Evolution is a Fact #15 - Robinson Crusoe

by cofty 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  Answer the question.
  
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  hooberus

  How did Hawaii end up with 60 endemic species of honeycreepers? It is impossible to explain without evolution/speciation.

  The problem is that “evolution” is a word that has many definitions. Some are compatible with creationism and some aren’t. On your “Evolution is a Fact” series your are referring to evolution as contrasted with creationism. Even here specifically you claim that the situation of honeycreepers is a “impossible dilemma for creationism”

  Since you claim to be well read on creationism you should know that creationists accept what is often called speciation in their models. So (since you demand others answer questions) what is the “impossible dilemma” for creationism?
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  cofty

  Well done. If you accept adaptive radiation you are an 'evolutionist'.

  Praise Darwin!
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  cofty

  Here is another example of adaptive radiation from the southern hemisphere. Just like the honeycreepers who descended from a common ancestor who made it to Hawaii, all marsupials descended from a common ancestor who landed in Australasia and South America having become isolated following the breakup of Gondwana 200 million years ago.

  
  
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  hooberus

  So your # 15 thread really involves either:

  1.) Knocking down a straw man (ie. that creationists don’t believe in migration or that creationists believe that every single animal population called a species today was directly created by God), or

  2.) Definitional equivocation by defining “evolution” in one narrow way (what is called speciation which is compatible with creationism), and then turning around and using it as support for Evolution defined in another much more broad way (ie. a total naturalistic version of history-which is not compatible with creationism).

  Both of these tactics are fallacies.
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  cofty

  Hooby - Migration isn't the issue.

  This thread - one of a series of forty that provide evidence for evolution - discusses the very unusual distribution of species on islands; specifically oceanic islands.

  What we find is that the first animals to arrive do spectacularly well do to a lack of competition, leading over millions of years to a radiation of species. Sometimes in the case of honeycreepers to dozens of separate species. Frequently these island species are found nowhere else on earth but are similar to species in the nearest mainland.

  This is a remarkable example of evolution. If you accept this reality then you already accept the same mechanisms of unguided evolution by natural selection that accounts for all species of animal and plant life on earth.

  Another sort of island is continental islands that bean as a chunk of a larger land mass - oceanic islands appeared out of the ocean through volcanic activity.

  A classic example of continental islands is Australia and New Zealand that began as part of Gondwana which broke away from Pangea about 250 million years ago. When this happened the ancestors of placental mammals went off on one direction and the ancestors of marsupials went the other.

  Today we find 223 species of marsupial in Australia.

  During the Late Cretaceous Period South America and Australia were joined to either end of Antarctica to form what was left of Gondwana which began to unzip in the Triassic.

  This leads to a testable prediction. If evolution is true then it ought to be possible to find fossils of marsupials with the correct antiquity in Antarctica.
  

  In his book ''Cold,'' published in 1931 Dr. Lawrence M.Gould wrote ''I had rather go back to the Antarctic and find a fossil marsupial than three gold mines.''

  Guess what?

  In 1982 an expedition funded by the National Science Foundation found fossils of more than a dozen species of marsupial on Seymour Island right on the ice-free corridor between South America and Antarctica. The fossils were dated to between 35 and 40 million years ago and were similar to those found in South America at the same time.

  Evolution is testable science.

  Since you accept the adaptive radiation that gave us the forty species of honeycreepers on Hawaii there is no difference to accepting the common ancestry of the 223 species of marsupial in Australia - or all the mammals that inhabit the rest of the world.

  Congratulations - you are an 'evolutionist'! Let me have your address and I will send you your club badge.