Iirc, Polycomb is a biologist, so I would trust him over your intuition until you have real evidence to support yourself. And he definitely doesn't need your biology lessons (not that the rest of us likely do either).

OP gets about 2/3 credit for knowing conditions of natural selection, but forgot to study during the evo-devo part of his course.

not saying it's evolution as the general public would think of it. i'm saying morphological change in the absence of change in allele frequency (more specifically dna, since that's what u seem to be talking about)

following is all in the absence of identified dna mutation

germline heritable gene expression
http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867400811812 (not the best example but i'm sure u can figure out why i'm referencing this)

germline heritable morphological isogenic (theoretically same dna) stock of organisms
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../396336a0.html (hsp90 has same effect a plant too)

and again in the germline
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture03380.html

all i'm saying is heritability of traits (and the dna changes cannot be completely be ruled out here). not saying long term fixed morphological difference or speciation. though i would say given current technology, chromatin/protein,rna effects on morphological evolution (if any at all) would be difficult to determine (actually i can't think of a way it can be done except in very closely related species).

edit: not saying these are the best examples either, just happened to be made aware of 2 of these over the years and they stuck due to the sheer shock of what was presented (i really do encourage you to read them, regardless of their value to evolution, they do generate discussion). most definitely not something i thing about a lot. as my suggest, i'm a gene expression kinda guy

Good point.

I'm not even aware of accepting science. Presumably I accepted gravity and friction at some point in the past?

I know that people who accept Christ into their life become born-again Christians. The OP is hoping that being become born-again Evolutionists, by accepting evolution into their life or what exactly is the point of this thread?

There's two types of people, those who want to "only hear the good news" and those who want to "hear it straight like it is". I'm in the second category, and believe me I'd rather NOT believe in evolution than believe. Believing in it has made me lean towards atheism, and I admit that being religious generally probably leads to a happier life. Evolution/atheism tells us:

1. We are not important. The universe and all animals weren't created to serve us.

2. There's no repercussions for doing immoral things if you don't get caught, because there's no afterlife to punish us.

3. There's a decent chance we are the ONLY intelligent beings in existence (some people say "it's impossible for intelligent life NOT to exist outside of Earth, given how large the universe is!" I say, "how do you if you don't know exactly how rare it is for self-replicating organisms to come into existence from non-self replicating organisms?")

4. Each human life is not very important. It's hard not to believe this compared to if you are religious, because religion teaches we are each unique children of God. Evolution teaches us hundreds of billions of creatures have died, and were what produced us, and we are living in only one tiny slice of time compared to the time since life on earth began.

All your points about importance aren't implied by evolutionary theory.

That's your opinion.

Btw, for point #2 I'm in no way more likely to do anything I think is immoral if I'm atheist compared to if I'm not. I'd never steal something if I was sure I could get away with it and no one is looking, and that doesn't change whether I'm atheist or religious. But I recognize that there's a punishment in the afterlife if I'm religious and compared to if I'm atheist.

Science fail... again.

At some point (probably far shy of 10,000 actually) my conceptualization of these things just becomes me thinking about the actual number. The point is that it quickly stops being a meaningful conceptualization, and that this process occurs at surprisingly small numbers. Human minds are not adept at conceiving of things very small or very large, and for good reason.

You've drilled down exactly to the key point. Well done.

The proponents of evolution have a social agenda. Without that agenda in mind people's acceptance is as irrelevant as to whether they accept gravity. I have a certain amount of sympathy for those that think that it's a scientific issue but nobody is promoting evolution for scientific reasons, anymore than there's a group promoting acceptance of friction for scientific reasons.

And you guys have the gall to look down on us in RGT.

I can't speak for all proponents of evolution, but I don't have a social agenda. I'm just someone who took the time to learn how evolution works and look at the evidence for it. Now, I'm FORCED to accept that evolution is true whether I want to or not.

And you are wrong, I'm promoting evolution for scientific reason (in other words, because it's TRUE). I didn't even start thinking about social implications of evolution until AFTER I accepted it as true.

You mean like these scientific-not-social reasons?

If the arguments you put forth in this thread are on the same level of what it took to convince you, then I don't think you should trust your ability to reason through the evidence.

In particular:

None of these follow logically from evolution, especially as you have defined it. When someone disagreed with you, you seemed to think that it's just an opinion. (If it does follow logically, you should be able to make a logical argument -- and you wouldn't have retorted by calling the opposing view an opinion.) Therefore, you have some other motivation for wanting to believe these conclusions that are not logical conclusions, and definitely not scientific conclusions.

Aaron, you've contributed nothing to this topic. All you've done is attempted to derail it, nitpick scientific inaccuracies even though you have no clue yourself (you look up what I say on the internet, looking for a source that says I'm wrong). You fail to appropriately respond to posts, ignoring my main points and focusing on one liners. You're very ignorant when it comes to actual science. I mention opinion, and now you think everything I was saying before was "my opinion". You fail to realize I wasn't talking about science in that particular post. You constantly take what I say out of context.

From the beginning, I've been trying to tell you that your reasoning is off base. Initially, it was about your inability to recognize that you were using "evolution" in two entirely different senses. Now it's your attempt to try to draw philosophical conclusions (edit: and social commentary) based on (edit: your faulty presentation of) scientific theory.

What makes you think I do that? All of my commentary has been based on what you have presented ITT. I've been hitting you repeatedly on the definition of "evolution" that you've provided and showing how it's not the same as "evolution" in the sense that you're wanting it mean in order to draw your various conclusions.

If by "main points" you mean "conclusions based on something other than the reasoning presented" then I'm guilty as charged. I don't care how right your conclusions are if the logic is as bad as it is.

Do you still not realize, despite the numerous people telling you so, that this entire thread is based on a shameful lack of reasoning? But I guess reasoning isn't really a part of "actual science" in your mind.

Ummmm... yeah. That "opinion" comment wasn't taken STRAIGHT from the context from the consecutive posts #155-157. And you weren't really talking about "science" when you said that "Evolution teaches us" something in post #155.

Are you really going to keep trying to blame me for your own errors in reasoning? Why not take a moment to read through things carefully and accept the reality that right in front of your face?

By the way, saying that "atheism teaches us" anything would get you skewered by the atheists in RGT. They insist quite firmly that atheism draws no conclusions of anything.

This thread derailleeeeeeeeeeeed.

To answer your original question :"Why is evolution so hard to accept?"

Well basically anything you teach children from a very early age in which they can't decide whether something is right or wrong they will accept something to be true because their parents say so. When on a later age they get confronted with emperical evidence that contradicts that something they will have an extremely hard time dealing with it. The thing is most of them can't ultimately ever decide that its wrong, so they're left with calling it mere opinions.

I mean you study biology and get alot of things about evolution wrong. How can you expect the rest of the population to make a proper judgement about evolution.

But wouldn't you agree that evolution has possibly provided us with an answer that humanity has searched for its entire existence--where do we come from? And isn't this answer/truth a little bit more significant than whatever friction tells us?

Can't you see how a layperson who's able to grasp the basic principles of evolution and have a good enough understanding to confidently answer such an important question might be a little vocal about it while others in their society bury their heads in the sand?

It isn't.


Now stay on topic which is marginal at best under SMP. Anymore derailing or getting near the sucking sound of god/religion and the thread will be closed -Or moved to RGT -Whatever I decide.

Zeno - Master of the Universe.

The "oh god..." part is not necessary and extraneous. This is SMP.


-Zeno

The "Master of the Universe" part is not necessary and extraneous. This is SMP.

This is the only answer OP should read.

What did I get about evolution wrong, besides I once mentioned we evolved from monkeys. Technically, we share a common ancestor with monkeys but that common ancestor probably looked similar to a present day monkey.