Can you consistently reproduce such speciation by generational separation and random mutation?
Add genetic drift and other factors. To my knowledge, and I hope to be corrected, it hasn't been done at all.
Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!
by Perry 365 Replies latest watchtower scandals
-
BurnTheShips
-
Perry
Don't confuse evolutionist with darwinist.
hamilcarr,
Isn't that a rather silly point? Who says I must use your word choice? I used the term "atheist evolutionist" because I wanted to. My word choice leaves the option open for someone to be an evolutionist and still believe in an intelligent First Cause.
Granted, I am sometimes naturally averse to standardized terminology. Call it a vestigial combat stress reaction from my fight out of the Tower.
BTW, here's a rebuttal to vestigial organs, tails, limbs.
-
inrainbows
AuldSoul
I deeply regret your lack of honesty. You can't even accept you went off on one at comments that were not even directed at you.
I haven't done so since and doubt seriously whether I will ever again on this subject, in future.
And? Sorry, colour me unimpressed.
What I want is something we can empirically prove and reproduce which can no longer mate with either its ancestor or empirically known common descendant to produce offspring. To my knowledge (and possibly due to the rarity of okapi) no one has ever attempted to cross-breed an okapi and a giraffe. I have emailed to ask a noted zoologist whether this has been attempted and will be happy to share any reply I receive.
My stab at humour/thought experiment/example of unreasonableness seems to miss you entirely, and maybe that is my fault so I will explain what I mean.
First of all if is lampooning your position somewhat. The reasons why I think your postion is lampoonable has already been explained.
Second, even given the apparently not so obvious hyperbolic elements integral to the lampoon, I am not talking about interspecies fertility using that example, I am talking about one animal giving birth to one different enough to meet your apparent standards of speciation not by means of hybridisation but by means of a large single generation genetic shift. This would not be a white-head gull/finch/salamandar variants that rarely interbreed, but something that might meet your requirements
However inane your insistence that my standard is unreasonable, until that is accomplished you haven't got a proven case.
I haven't got a proven case to you. Others differ. And my opinion of your standard being unreasonable is mine. You don't have to share it. However, I know that the godless conspiarcy of evolutionary scientists who know far more than you or I ever will about the subject would agree with me. And whilst that argument may approach fallacy, if you said take medicine A and those who'd studied medicine said take medicine B, I'd follow their advice unless you had a far far better argument than you do.
I would recommend selecting something with a much faster life cycle and much larger populations to accomplish the feat.
So, you haven't read up on those easily found Talk Origin examples, or do they look too much alike to meet your standards even though they are not interfertile. Which one is it?
Your cute 'okapi' comment is not a very practical expectation at all, on either count, especially considering the low fertility rates among okapi due to widely divergent haploid variations.
As explained, this attempt at lampooning failed entirely as you missed it. It wasn't mean to be practical, it's mean to illustrate how unreasonable you are.
Variation allowed for within the coding itself.
I am tempted to follow Burn's lead and go blah blah blah at that. That's not an explanation of WHY, it's you desperately clutching at straws.
If (as you seem to allege) there is design required, then why would that design allow a dolphin to sprout atavistic legs? Why would that be required genetic variation? In case the dolphin wanted to pop down to the shops?
Is the designer a fan of those little transformer toys? He likes his designs to morph from fish to terrestial terapod, maybe even to avian?
Come off it. And you think evolution is unbelievable.
Can you explain why evolutionists insist that intentionally engineered adaptability to environmental stressors within a given range would be a poor design model?
So, you are saying, if I can follow your argument, that dolphins have the ability to develop legs due to environmental stress? But that if they did so they would still be dolphins and interfertile with aqautic dolphins going back to when the design was made? Please confirm, this is great.
And biomorphic variation (which exists) is different from speciation, although one might lead to another given seperation of gene pools.
I might not be able to prove to you specifically who intelligently designed life,
So, you don't have a theory. I obviously have to say it for you as you won't come out with it.
but humans can consistently reproduce intelligently designed life that is speciated, can't we, inrainbows?
Is this the god as spaceman lark?
Glow-in-the-dark tobacco plants come to mind, somehow. And the things we have done with various grasses? Oh my.
Oddly, we don't have to actually start from scratch.
Yeah, we've been GM'ing before genetics. This is not a proof of ID. And you know it is not a proof of ID.
Can you consistently reproduce such speciation by generational separation and random mutation?
You haven't read those links on Talk Origins, have you? The answer is 'yes, but not to the macro extent you seem to require given your refusal to give a clear descriptor of what would prove it to you'.
Burn
You said;
We need proof
... and thus associated yourself with the level of proof I was discussing.
If I was wrong and you didn't mean that, fine, but I thought you were supporting that level of proof as that's what you seemed to say.
And whilst I wouldn't support 'argue', I do wish someone from that camp would have a real go at it. Discussion like this is fun. I can't believe the avenue Auld's trying but maybe his clarification will adjust my mirth co-efficient.
Now, I'm running late for the train, I need to fly. Obviously I have the genes for that somewhere but (pats pockets)
(PS Auld, yes, I am not serious, I know you're not saying things can just sprout wings, you're saying under the right environmental stress their babies can, I think, hopefully you'll clarify).)
-
hamilcarr
perry,
I refuted your statement, not your word choice.
-
hooberus
serotonin said:
You've misunderstood me.
I wrote: That's all evolution is, and yes, creationists do claim to deny this.
Meaning creationists deny this is all evolution is. They think it's something more, so you get the classic 'I believe in micro evolution, not macro evolution' line, when they don't get that macro evolution is just micro evolution repeated over and over.My comments referred specifically to the false claim in the film that you linkerd to that: "after years of rejecting these simple steps of natural selection some creationist preachers are now embracing them"
-
hooberus
.
hooberus,
I checked the site and to get the information I'd have to purchase a book. Can you just tell me yourself why natural selection doesn't account for the complexity of life?
I hope you'd agree small changes take place in species. If a species can change a little bit, what's to stop it changing a little bit more? If there's a small change, then another, and another, over millions of years those small changes will add up. You'll end up with something that looks completely different to how it started out.
That's all evolution is, and yes, creationists do claim to deny this. However, when some say animals diversified quickly after Noah's flood due to natural selection, they're basically explaining evolution!
Small changes + time = complex life forms
The problem is that the complete evolutionary naturalism "version" of history would have required more than merely "small changes" and "time" in order to properly explain the world around us. For example there is the significant issue of the direction of change. Evolutionary naturalsim would have required a massive increaese in genetic informational content over this time (in order to get a bacteriologist from bacteria).
The problem is that the adverse effect of random mutations on information is so overwhelmingly destructive that above a certain (low) amount of mutation rate, natural selection cannot even preserve the existing information in the genome, let alone establish a net increase.
For example:
Take a flopy computer disk and copy the information from an arcticle on the subject of "Evolution" from an Encarta encyclopedia. Then write a program that intrduces three random mutations (mispellings, etc.) on each of four subsequent copies. Then have an Ph.D biologist directly select the best disk according to biological information content out of the four, and through away the rest (perfect selection). Make four more disk copies and repeat the process of "small change" over "time" for as many generarations as you would like. Would such a process ultimately end up with more information about biological evolution for Encarta? Obviously not- the overall effect would be degradation of information with selection unable to keep up.
Note that in the above "Encarta" example the biologist "selector" could not simply select benefical mutations in each disk and then dismiss the harmful ones, since he could not select directly for mutations but must accept or reject the entire flopy disks in each generation. Likewise natural selection can only select whole organisms, and deleterious change (especially with "random" mutation) can easily overpower even perfect selection.
Many internet evolutionists however minimise deleterious change with a simple handwave like:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/87640/1461219/post.ashx#1461219
"The fact that these mutations are usually harmful is not at all relevant. If one mutation in a million, or even a billion, was only 1% beneficial, that would be enough fuel to roll the evolutionary machine along. The harmful mutations would simply die and be gone."
-
serotonin_wraith
Now this is interesting Auldsoul. You can accept a dog-like animal evolved into the modern horse when presented with different transitional fossils in the correct order, yet you won't accept pakitecus evolved into the modern whale, when presented with different transitional fossils in the correct order. Please explain the animals that look half pakitecus, half modern whale. Please don't tell me this is your position...!
Are you saying all these animals leading to whales were really seperately designed? It's just a coincidence that the ones with long legs on land went extinct before the ones with legs half that size, who went extinct before the whales with only small parts of legs (funny design there, a useless leg bone), who went extinct before modern whales, who were really around at the same time as all these other animals, even though there's no proof in the fossil record of this?
Consider the tiktaalik. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/060501_tiktaalik
Technically it was a fish, so can you explain how it also happened to have features found in amphibians, and it can be dated to the time between fishes and the earliest amphibians we've found?
Tiktaalik had fins with thin ray bones, scales, and gills like most fish; however, it also had the sturdy wrist bones, neck, shoulders, and thick ribs of a four-legged vertebrate.
You made a mistake earlier too. I almost missed it. You wrote:
The cichlid fish did not become largemouth bass or rainbow trout or sharks
Quite right. Evolution says nothing of the kind. Modern animals do not evolve into other modern animals. It would be like someone giving birth to their cousin. That's right, all animals alive today are distant cousins of each other. How can you knock evolution when you don't even know what it teaches?
Here's another transitional fossil for you. Archaeopteryx.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx
Despite its small size, broad wings, and ability to fly, Archaeopteryx has more in common with small
theropod dinosaurs than it does with modern birds . In particular, it shares the following features with the deinonychosaurs ( dromaeosaurs and troodontids ): jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest homeothermy ), and various skeletal features.The features above make Archaeopteryx the first clear candidate for a
transitional fossil between dinosaurs and birds. [1][2][3] Thus, Archaeopteryx plays an important role not only in the study of the origin of birds but in the study of dinosaurs.That's what wiki (and many other sites) have to say about it. What do you make of it? Is it 'just a bird'? 'Just a dinosaur'? Looks half dinosaur, half modern bird to me. It's been dated to the correct time too - between theropod dinosaurs and more modern looking bird fossils. How do you explain that? Well you wanted proof from the fossil record. There's plenty more where that came from, but I'd like to see what you make of the ones here first.
-
serotonin_wraith
Hooberus,
My comments referred specifically to the false claim in the film that you linkerd to that: "after years of rejecting these simple steps of natural selection some creationist preachers are now embracing them"
The comment from me you underlined wasn't talking about that. To be honest, I don't have the time to go through every piece of creationist literature over the past however many years to see if they believed in natural selection before a certain date. I really don't know. They either did or they didn't. It doesn't change natural selection. If you have a problem with that statement, I suggest you take it up with the maker of the video. For the sake or argument, let's call it a mistake, even a lie! Are you clinging on to that to refuse to look at what the rest of the video has to show? If creationists accept it too now, what's the problem?
For example there is the significant issue of the direction of change
Evolution is blind. What direction of change are you talking about?
Evolutionary naturalsim would have required a massive increaese in genetic informational content over this time (in order to get a bacteriologist from bacteria).
Small steps...
SW: Hey hoob, I'm 5 miles from where I was this morning.
Hoob: What?! That's a massive distance! It's impossible! On foot?!
SW: Yes. One step at a time. Add those small steps up, and voila, 5 miles!
Hoob: I refuse to believe! 5 miles is too much!
Quite silly.
Mutations are not always harmful at all. How about an insect which is born with a slightly bigger wing than others? Slightly more chance of survival, means more chance of producing offspring, means more chance of the 'bigger wing' gene being passed on. How about a mutation that gives 1% (or even less, let's say 0.05%) of a species of butterfly immunity from a disease. It goes unnoticed until the disease strikes, wiping out all the butterflies except the 0.05%. Who's left to repopulate the species? Yep, the 0.05%. When the numbers go back to normal levels, what's changed? Well now that random mutation has been passed on to them all, and they all have the immunity.
Most of the time, things don't work out, and this is why 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Just what we'd expect.
As for no increase in genetic information, how come people are born with extra thumbs, etc? Isn't that extra genetic information being added?
Genes duplicate, and here are over 5000 examples.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
Search for 'gene duplication'.
-
Galileo
Wow! This thread just won't die! I just want to make a small point about the "random" aspect of evolution; that is: mutations are random, natural selction is not. Natural selection is the mechanism by which advantageous mutations are passed on and disadvantageous ones are not, from amongst all of the random mutations that occur. This is a large part of what Darwin discovered.
-
TopHat
I believe Dawkins to be a complete idiot. Sorry, for all of you Dawkin worshipers.