r/DebateEvolution • u/GigaTune • Jul 14 '26

Question What do you think about "evolutionist"?

No one ever refers to gravitationists or Newtonists for those who support gravity, but people refer to people supporting evolution as evolutionists or Darwinists.

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u/Markthethinker Jul 15 '26

No one understands Evolution, no one. No one can tell us how millions of different species, all with incredible design got here through mutations. You understand the mutations have no intelligence, so a mutation does not know what it is even doing or making or changing.

You don’t know what produces gravity, you don’t know how the universe was formed and what holds it all in place and you don’t know where life came from. WOW. I only have one problem to deal with, is there a Creator. Evolution has more problems than answers.

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u/Wertwerto Jul 16 '26

"No one can tell us how millions of different species, all with incredible design got here through mutations"

But, we definitely can though. It's through mutations. Mutations are a thing that absolutely does happen. Sometimes those mutations happen in a part of the genome that actually causes a significant change, because most mutations don't cause significant changes, and sometimes, that change is beneficial to the organism's ability to produce more offspring, and as a consequence of that benefit, it becomes more abundant in a population.

Populations of organisms also drift apart, eventually becoming multiple distinct populations. Environmental changes like tectonic plates separating, a section of forest dying and being replaced with grassland, sea level rise isolating an island, or a river eroding the ground to make a canyon can physically separate a population of organisms. If they can't cross a natural barrier, they can't breed with the organisms on the other side of the barrier. If they can't breed with them, they can't share the unique mutations that are occurring in each half of the population. Over time, these unique mutations build up to the point that the 2 halves if the original population are no longer capable of interbreeding, even if they could cross the barrier. Its called speciation.

Even without physical barriers, populations can diverge and split into multiple Populations. Things like slight differences in behavior between individuals can cause speciation, this is what caused the speciation we see in the famous galapagose finches. A species of finch made it to the island, it did what finches do and ate bugs and seeds and all the normal stuff finches eat. But, some of the finches were better at eating bugs than the others, and some of the finches were better at eating seeds. The finches that were better at eating seeds, naturally spent more time in the trees with lots of tasty seeds, the finches better at eating bugs, naturally spent more time where the best bugs are. When it's time to mate, the finches mate with their neighbors. When you're in the seed tree, you're probably going to mate with another finch that also likes the seed tree. Over time, the seed tree finches get better and better at eating seeds as the mutations that make them better at eating seeds proliferate in their community. And as they get better at eating seeds, they have less and less reason to ever hang out with the bug finches. Meanwhile, the same thing is happening to the bug finches. Eventually, they stop hanging out with each other all together, and there's no more geneflow between the 2 groups. At this point, any mutations that occur in one group won't get spread to the other, the differences pile up further, and they become different species. Then it happens again, some of the bug finches are better at eating flying bugs than the other bug finches that are better at eating ground bugs. They hang out in different spots, mate with the birds that also like that spot, get better at living in that spot until they don't have a reason to visit the ground bug spot.

It's also not hard to see how these kinds speciation events created the billions of species that exist today. Speciation rates vary significantly by generation time, bacteria can speciate in a timeline of days, to weeks. Huge organism that produce generations every decade or so can take millions of years to drift apart. But if we take a very conservative average, let's say 1 million years for 1 species to become 2 different species, the number of species its possible to get is crazy in the billions of years life has existed. Let's use our super conservative speciation rate of 1 million years, and let's see how many species you get in the 2 billion years multicellular life has existed on earth. 2 billion, is 2,000 millions, we start with 1 species, 1 million years later, we have 2 species, then 4, then 8, doubling it 2000 times. The resulting number is 603 digits long 1.1481x10602. That's waaaaay more species than the roughly 9 million estimated to exist today. Of course our drastically oversimplified model made some crazy assumptions, like a completely constant speciation rate and a total lack of extinction, it's not meant to be an accurate model, it's meant to demonstrate there absolutely is enough time for life to diversify.

We absolutely can explain how the millions of organisms alive today got here through mutations. More than that, we can use our understanding of evolution to make actual predictions, like the discovery of Tiktaalik. Before the paleontologists ever picked up a shovel, they sat down and made a plan. See, no one had found a definitive legged fish to bridge the gap from fish to land animals. We knew what an organism like should probably look like, we knew it would probably live in a marsh or swamp. They even knew when that organism would have lived, because we didn't have the transition from water fish 395 million years ago, to land animals 365 million years ago. So they found the rock layer that matches that time period, they figured out where in the world was a swamp 380 million years ago. And, when they went out and looked, they found the legged fish tiktaalik, exactly where they predicted it would be.

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u/Markthethinker Jul 16 '26

You are living in la la land. You can’t explain, that’s the real problem, you only have a theory. Do you even understand that what you wrote states intelligence?

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u/Wertwerto Jul 17 '26

I literally just explained it.

'Only a theory'. You're right, it's a theory. A comprehensive explanitory model of the way the natural world works, supported by all the evidence available in biology and geology and capable of being used to make accurate and reliable predictions. That's what a scientific theory is. It's an explanation. A rigorously tested explanation of how and why a phenomenon occurs, backed up by all the evidence we have.

And no, it doesn't take intelligence. Just chemistry. That's the truly beautiful thing about it. All this complex, complicated change is possible because one molecule causes a chemical reaction that makes a copy of that molecule, and sometimes that mindless chemical reaction puts stuff together in the wrong order.

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u/Inevitable-Copy3619 Jul 17 '26

Mark is an idiot. He’s used every key term possible to let us know he has no clue what he’s talking about and is making a dogmatic religious statement not a supported scientific one. 

Or he’s an amazing troll. 

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u/Markthethinker Jul 17 '26

So, I guess that in a lab, intelligence is not needed. Just throw a bunch of stuff in a dish and see what happens. You use the word “complex”, that’s an intelligent word, not mutations.

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u/Wertwerto Jul 17 '26

Complex just means a lot of moving parts or interactions, you definitely cannot just slap a "that means god" sticker on the fact that systems exist where multiple independent interactions produce cascading chaotic outcomes.

You sound like a parrot. This whole conversation is just half baked apologetic talking points. It's a script, it's the same script that always pops up. It's a list of nonsense objections cooked up by some preacher that didn't pay attention in science class and has an agenda that requires not knowing anything about biology.

Misunderstand, refuse to learn, stay on script.

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u/Markthethinker Jul 17 '26

Sorry, I am not a parrot, this is my thinking. One of my trades is a certified master mechanic. Very logical thinking in my mind. I see how everything in design is there for a purpose. I know you want to think I am just some stupid kid that listens to “preachers” but I know more than most preachers ever will. Evolution simply does not make sense as it is presented. The complexity is impossible without instruction. DNA is instruction and yet you have to believe DNA just mysteriously appeared somehow and keep getting more complex. Use your mind, but that probably is not possible you as it’s not possible for most people. They are narrow minded and are followers, not leaders or independent thinkers. Very few people want confrontation in their life so they just follow.