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OTOH as engineers who spend a large percentage of life pouring blood and sweat into creating things, it's not a giant leap of inference to ponder that there may

by kirse 5y ago

OTOH as engineers who spend a large percentage of life pouring blood and sweat into creating things, it's not a giant leap of inference to ponder that there may be a Creator for the engineering marvel we live in. I struggle with the speciation aspect of Evolution. Not hard to empirically verify in-species adaptations, but I'm still waiting to see coronavirus turn into influenza (etc)

cogman10 5y ago
Where do you think covid came from in the first place? Covid won't change into the flu, that's like assuming a chicken might evolve into it's ancestors species or humans will evolve into apes. Evolution goes forward, not (or rarely) backwards. It's a completely new species that, up until 2019, did not exist in the human population. This sort of evolution happens frequently when people are in close contact with animals. Hence the reason European disease wiped out native populations but not the reverse. Also, a direct example of human evolution.
- kirse 5y ago
  It's a completely new species I think this is where we differ. That obnoxious spiky little ball we all now know as coronavirus(es) existed in both humans and bats long before making the "jump". Ignoring the possibility that humans are directly responsible for the new host capabilities, it's not like we watched influenza slowly morph into a coronavirus and cause a new form of havoc. All we saw was an existing "species" that had mutations inside the bounds of its genetic code that enabled it to survive elsewhere.
op00to 5y ago
I’m waiting for your post to turn into one that makes sense. We will both be waiting a very long time.
dTal 5y ago
>I struggle with the speciation aspect of Evolution. You might find that pondering the existence of "ring species" proves enlightening. It turns out that "species" isn't even a well defined concept when you look closely enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species (Also, you needn't capitalize "evolution". It's not a god :))
- esyir 5y ago
  Yep, Phylogenetic boundaries and the clades are entirely arbitrary constructs. Useful, but don't treat them as though they have absolute meaning as they're essentially a discretization of a continuous process with all the limitations henceforth.

by kirse 5y ago

cogman10 5y ago

Where do you think covid came from in the first place? Covid won't change into the flu, that's like assuming a chicken might evolve into it's ancestors species or humans will evolve into apes. Evolution goes forward, not (or rarely) backwards. It's a completely new species that, up until 2019, did not exist in the human population. This sort of evolution happens frequently when people are in close contact with animals. Hence the reason European disease wiped out native populations but not the reverse. Also, a direct example of human evolution.

kirse 5y ago
It's a completely new species I think this is where we differ. That obnoxious spiky little ball we all now know as coronavirus(es) existed in both humans and bats long before making the "jump". Ignoring the possibility that humans are directly responsible for the new host capabilities, it's not like we watched influenza slowly morph into a coronavirus and cause a new form of havoc. All we saw was an existing "species" that had mutations inside the bounds of its genetic code that enabled it to survive elsewhere.

op00to 5y ago

I’m waiting for your post to turn into one that makes sense. We will both be waiting a very long time.

dTal 5y ago

>I struggle with the speciation aspect of Evolution. You might find that pondering the existence of "ring species" proves enlightening. It turns out that "species" isn't even a well defined concept when you look closely enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species (Also, you needn't capitalize "evolution". It's not a god :))

esyir 5y ago
Yep, Phylogenetic boundaries and the clades are entirely arbitrary constructs. Useful, but don't treat them as though they have absolute meaning as they're essentially a discretization of a continuous process with all the limitations henceforth.