again. No faith is required to say that it is the best current theory to believe in.

I totally disagree. The earth speaks of balance in every way - none of this survival of the fittest crap. Everything is balanced so that all creatures have a fair shake. Small animals that don't live long produce far more offspring. Large animals that live long produce far fewer offspring. The hunted have the ability to camoflage and get away. The hunters in many cases have no camoflage and often stick out like a sore thumb. The interrelation between plants and animals speaks of balance. The earth's positioning and atmosphere is no accident. It is perfectly designed to sustain life. The universe was created by an intelligent designer. That should be so obvious.

But I am willing to nail my colours to the mast on one thing - and that's common ancestry. I'm willing to say that man is close cousins with gorillas and chimpanzees, and less close to old-world monkeys.

And why NOT common designer?

There is no faith involved in these statements - I didn't have to be there to know - there is modern day evidence to support this. However, on the question of "why did the gorilla and orangutang lineage split?" the answer is "I don't know". And on the question of "exactly why did fish crawl out of the sea?" the answer is "I can only guess at likely reasons why this might have happened?".

You sound like you have to continually convince yourself, even though there are too many unknowns to know.

But crawl out they did, because we are related to them.

Wow. Do you hear yourself?

Do you understand now, the difference between the theory of common ancestry, and theories on how common ancestry happened?

No, it makes little sense whatsoever.

QUOTE

It would be advantageous for predators to be camoflagued. Why do you think most times they aren't - most times, or often, they stick out like a sore thumb?

Firstly, btw, this would count as poor design also, which is rather harder for you to explain given that they were designed by God for the purpose of predation. However.

No. It would be about balance, as mentioned above.

How do you know that it would always be advantageous for predators to be camoflagued? Perhaps their mode of predation doesn't require camoflague? Have you looked into it? Have you done any research on it? Also, how many predators are not camoflagued? Have you looked into this? Have you studied how they live, and how they predate?

I actually think it's not the predators who camoflage for the most part - it's the prey who usually have this ability.

QUOTE

What? Still living? Shouldn't these fish have turned into humans by now? What happened? Did some change their mind?

Actually, eventually, they did turn into humans - that's how life got onto the land, and guess what, we're land animals. Everything is related, you see.

Well why didn't they all change into humans?

QUOTE

Who thought up this idea anyway? And why can't experiments be performed to prove these kinds of things.

I don't know who thought it up. What experiments? Can you think of even one? I mean, we might do an experiment to find out how gills could turn into lungs, maybe some sort of thought experiment - but there's no guarantee that the transition we think up is the actual transition - after all, there might be more than one way it could happen - it could have happened in a way we can't even think of!

Yeah, some experiments. Take a fish and put him in a small pond where there's food visible on land and see if he'll grow some legs or stumps. Try it. Dare ya.

QUOTE

Anyway, what evolutionary advantage does a predator have when it sticks out like a store thumb?

Could you give an example?

Sure, snakes with wild red and black markings or black and yellow stripes etc.

By the way, have you thought that all predators must have something going for them evolutionary, given that they survive to this day? If they made, for whatever reason, ineffective predators, then they'd die out. That's what natural selection is.

Well, what about the ones who AREN'T predators - the ones on the bottom of the food chain. They are still here! And nature needs them too right! I'd beleive in Mother nature overseeing this process before I thought it all had to do with evolution and survival of the fittest!

QUOTE

Okay, the fish sees food with its eyes. It wants the food. It needs the food. It grows stumps to go and get the food.

No no no!!! Classic misunderstanding

Evolution doesn't happen because the animal wants it to happen, or wills it to happen. An animal cannot control its own mutations, they are random. Similarly, plants can't even think - they don't have a will to will mutations, but they evolved also.

Then why did you say it can see the food on the land, or even know that there WAS food on the land?????

Mutation is a random process. It's like getting dealt a poker hand. Once you've got it, it don't change, and you have to play it to the best of your ability. So, you get a set of random mutations, some good, some bad, all played out in a big population. The fish that happened to get mutations for limbs or protolimbs used those appendages to their advantage - beating their non-limbed competitors, or finding a niche away from their non-limbed competitors. But they didn't ask for the limbs. They didn't wish for them. They just happened to get them. You don't ask a dealer for an ace, and you don't ask gamma rays for a good mutation. You either get it, or you don't.

Cool. Now that you put it that way, I really understand how evolution could have happened.

QUOTE

So the fact that the food is on the land and the fish can see it has nothing to do with the evolutionary changes it makes to grow itself some stumps. It is all random???

The changes are random, the selection of changes is not. Yes, the cards you get dealt are random, which cards win is not.

Okay. So.... then, as you stated before, there was food on the land that the fish wanted to get to because they didn't have enough in the water, right? I guess you can throw that hypothesis right out, right? It's all about a bunch of lucky accidents that are dependant on NOTHING. lol.

QUOTE

I thought you said the fish holds its breath and goes on land to get away from its enemies, yet the changes required to do this better and better are all random?

Correct, it's trial and error. Some fish will have been real bad at this - not through any fault of their own, but because they randomly got bad mutations, or mutations that made them worse at it. They got eaten, or died of starvation, or befell some other fate. There were lots of them.

I can't beleive we are continuing in this ridiculous conversation... but since we are

is there any evidence that the fish held it's breath?

You asked for experiments? This should be an easy one. Put a guppy in a tank with a fish and see if he can jump out for a second to hold his breath. Try it. Dare ya.

Evolution is trial and error, and there's an awful lot of error,

Umm yeah. Oh, you mean the process, not the theory.... okay, go on.

and that means a huge ammount of death and suffering in a population, every generation. Mutations don't have to be good, they can be neutral, or even disastrously bad. The ones that get disastrously bad mutations end up with 99.99% of fish offspring, dead before they can have children of their own. Many are called, few survive, even fewer breed successfully. That's trial and error for you.

How often do bad mutations happen as opposed to 'good' ones?

[artsylady]

Whew, you go ArtsyLady, I been plannin on dojn that, jus haven't had tha time lol