If theres a heaven....

[Adam]

nooooooooooo..


I am just talking about the fact that if you put a huge cat and a little cat inside a container, the huge one is probably going to win if they fight.... RIGHT!

[enzo@af]

Exactly. So, if you put a million large cats and a million small cats on the planet, the large cats will have a better chance at surviving than the little cats. Thus, over time the frequency of large cats will rise (from 50% to say, 80%). Right there, an evolutionary force.

Now, this might seem like it means nothing other than the obvious...exactly. When applied to larger settings, multiple traits, varied ecosystems, things change. Large cats appear in one system, but small cats appear in another. The large cats for some reason have blue eyes (maybe it makes them less visible to predators in that area), and in the other location small cats get green eyes. Enough of these differences and you have two breeds of cats. Over time, with continued seperation, mutations and natural selection will cause the two breeds no to be able to produce viable offspring....SPECIATION! It's a miracle! No, it's just logic, chance, and millions of years.

[LakeMountLude]

here is what scientists see today... a small beaked bird (bird #1) fly's to an island where it his forced to eat worms out of a tree, so it eventually devlops a longer beak (bird #2) over a short period of time... then the bird (bird #2) fly's to a different island where eventually its offspring develops even longer beaks to eat the necter out of flowers.. so necessarily bird #1 did not evolve... instead bird 1 adapted to its envioronment which then would make bird 2... then when that birds offspring flew to the other island adaptation happened again.. not three different types of birds, but instead the same bird with different adaptations!

[enzo@af]

Yes, exactly. Lets use the same theory in cats now. We shall join them at this same point...all the same cat (common ancestor), but with different adaptations. cat 1 is now a common house cat, cat two is some sort of wild cat. Now, the cats can still mate with each other, yet because of cat two's predators, the stronger, larger cats survive more often than the smaller ones. Size is genetic in this situation. We'll also say that because of the environment, cat two's that are orange survive more than brown or black cats, and those that are orange with black stripes survive even more than the orange ones.....Do you see what will most likely happen, given the conditions are somewhat constant, and mating is random? It's pretty easy...10000 or so years later you got yourself tigers and tabbys.

I made that example up...for all I know a common house cat could mount up on a tiger and have some f'd up little kittens, but the point is that you now have two species! Woohoo!

Listen, you guys don't have to be threatened because evolution somehow contradicts what the bible says. It's okay to just accept that this sort of thing happens and could possibly account for the wide variety of animals and plants on our earth. I believe in God, yet I'm not stubborn enough to dismiss this sort of blatantly obvious logic.

[LakeMountLude]

yuup, preciesly my point.. you thought that up too huh?? me 2! hehe i didnt know you did (if you posted it somewhere) but hey great minds think alike!!

[Heep]

I agree whole heartedly, Enzo. However, I just hesitate to use the word species insted of adaptation. Most people consider "species" as "cat", "horse", or "dog", not "lion", "tiger", and"house cat." See what I mean? Yes, a lion is different from a house cat, but they are both feline. Therefore, if you mention something changing from one species to another over time, they assume you mean feline to canine, not house cat to lion.

[enzo@af]

I can see how the differences between "cat" and "turtle" are obviously greater than between "cat" and "tiger", but the same principles apply. A generic mammalian creature gets seperated. One isolated group develops into something completely different than the other. Of course, all of this is done by the simple mechanisms of evolution we've seen earlier (natural selection, mutation....).

It's hard to accept that somehow amoebas evolved into something as complex as humans, but it's based on simple, logical rules. Personally, I see it being an incredible feet, but I just don't accept that God made us, made every single of the gagillions of species out there, and then messed up many of our scientific methods (carbon dating, geological evidence, plate tectonics...) just to confuse us.

[Heep]

Yes, it would be quite a feat...but actually feasible if given millions or billions of years. I just don't believe it was, therefore making this evolution even harder for me to believe. Also...read my carbon dating post in "Evolution"

[Bean Bandit]

Note: If we compare a wolfs DNA with that of a poodle will find the most similaritys than compared to every other race.:bandit:

[Lizard King]

Dogs and cats have adapted very quickly due to the selective breeding by humans.
Maybe we can look at it as evolution speeded up and man made...

[enzo@af]

but evolution nonetheless.

[Adam]

I DON'T agree wholeheartedly... yes, the stronger survive, BUT>>>> the stronger doesn't evolve, nor does the weaker. NONE DO! it's just strong=better chance of survival. weak=less chance... NONE EVOLVE

[Dimex]

you've changed the gene pool to increase frequencies of stronger genes...evolution right there. It's not speciation, but keep doing that same thing for millions of years and you'll have a plethora of species (and maybe a few different genuses, orders, and all of 'em).

[Heep]

Wolves and poodles are both canine though (I'm pretty sure, anyway...), so of course they are goind to have similar DNA characteristics.

I still can't see how a turtle could lose it's shell, grow fur, completely change it's look and habitat to become a cat, or any other interspecies change. Maybe I believe in creation just because I can't get my head around evolution being possible...

[Bean Bandit]

Originally posted by Heep
Wolves and poodles are both canine though (I'm pretty sure, anyway...), so of course they are goind to have similar DNA characteristics.

The Point is that a poodle is more similar than other dog races like huskeys or alsatian:bandit: