Is evolution true? I've always just accepted the darwinian model of life as dogma...

Darwinian evolution is about existing variations, not spontaneous mutations, although there are theories about the latter too. Variations already exist in all populations. The point of natural selection is that the more beneficial ones will tend to win out, and over time these may form qualitatively distinct (to us, evaluating them heuristically as singular forms) structures.

The origin of life issue doesn't really lie within the scope of Darwinian natural selection. Natural selection is simply what happens when you have many organisms who can breed with one another, who aren't identical because they all have natural variations, and over time certain variations are conducive to greater reproductive success.

If a flock of birds is blown by a freak storm onto a previously isolated island, and the birds' eyes are well-adapted to see brown bugs but poorly adapted to see red bugs, and there is an existing population of bugs with natural colour variations including red and brown, the red bugs will be "naturally selected" as more fit by being eaten less often by the birds. Natural selection is effectively indisputable.

Darwinism or Darwinian natural selection however are not synonymous with the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 20th century which is much more dogmatic and has a lot more holes. In fact biology is currently having a crisis and rethinking evolution. Neither of your questions really come into it though, except peripherally, for example there are neo-Lamarckians who think that there are drivers for mutation other than SOLELY selection from among existing naturally varying populations. But they would still allow for the latter.

>religion/philosophy
Religion and philosophy go to /his/ unless the discussion is centered around a specific piece of literature. Science goes to /sci/.

Not bothering to look up specifics for a thread that will get booted soon. However, mutations are just changes to dna. A common type could be a deletion of a few pairs in a creature which have no effect whatsoever on the creature. Even changes which do have an effect typically would be too insignificant to notice in every day life. If you're thinking of mutations as growing an extra kidney or something then you're way off base.

In english, doc

Fucking moron. That was written in language a 5th grader could understand. Just read it bitch.

Here's my humble opinion: What Darwin saw as a means to preserve life, or simply to reproduce and pass on life, mutations and so on, Nietzsche saw as an expenditure and the exhaustion of power of the organism. Nietzsche believed that the organism was active in its exercising power, as opposed to reactive, sparsely using energy to perpetuate life only. For Nietzsche, the branch seeks to extend forward, instead of being a reaction against all else. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Unironically read Bronze Age Mindset. Darwinism does not describe all life, but merely life under stress.

Seems to me you're interpreting what Darwin said too metaphorically. They were simply observations with their accompanying logical explanations, no immediate philosophical conclusions.

While BAP does explore and acknowledge this concept, I think one should read Kant, Schoppy and Neetzsch if one is serious because that's where he draws his inspiration.

Not true. Literally all of Nietzsche's conclusions are based on misconceptions of the consequences of evolution.
Spinoza and Einstein are the ones worth listening too, but you have to have an IQ of 150+ to understand them desu

>lifeforms are just randomly mutating and arbitrarily gaining traits that help them to survive
That’s not how evolution works
Evolution works across species populations, there is a variation of traits within that population (caused by random mutation initially but mostly passed on from parent to child through descent), many of these varying traits have no effect on the evolutionary fitness of an individual (how well an individual passes on its genes to offspring, by both number of offspring, and how many of those offspring survive to breed themselves) but some traits do improve evolutionary fitness and give an advantage that leads to the individual breeding more and making its traits more common within the population in subsequent generations.
>wouldn't we see thousands of examples of superfluous mutations that neither help nor hurt the species?
We do see this. Many of them are so inconsequential as to only change a single amino acid in a single protein that has no actual effect on protein structure, but on a larger scale you might have differences in pattern on an animals coat, or slight colour change, or slightly altered tooth size, these traits might not have an advantage now but could some time in the future if a change in the environment of the population occurs.
>it is mathematically impossible for random amino acid chains floating around in a primordial soup to form into basic proteins, much less into complex single cellular life.
Evolution isn’t meant to be an answer to the origin of life, it’s an answer to the way it primarily works and changes over time, it explains diversity of life, not the origin

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>Nietzsche's conclusions are misconceptions of the consequences of evolution.
Can you expand on this claim? From what I understand, Nietzsche did generally agree with the conclusions of evolution, he simply disagreed with how evolution is ''pushed''.

>posts fantasy creatures as example
this is your brain on atheism

>wouldn't we see thousands of examples of superfluous mutations that neither help nor hurt the species?
yes we would and yes we do
from quickly googling we each are born with like 60 mutated base pairs, some of which have an actual effect that does nothing and some of which produce the exact same product due to codon redundancy

>some of which have an actual effect that does nothing
...that we know of. Reminder that scientists pushed the meme that the appendix was a purposeless vestigial organ for decades and people still believe it. Just because an item's purpose is not known (especially in regards to something as subtle as DNA), does not mean it lacks a function

Nietzsche quote on this?

>If lifeforms are just randomly mutating and arbitrarily gaining traits
Mutations are indeed random, but the acquisition of new traits in a population is far from random. Ever heard of natural selection?

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mutations don't have a "function", it's more apt to call it an effect because the mutation hasn't had time to process into something with a purpose. And sure, some mutations probably give you something like slightly less stable proteins as an amino acid is replaced, no practical changes are truly equivalent, but they can be so marginal as to vanish in the noise and then it's basically no effect. The point anyway was that you have a bunch of mutations that are completely unnoticable.

where are all the vestigial structures? There should be countless examples.

an entire vestigial structure is much more of a vast evolutionary project than fundamental molecular mutations, I wouldn't be surprised if there are only a handful in the animal kingdom, that aren't running at half capacity or such. But we were talking about why there are no superfluous mutations, which is not the case.

The fact that the appendix has a function doesn't mean it isn't a vestige of a former organ, you utter fucking tard.

i never understood evolution did we actually come from fish

user, we came from the singularity.

Sources on "biology is having a crisis and rethinking evolution"?

>it explains diversity of life, not the origin
This. I just wish people actually understood this. Ironically, what is thought of evolution (going from a simple form of life to something more complex) is the opposite of what is actually going on. A more correct term would be de-evolution, since the diversity of life in terms of all the various species found in genera stems from a common origin of a more complex organism that lost various traits in specific environments so as to adapt to those environments. Obviously, this is also why there are differences between human races despite all being the same species.

>A more correct term would be de-evolution, since the diversity of life in terms of all the various species found in genera stems from a common origin of a more complex organism that lost various traits in specific environments so as to adapt to those environments.
lol bullshit, do you have anything to back this claim up?

Let me be more specific. I don’t mean a single complex organism, but many of them. So say there was originally one bear species that overtime migrated to various places on earth and adapted to different environments by losing traits or having other innate traits come to the forefront. So you get stuff like a polar bear adapted for colder environments and a black bear for more temperate environments.

>durrr he recognises the validity of evolution he must be an atheist
Cringe and retardpilled
I’m not an atheist but evolution is clearly real, it actual gives me more awe for God, his creation is far more beautiful with this complex adaptability in evolution than it would be with static species

It's obviously bullshit. And the way of life that leads form it is even worse.

Ah. Well, your example doesn't really show any loss or gain of traits, just difference. Lets go further back, what about the common ancestor of dozens of different diverse species? We can tell that they're related through genetics, unless there was some meddling that caused them to have genes similar enough that for that likeness to happen at random would be one in a googolplex. Was that organism some sort of trunked, winged, sapient, chimera?

Yes evolution does not explain the origins of life, or the origins amnio acid sea, or of protein ,or the combination of proteins into cells.

so this is how n**ggers are conquering america?

Correct, evolution is an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life, not how it came to first exist on earth
I wish evolution wasn’t so associated with fedora tipping atheists because evolution is beautiful and has no bearing on the existence of God, I think those atheists put some religious people off the idea despite the beauty that comes from it

>evolution does not explain the origins of life, or the origins amnio acid sea, or of protein ,or the combination of proteins into cells
Because the aim of the theory of evolution is to explain how organisms evolve through time not how life arose, you fucking mong. That's what abiogenesis is all about
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

>the more I read about it
I don't suppose you're reading biology textbooks

>the more I read about evolution
>asks questions that he’d know the answers to or know aren’t related to evolution if he had read extremely basic evolutionary theory
What exactly have you been reading? Dawkins books instead of actual science?