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Evolution in Action?

Evolution in Action?

Spirituality

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Could the life cycle of a frog not be considered a microcosm of the evolutionary process? What about the metamorphosis of a butterfly?

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Originally posted by David C
Could the life cycle of a frog not be considered a microcosm of the evolutionary process? What about the metamorphosis of a butterfly?
Nope, no selection pressure. No selective death. It is a wonderful developmental process though and is indicative of the organisms that we evolved from. For example, during the embryonic phase all mammals exhibit a fish-like phase, with tail and everything...

edit; actually, I should say all chordates, rather than all mammals, although the mammals are a subdivision of the chordata. They / we also have gills during development...

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Originally posted by scottishinnz
Nope, no selection pressure. No selective death. It is a wonderful developmental process though and is indicative of the organisms that we evolved from. For example, during the embryonic phase all mammals exhibit a fish-like phase, with tail and everything...

edit; actually, I should say all chordates, rather than all mammals, although the mammals are a subdivision of the chordata. They / we also have gills during development...
Selection pressure or selective death aside, this is the process, right? Brain pan expands, lungs develop, leg bones form, etc.?

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Originally posted by scottishinnz
For example, during the embryonic phase all mammals exhibit a fish-like phase, with tail and everything...
I seem to recall that your conclusion -- that the embryonic phases like the fish-like
one support evolution on some scale -- is spurious. I mean, doctors studying biology
before the common era have been looking at miscarriages and surmising that we
were higher on the hierarchy of animals because we can see fish-phase, lizard-phase
or whatever.

I don't know much about embryonic development and what these phases entail, I
just remember that the 'we can see our evolutionary history in embryos' claim was
not well respected.

Or I could be totally inventing a memory!

Nemesio