More Evolution Help

[he_who_is_nobody]

and natural selection is nowhere to be found either these butterflies did not evolve.Animal breeders are already well aware of the evidence you are presenting and were long before Charles Darwin wrote his book.

Animal breeders are also an example of natural selection. The breeder is simply a feature of the organism's environment. When we breed for certain traits, not only is it evolution, it's fucking natural selection. Man simply constitutes a selection pressure.

Nit-picking point, this would be considered artificial selection. Even though everything you said is correct, we like to think of ourselves as special and outside of nature, thus the distinction.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Nit-picking point, this would be considered artificial selection. Even though everything you said is correct, we like to think of ourselves as special and outside of nature, thus the distinction.

It would certainly be considered artificial selection, but it's actually natural selection, for all the reasons I described. We're NOT special, regardless of how some may think of themselves. We're just another selection pressure. It's a distinction without a difference.

 

[Visaki]

It would certainly be considered artificial selection, but it's actually natural selection, for all the reasons I described. We're NOT special, regardless of how some may think of themselves. We're just another selection pressure. It's a distinction without a difference.

If one takes this slightly further (into absurdity, perhaps) couldn't one argue that paintings, buildings, automobiles and computers are all naturally occuring?

I wonder if science deniers (or creationists) really think that evolution in nature and "artificial" breeding with human influence are by completely different things? And not just different kinds (yes, I really had to use that word) of selection pressure. I mean these things are not that complicated to understand even if one does not accept the validity of them.

 

[Deleted member 619]

If one takes this slightly further (into absurdity, perhaps) couldn't one argue that paintings, buildings, automobiles and computers are all naturally occuring?

I was involved in a very lengthy discussion about that on RDF before it went tits-up. My feeling is that not only could it be argued, it is in fact the case.

This is the logical conclusion to Dawkins' arguments in The Extended Phenotype.

I wonder if science deniers (or creationists) really think that evolution in nature and "artificial" breeding with human influence are by completely different things? And not just different kinds (yes, I really had to use that word) of selection pressure. I mean these things are not that complicated to understand even if one does not accept the validity of them.

I think they do, yes.

And you're right, it isn't difficult. Indeed, I think harder NOT to understand evolution, but they manage it somehow...