According to scripture and to evolution, you’re related to everybody, just a matter of how far back. Comparing across kinds, families or kingdoms is another matter. Since a large part of DNA codes to build the body, they are all going to be similar to some degree, and some body types closer than others. That makes them a common design, not related.
You missed my point, which was not a scientific one. A label is merely a label and needs no ‘proof’, regardless of the object. Whether or not it is appropriately applied is another question.
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But the same type of technology that shows I am related to my cousin’s kid tell me I am related to a chimp. Or maybe that is still in my kind. My wife thinks so, anyway.
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Yes, good spot. This is a fairly common teleological way of retrospectively describing evolution in terms of purposes. It would be more accurate to say that it evolved because it prevented the cod from icing over.
In other words, it was a mutation that provided an advantage to the cod that had it (perhaps to extend their feeding range into colder waters, or just cope better with conditions becoming colder). The mutation would tend to spread through the population over generations due to the reproductive advantage it conferred (e.g. more successful cod producing more eggs better able to survive & thrive in a colder environment).
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Once again, we run into your dogmatic rejection of evidence. As we can all see, there is no fossil we could ever show you that would change your position.
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That is because fossils are evidence that something lived, not that it changed.
Question: Since evolution is believed to be an ongoing thing, and didn’t end with the dinosaurs, where are the living transitional forms today? There are apes and there are men. There should be ape-men of all types who didn’t get quite to the next level of evolution. The same goes for all other transitions. Dino-birds, feathered mammals, or scaly mammals, or furry reptiles.
Do you and the others realize why we have similar DNA and the same proteins as all other life, without needing evolution as a reason? Anything too far removed from our genetic makeup would have nothing to eat. Our food would either not be digestible, or it would poison them.
That sounds like a good excuse to not be vegan.
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If humans evolved from ape-like ancestors, wouldn’t you expect there to have been individuals who had a mixture of human and ape features?
We have their fossils. Why do you reject them?
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It is the PATTERN of both the similarities and differences that points to evolution. That pattern is a nested hierarchy.
Evidence?
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We don’t have that, except in recreations. We have fossil apes and we have fossil humans. A variety of each, but distinct from each other.
Same answer.
These aren’t recreations.
What features would a fossil need in order for you to accept it as being transitional between humans and apes?
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There is speculation that the evolution of eyes might have been a factor in the Cambrian radiation. It’s probably not the only factor, but certainly being able to see predators or prey opens new opportunities and challenges.
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Peacock Spider "Stayin' Alive" - YouTube illustrates that jumping spiders also use their eyes for assessing potential mates. Those with musical taste should be warned that the video should be rated BG.
Ha! I was wondering what “BG” meant until the music started. Beautiful!
“It’s so far beneath us on the evolutionary ladder” is a misconception, closer to Lamarckian ideas [not the inheritance of acquired traits, but his overall idea of the progression of life] than to modern evolutionary biology. Evolution is more like a bush growing out in all directions than a tree, much less a ladder. Octopi are just as distant from bacteria as we are, though conspicuously they have gone in a different direction. Conversely, bacteria are just as distant from us as we are from them - they haven’t developed large-scale complexity, but they have gotten all sorts of chemical complexities that we haven’t. In critiquing an idea, it’s important to know what it actually says.
Evolution produces functional forms. Anything that isn’t functional will die out. But there are myriad ways to function. Although eyes, being soft, tend to not fossilize very well, as already discussed, we have a full range of degrees of development of eyes in different animals. In each case, the degree of light sensing is useful to the animal. So eyes are a terrible example of “irreducible” complexity - every step along the way is useful. Although it is true that a reason to give humans well-developed eyes was for us to be able to appreciate the beauty and wonder of creation, the mechanism of forming the eyes is explained quite well by evolution. Octopi and humans followed independent paths of eye development from simpler ancestors. We can see simpler eyes in other cephalopods and in other vertebrates that show us some aspects of how they evolved. Genetic analyses can also highlight similarities and differences that inform about the path of evolution.
Likewise, the pattern of similarities in DNA does not track particular functions, the way it might be expected to under common design, but rather tracks evolutionary relationships. Whales have fish-like lifestyles, yet their DNA shows them to be most closely related to hippos. DNA similarities also extend to aspects that don’t matter for the lifestyle. Non-coding spacer regions in the DNA, such as the ribosomal ITS regions, show patterns matching evolutionary relationships. There are also many genes that relate to basic cell function. All life needs functional cells, yet those genes also show similarities that match evolutionary relationships. For example, if you’re an oxygen-breathing eukaryote, you need functional mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA, a relict of their origin as free-living bacteria that were taken into a proto-eukaryote. Even though animals all need that (except for certain loriciferans, with highly modified mitochondrial derivatives functioning without oxygen), the mitochondrial DNA similarities match evolutionary relationships. Design not using evolutionary means would have no reason to give the same patterns of evolutionary similarity in mitochondria as in the nuclear DNA. (Hybridization can mix things around, but generally not by much.)
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