I found THIS INFORMATION fascinating. But, then, I still do have my appendix.Why would God have made a body with a "worthless evolutionary artifact," anyway? :-) (more apologetics...I love this stuff)
GeeeeeeZ
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 510 Newer› Newest»Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.Human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, p. 254
"The scientific evidences I have presented here are all facts observed in the natural world by professionally trained observers."
Again you are not thinking. Yes they are facts observed by scientists, so what?
Again you’re not making sense. Go back to the context, Faith. You were questioning the validity of the evidences.
The facts need to be explained and their explanation is wrong.
Try to think what you are saying. A flat declaration that the scientists are wrong doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this world coming, as it does, from a creationist crusader who devotes her energy to combating evolution as a challenge to her religious faith. No matter how righteous you see yourself.
"It's the standard defense of creationists to resolutely claim that all observed support for evolution is evidence for microevolution only and often to claim as well that scientific dating methods of dating are faulty."
But for heaven's sake it's OBVIOUS that's what it is, evidence for microevolution. They are all finches, they are all fruit flies, nothing beyond what creationists would expect. You DO NOT HAVE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION in these facts.
It’s obvious you want to remake science to suit you by self-righteously shouting down the opposition. The Darwin finches on the Galapagos Archipelago are different species. So are the fruit flies. They are direct evidence for speciation. I can already hear you shouting across cyberspace now.(Cyberspace does not exist, since God would have created it on the sixth day, at the latest.)
And dating hasn't entered into this discussion.
Implicitly or explicitly, dating is an important issue in these discussions.
It's hard enough getting you to focus on one obvious element of the dispute without bringing in other elements.
It’s hard enough to get you to understand what science is and what it is intended to do and the function of scientific theories, and the importance of modern science in public education. All of these things must be understood and focused on in the creationism/science debate as a whole.
You are a despicable devious arguer. I do NOT appeal to the supernatural in my arguments, you constantly mischaracterize what I write.
I do not know what has struck a nerve here, since you don’t quote it. If you do NOT appeal to the supernatural, you are leaving something essential out of your representation of the creationist position. Most creationist crusaders believe every species of living organism was designed by God perfect and immutable.
"In allopatric speciation, geographically isolated populations diverge to the point where individuals of the different populations cannot interbreed, and thus new species are formed."
I'm sorry but inability to interbreed is an artificial definition of a "new species" made up by evolutionists. Even some dogs can't interbreed with other dogs. Either the morphology or the behavioral cues are off, thanks to the genetic extremes involved, but they are still dogs, and as I've been saying, they have FEWER genetic potentials for further "evolution" as well, a point you have been ignoring in favor of your irrelevant mischaracterizations.
I’m sorry that you feel it necessary to invoke a supposed parallel with artificial breeding to discredit the phenomena observed in the natural world.
Continued
The biblical "kind" implies reproductive separateness. On the Ark, the purpose of gathering different kinds was to preserve them for later reproduction. So, species, by biblical definition, is the level at which animals are reproductively distinct.
I am aware of the difference between volcanic islands and continental plate islands. You were talking about volcanic islands. These are caused by the movement of the tectonic plates or they are themselves the force that moves them or both. Volcanoes occur in the line where the plates split or meet, but make islands especially in the Pacific.
Mid-ocean volcanic islands are created by volcanic eruptions from the sea floor. Unlike the continental islands, they have no connection to the dry mainland.
Again, the continents split where the volcanoes form. They are independent of the continents. I was very clear about this. They are not "in association with" or attached to the continents, they are a force connected with their separation. Whatever animal life existed along the split would not have had a long distance to go to the new volcanic islands for many years before the distance widened beyond their reach, and not many species would cross either. This is a reasonable explanation for what actually exists.
You misread me. However, the above is your mere speculation that is not plausible given the relative impoverishment of the flora and fauna on the islands discussed. If animals and plants did not have “a long distance to go to the new volcanic islands for many years” there would be little observable difference between the life forms on oceanic islands and on continental islands, offshore or in rivers. But that is contrary to fact.
I do ignore your dating schemes, of course because they belong to the false paradigm.
It’s not my dating schemes; it’s the dating techniques scientists regularly use to date fossils and archaeological artifacts. Only young-earthers utterly reject them. Some folks also believe the Apollo moon landings were faked. If God had wanted any of us to walk on the moon or go to Mars, don’t you think we would have been born in space suits with rockets included?
What is the false paradigm? That we can use natural processes to tell us the age of things? Some creationists believe it, and some do not. General public acceptance that fossils are the remains of once-living organisms did not come until the turn of the nineteenth century. Do you accept that view of fossils?
The supercontinent would have broken up at the time of the worldwide flood, which was a natural, not a supernatural, event, whose consequences are visible all over this earth.
If the supercontinent had broken up in the last several thousand years (you said like 4000 years ago), there would be some historical record of that. But not even the Bible has any account of it.
The early theorists about the flood had false ideas about what sort of effects they'd expect to see. Nobody was expecting the truly worldwide effects it actually did create. They were looking for "evidence" in deep layers of the earth instead of at ALL the layers visible to the naked eye which ARE what we should expect from the flood.
The naked eye can only see the topmost layer if layers are positioned on top of one another.
Price was quite right that there is no evidence for any fossils being older than any others and that the dating techniques used to make that claim are all circular and self-confirmatory. Which OUGHT to be obvious to anybody who actually READS the evolutionist garbage.
Continued
It is difficult for the non-scientist to acquire the sophisticated languages and patterns of scientific thought without firm guidance from a fully qualified teacher. The learning process cannot be speeded up by teaching scientific facts and theories by rote, to be memorized in bulk as one might the vocabulary of a foreign language, or the map of some distant country. It is not merely that indoctrination, in the authoritarian tradition of theological or ideological education is antipathetic to the criticism and skepticism that are essential to the research profession. It is that scientific concepts can only become real by practical use.
But I'm not aware that he made note of the layering and sorting of the fossils as evidence for the flood, which is the best positive evidence for the flood.
From the creationist point of view, the best evidence for the Flood should be that God ordered it and it was so, as told in the Bible. From rational points of view, the idea of a global flood for which there is no scientifically convincing evidence is preposterous.
Not to mention the problems of the Ark. Bringing all the kinds of animals together in the vicinity of Noah’s ark presents significant problems. Could animals have traveled from elsewhere? If the animals traveled from other parts of the world, many of them would have faced extreme difficulties. Some, like koalas and many insects, require a special diet. How did they bring it along? Some, like koalas and many insects, require a special diet. How did they bring it along? Could animals have all lived near Noah? Some creationists suggest that the animals need not have traveled far to reach the Ark; a moderate climate could have made it possible for all of them to live nearby all along. However, this proposal makes matters even worse. In the case of island species, but for almost all species., competition between species would have driven most of them to extinction. The creationists who propose all the species living together in a uniform climate are effectively proposing the destruction of all environments but one. Not many species could have survived that.
"The diversity of living organisms, a major theme in biology, is not explained, as you suppose, by various selection events."
Go read a few evolutionist sites where they make it plain that such events, plus mutation, do explain diversity.
That is probably not true of sites written by professional scientists. You have misread them with a creationist slant that vilifies them as dogma.
"Creationists insist that selection processes explain microevolution, that is diversity below the species level."
Uh huh, and that is true.
Ummmm, yes, I know.
You were trying to make these into macroevolution, that are really only microevolution, OBVIOUSLY.
Uh, uh, they are microevolution by the creationist definition of the term, i.e., all evolution is microevolution, by creationist decree.
"The origin of the diversity of species and the origin of taxa above the species level, however, are something else, another matter."
I'm glad you acknowledge this fact, since you seemed to be arguing that the diversity of finches and fruit flies WERE evidence for species and taxa above the species level.
They are evidence for speciation in geographic isolation, not for development of taxa above the species level.
But they are of course "something else, another matter" as you sa.
Taxa above the species level is something else, matter for another argument.
"Either an ancestral species evolved into a number of descendent species (the scientific view), or a supernatural designer created each of the species extant in the world (the religious view)."
Yes, this is true. God either created them all at one time as is reported in the Bible or they evolved from the primordial goo.
Continued
In a realistic perspective, the Bible account is a narrative recounting purported events at the beginning of the universe, neither a news report, nor a scientific paper. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, all living species descended from a common ancestral species; “primordial goo” is your creation.
There is no evidence for EITHER of these theories as I've said over and over,
There is no demonstrable empirical evidence for the assumption of a god intervening in nature. Hence it is a reasonable assumption that nature is explicable solely in terms of natural processes.
there are only more and less plausible explanations of it that cannot be proved empirically.
Rationally speaking, explanations of natural phenomena that throw out Occam’s razor are less plausible. That is to say, an explanation that can account for what happened is more plausible when it does not rely for acceptance on an observed miracle from God.
This is of course an oversimplification since evolutionism can be shown to rest on much faulty reasoning, for instance the circular self-confirmatory reasoning identified by Price as the evolutionist way of proving some fossils older than others.
Creationist claims of circular reasoning suggest their own circular reasoning: God created all life, they posit----can anyone doubt this? God is Absolute Truth----therefore, that God created all life is incontestable.
"You indicate that you want neither one taught in science classes, thus leaving a major scientific problem without an answer, as if none exists."
None exists, that's a fact.
No, that’s not true. A widely recognized scientific answer does exist. It’s only true that no answer exists that you would sanction for teaching in science classes.
There is nothing but the imaginative castle-building of evolutionists backed by law, not science. Creationists do have God's word for what actually happened and this is a lot more than evolutionists have, who have to make it all up from scratch, and a bad job of it they do too. But as far as actual evidence beyond the Bible goes, creationists are also only able to speculate, again because that is the nature of the problem of origins.
It’s not just any law that backs the teaching of evolution as science: It’s the U.S. Constitution, our most fundamental law. While creationists have only their Bible, which they read as a scientific account, scientists build their rational theories on observable data, not scratch. If new data doesn’t fit their scientific theory, the theory will be modified or replaced with a better theory. When creationists speculate on new data, it is only to determine how to reshape the data to make them consistent with the biblical story. This is the case, no matter whether the data pertains to the origin of species, the origin of the cosmos, or the origin of matter.
But also again, the clues from the Bible produce a far more plausible theory, while evolutionists are faulty thinkers. The ridiculous logic employed in defense of their fantasy is truly laughable. Too bad you don't read well enough to recognize this blatant problem.
Too bad your Christian commitment does not allow you to recognize the larger-than-life smugness that consumes you, leading you to effortlessly thrust aside with no doubts whatsoever the contributions of many great scientific thinkers. I have encountered this extreme mind-set before. In other creationists.
As yesterday’s Phillip E. Johnson quote illustrated, the truth is the creationist movement is not really about science, but about religion, politics, and culture.
Concluded
OLD STYLE PHILOSOPHY BEFORE EMPIRICAL SCIENCE CAME ALONG DID SPECULATE ABOUT ALL THE MATERIAL THAT BECAME THE SCIENCES, and evolution is still in that category because of the simple fact that it remains theory without a shred of proof. It's all speculation. You really ought to read some of it some time.
You seem to have a penchant, Faith, for making baseless assumptions. I have read some of it.
As I noted previously, in the earliest philosophy, evolution was included (in the time of Anaximander) because it then had no methodology for validating its conclusions. Today it does, and consequently is not pertinent in modern philosophy, which is what I have said before.
Faced with the facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely on distortion and innuendo to buttress their strident claims. Creationism belongs in theology, but it seeks to gain greater credibility in U.S. culture by seizing the imprimatur of science by means of furious attacks on evolution and its proponents. Creationists crave to achieve equality in the public schools with evolution as a step to attaining dominance in public education.
In Kansas, where the creation/evolution culture war is hardest fought, a popular T-shirt among conservatives says “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm” under a picture of Charles Darwin.
Children should be taught that estimates of the age of the Earth are based on what we know of radioactive half-life decay and insterstellar distances calculated by [using] the speed of light.
So, beamish, the conclusions of science should be respected regarding the age of the earth. And what of life? Should we teach that life on earth began 6000 years ago or 3.5 billion years ago? Did God create the universe and each of the species on earth, or should we teach in science class that these questions can be answered by science in terms of natural processes?
Your theology of evolution,
Tell me, beamish, should Darwin's book be placed in hotel rooms alongside the Bible?
if taught at all, should be in an anthropology / sociology / comparative religion class alongside the recounting of other pre-scientific cosmogonic myths.
Should this be an elective or required course? Should any distinction be made between the scientific theory of evolution and pre-scientific creation myths like the one in Genesis? If not, undermining the integrity of science, and encouraging contempt for it, is inevitable since evolution is a major achievement of modern science that has been consequential in biology and medicine, as well as many other fields.
Focus on the question at hand, PsiBond. You ridiculously believe it is possible to trace your geneology [sic] to a fish. Why?
Focus on this: No, I don't believe it's possible to trace one's genealogy as far back as that; no birth certificates can be produced for individuals without screen names or good Christian names.
All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle we cannot observe processes that operated in the past. We must infer them from results that still surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human history, strata and topography for geology.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome .Human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, p. 254
Yes, psi bond, SJG used to say stuff like that. He wrote books and articles of the most entertainingly imaginative sort. I enjoyed his writing back before I was a Christian. He was the king of evolutionist castle-building. Lots of flat-out assertion built on little evidence, whole books' worth.
But surely even you can see the logical fallacy in this paragraph if you set your mind to it. No? Oh TRY.
Oh that's all right. I know it would hurt your pride to recognize you are wrong. But maybe sometime after this discussion is past you might, in the privacy of your home, give it a thought?
"The Darwin finches on the Galapagos Archipelago are different species. So are the fruit flies. They are direct evidence for speciation."
It's a terminological trick, psi bond, nothing more, and the evolutionists have deceived themselves by this trick. If you want to call them "species" and the event "speciation" I can play it that way too. What you call "speciation" only occurs by reducing genetic potential, exactly as happens in domestic breeding. At the extremes, when you have a truly striking new phenotype, you will also have strikingly reduced genetic potential. You will have fewer ways for the offspring to modify. Such as in the case of the cheetah where there are no genetic options for some large number of loci, only fixed characteristics. This is a dead end evolutionarily speaking. This fact demonstrates that evolution is genetically impossible. You can ONLY "speciate" out to such genetic dead ends, soemtimes by increment and increment, or sometimes in one fell swoop through a genetic bottleneck. Consider the chipmunk.
It occupies an area in the Sierra Nevadas (I might have the mountains wrong) where it has undergone a series of "speciation" events. I believe this is called a Ring Species or something like that. Sorry, I'm rusty, not having engaged in such heavy debate on this subject for some time. Anyway, from the original population some migrated to new territory, and as a result developed new characteristics. Standard effect of isolation or any form of selection which isolation really is, though evolutionists sometimes name things in a way to obscure the obvious. Because of these new characteristics and perhaps also because the two populations no longer interbreed (whether from distance or new allegiances I'm sorry I don't know), this new population is considered to be a new "species." OK, I won't quibble over the term for now, although it makes fools of evolutionists that they insist on it. So you have this new "species."
YOU ALSO HAVE LESS ABILITY FOR THAT SPECIES TO "EVOLVE" BECAUSE IN ORDER FOR SPECIATION TO OCCUR YOU MUST SELECT OR ISOLATE A PORTION OF THE GENE POOL AND LEAVE OTHER PORTIONS BEHIND. That's the only way you get change in populations, as I've many times said before.
However, these are hardy little chipmunks and when the new population gets a little too large for the territory another scouting party breaks off and migrates to a new area, taking with them another portion of the gene pool and leaving behind a portion, probably the larger. AND, true to the laws of genetics this new group as it settles into its new territory interbreeds and new characteristics emerge and now we have an entirely new "species" of chipmunk. Again, this can only occur because of the reduced genetic potentials caused by eliminating some of the genes that dominated back in the old homestead.
So now we have three "species" of chipmunk. They have different kinds of striping, perhaps, different size and shape of ears or tails perhaps, who knows, something that sets them apart from each other.
And as this routine continues and small portions split off from the mother group to found new territory new "species" again emerge. These groups or species eventually form a ring around the mountains as they've established separate territories, hence the name "ring species."
The same has occurred with salamanders in a similar series of migrations to new territory.
You delude yourself if you call this Evolution. And yes, all the scientists so delude themselves. They are so caught up in their Theory they ignore simple genetics. You don't get variations or species without a reduction in the genetic complement. And if you have a reduction there, you also have a reduction in the ability for further scouting parties to speciate. If you have a reduction in the ability to speciate, you have the built-in end of the processes of evolution that spell Finis to the theory.
"Most creationist crusaders believe every species of living organism was designed by God perfect and immutable."
I readily admit that I don't follow most creationist reasoning and some of it is not very convincing to me. I have my own arguments I find convincing.
Obviously change occurs, species aren't immutable. But the change is limited by the genetic factors I've previously discussed. God created Kinds that cannot become other Kinds, but they can vary a great deal in many characteristics. There can be larger or smaller varieties, different coloring and marking in many cases, differences in many features that set them apart, but they are still the same Kind.
And Natural Selection is one name for the processes that bring this about. They are all basically selection processes although "survival of the fittest" is only the driving force in a few of the cases. Simple migration of a portion of the gene pool into new territory will do the trick. It's a random selection but it IS a selection and it does produce new characteristics while also reducing the genetic potential for further change -- at least at the end point of the processes of selection where the gene loci have become fixed and have no options.
Domestic breeders have known this for millennia. And Darwin himself took domestic breeding as his model.
You may find this argument at some creationist sites, but it's not often emphasized. I've found it to be the most convincing myself so I focus on it.
Faith said: "I am aware of the difference between volcanic islands and continental plate islands. You were talking about volcanic islands. These are caused by the movement of the tectonic plates or they are themselves the force that moves them or both. Volcanoes occur in the line where the plates split or meet, but make islands especially in the Pacific."
psi bond said: "Mid-ocean volcanic islands are created by volcanic eruptions from the sea floor. Unlike the continental islands, they have no connection to the dry mainland."
That is correct. Perhaps I failed to make myself clear. They are now a great distance from the mainland, but at one point they were a shorter distance, and in fact if the notion of a single supercontinent is correct (and I believe it) at one point there was no distance at all. Clearly the volcanic action began in the split when it occurred -- or caused it to occur, beneath the continent. Ocean water would have soon filled the gap and there would not have been much distance at all between the separating parts of the original continent for some time.
I tried to say that here: "Again, the continents split where the volcanoes form. They are independent of the continents. I was very clear about this. They are not "in association with" or attached to the continents, they are a force connected with their separation. Whatever animal life existed along the split would not have had a long distance to go to the new volcanic islands for many years before the distance widened beyond their reach, and not many species would cross either. This is a reasonable explanation for what actually exists."
psi bond answered: "You misread me. However, the above is your mere speculation that is not plausible given the relative impoverishment of the flora and fauna on the islands discussed. If animals and plants did not have “a long distance to go to the new volcanic islands for many years” there would be little observable difference between the life forms on oceanic islands and on continental islands, offshore or in rivers. But that is contrary to fact."
I don't picture the new volcanic islands as very desirable places, merely more accessible at an early phase of the splitting continents than later. The life forms that found themselves there could have been driven there by the split itself even, having the choice of drowning or making a home there. Perhaps many died in the process, that would be understandable.
I also regard this as a side argument. The idea that some species could traverse the huge distances from the mainland that we now see just seems too outlandish, but if you believe in continental drift then you have a new way of understanding the situation.
In any case, however they got there, the laws of genetics still apply and they will of course have developed new characteristics from the mainland population they came from, WITH the concomitant reduction in genetic potential. They may retain enough genetic potential to produce a number of new "species" nevertheless, with different sized beaks perhaps, that adapt to different conditions on the island, but the ultimate trend is still a reduction in ability to evolve, out to the usual dead end should it proceed that far.
"It’s not my dating schemes; it’s the dating techniques scientists regularly use to date fossils and archaeological artifacts. Only young-earthers utterly reject them."
These methods are far from the predictable measurements you present here. It all started with dating fossils by guessed ages of rocks, and then dating rocks by their fossil contents, hardly a trustworthy method.
"Some folks also believe the Apollo moon landings were faked. If God had wanted any of us to walk on the moon or go to Mars, don’t you think we would have been born in space suits with rockets included?"
This is one of your typical distracting comments that have no relevance to the discussion at hand. I think I've made it clear that I use TWO revelations of the Bible as my starting point, the statement that God made living things after their own kind, and the story of the Flood. Period.
"What is the false paradigm? That we can use natural processes to tell us the age of things?"
Evolution is the false paradigm.
"Some creationists believe it, and some do not."
Yes, there is sometimes a large gap between us creationists in what we believe about these things. I do not agree with Beamish who accepts the old earth theory. And the reason I don't is that I believe Genesis makes it clear the earth is young. He finds long ages somewhere between the lines as some creationists do.
"General public acceptance that fossils are the remains of once-living organisms did not come until the turn of the nineteenth century. Do you accept that view of fossils?"
I'm aware that there have been many silly ideas about the fossils over the centuries, as well as silly ideas about their age and the ages of the rocks which still continue.
And if you have to ask if I accept the view that they are the remains of once-living things after everything I've argued here, you haven't been paying attention.
Faith said: "The supercontinent would have broken up at the time of the worldwide flood, which was a natural, not a supernatural, event, whose consequences are visible all over this earth."
psi bond answered: "If the supercontinent had broken up in the last several thousand years (you said like 4000 years ago), there would be some historical record of that. But not even the Bible has any account of it."
There is no reason there should be an account of it. Only Noah and his little family were living at the time of the Flood (about 4500 years ago) and not near where the continents split.
There is an obscure reference in the Bible to something concerning a splitting of the land that could refer to this (and I can't find it right now) but it would place the split some time after the Flood and that's an entirely different theory I haven't tried to follow up. At that time more people would have been living but those who could have experienced such an event would have been very primitive people along the western European coasts -- if any had managed to migrate to that point by that time.
Not sure their lore would have reached the Bible writers -- or down to us. Perhaps they arrived there some time after the split but could still see the eastern coast of the Americas for a while. I like to think about these things but I don't really know much about this particular theory.
Faith said: "The early theorists about the flood had false ideas about what sort of effects they'd expect to see. Nobody was expecting the truly worldwide effects it actually did create. They were looking for "evidence" in deep layers of the earth instead of at ALL the layers visible to the naked eye which ARE what we should expect from the flood."
psi bond: "The naked eye can only see the topmost layer if layers are positioned on top of one another."
True, they'd have to see the layers exposed somewhere, and although they are exposed in many places in the earth I don't know when they were able to take them into account. Do you? The layerings in Europe are less visible than in the Americas or Asia for instance, although there are dramatically folded layered rocks to be found in the British Isles. In any case by the 19th century they were certainly aware of the layering, and the fact that different fossils are found in different layers.
But you are right, it could partly have been the lack of knowledge of the depth of the layering that prevented them from coming up with reasonable ideas about what the Flood would have done. There were very silly ideas about the Flood just as there were about the fossils. Too bad those were given up but no progress has been made nevertheless.
There is really no excuse now as the strata are known world wide. The only reason they can't see it any more is that they are blinded by their theory of evolution which has turned those layers into time periods.
"Not to mention the problems of the Ark. Bringing all the kinds of animals together in the vicinity of Noah’s ark presents significant problems. Could animals have traveled from elsewhere? If the animals traveled from other parts of the world, many of them would have faced extreme difficulties. Some, like koalas and many insects, require a special diet. How did they bring it along? Some, like koalas and many insects, require a special diet. How did they bring it along? Could animals have all lived near Noah? Some creationists suggest that the animals need not have traveled far to reach the Ark; a moderate climate could have made it possible for all of them to live nearby all along. However, this proposal makes matters even worse. In the case of island species, but for almost all species., competition between species would have driven most of them to extinction. The creationists who propose all the species living together in a uniform climate are effectively proposing the destruction of all environments but one. Not many species could have survived that."
Many of what you call "species," which we call variations of the Kind, simply did not exist at the time. However, I believe the idea that they were all living in a uniform climate is the right explanation. I also believe this was the supercontinent. There were no volcanic or even other islands at the time, only the supercontinent with uniform climate.
And again, the species were not yet speciated into the types we find today. Check the fossil record. There aren't many of our modern type of anything represented there, are there? Just as from Noah had to come all the different races we now see on earth, so from the representatives of the kinds he took onto the ark have come all the variations of modern animals with their many specialized adaptations.
If Occam's razor dispenses with even the possibility that God is real and the Bible His word, it's going to be interesting to see what God has to say about that on Judgment Day.
As for smugness, Elijah sounded pretty smug taunting the priests of Baal too.
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.Human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, p. 254
Well, Anaximanderianism is a theology. It is also a primitive pre-scientific belief claim professed by idiots. Primitive per-scientific beliefs professed by idiots and theologies are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing enlightenment. Pre-scientific belief claims are the world's fallacies. Fallacies do not go away while theologians debate rival theologies to incorporate them. Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" theology of a tyranosaurus rex laying an egg and a bird hatching from it was replaced by Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" theology of populations of dinosaurs laying eggs that hatched birds from them, but the fallacious belief in chickens hatching from dinosaur eggs did not cease to be mockably ridiculous pending the outcome. Human beings formed inside the rotting flesh of beached fish, whether they did so by Anaximander's cosmogony or by some other, yet to be concocted example of circular reasoning." - Beamish
Faith, my mention of the little fish is more about leftwing MINDSET than anything to do with evolution.
YOu're arguing with a person who's in a group of Americans who think a fish is more important than people.
I see a connection, maybe you don't.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/268/story/723307.html
Z,
Every time you eat a fish, you're devouring the flesh of one of PsiBond's distant cousins (on his mother's side). Try to be a little more sympathetic. ;)
beamish: Well, Anaximanderianism is a theology. It is also a primitive pre-scientific belief claim professed by idiots.
Including a few Republican office holders. And many conservatives. Particularly the college-indoctrinated ones.
Evolution is not "Anaximanderianism;" your use of Orwellian verbiage notwithstanding. And evolution is not theology; it doesn't posit a god to explain everything we see in the world.
Human beings formed inside the rotting flesh of beached fish, whether they did so by Anaximander's cosmogony or by some other, yet to be concocted example of circular reasoning." - Beamish
A cosmogony is a theory of the origin of the universe, not the origin of species. They are different things, not rungs in a handy hierarchy of political gerrymandering, on which you can practice your circular reasoning. Alas, Dr. S. J. Gould has unhinged you utterly. Fundamentally. And it's not a pretty thing to see.
beamish: Well, Anaximanderianism is a theology. It is also a primitive pre-scientific belief claim professed by idiots.
Including a few Republican office holders. And many conservatives. Particularly the college-indoctrinated ones.
Evolution is not "Anaximanderianism;" your use of Orwellian verbiage notwithstanding. And evolution is not theology; it doesn't posit a god to explain everything we see in the world.
Human beings formed inside the rotting flesh of beached fish, whether they did so by Anaximander's cosmogony or by some other, yet to be concocted example of circular reasoning." - Beamish
A cosmogony is a theory of the origin of the universe, not the origin of species. They are different things, not rungs in a handy hierarchy of political gerrymandering, on which you can practice your circular reasoning. Alas, Dr. S. J. Gould has unhinged you utterly. Fundamentally. And it's not a pretty thing to see.
"The Darwin finches on the Galapagos Archipelago are different species. So are the fruit flies. They are direct evidence for speciation."
It's a terminological trick, psi bond, nothing more, and the evolutionists have deceived themselves by this trick. If you want to call them "species" and the event "speciation" I can play it that way too. What you call "speciation" only occurs by reducing genetic potential, exactly as happens in domestic breeding. At the extremes, when you have a truly striking new phenotype, you will also have strikingly reduced genetic potential. You will have fewer ways for the offspring to modify....
These are well-worn standard creationist talking points designed to suggest that change occurs but evolution is impossible, and that species are the mere result of a naming convention by scientists.
One of the most familiar facts of biology is the division of living forms into recognizably different species. Even the most casual observation of the birds in a North American town shows the presence of several species. Each species has its own distinctive body size and shape, plumage coloration, song, and feeding and nesting habits. Males and females of each species pair only with each other, and their offspring of course belong to the same species as their parents. Within a given geographical location, sexually reproducing plants and animals can nearly always readily be assigned to distinct groups (although careful observation sometimes reveals the existence of species with only very slight morphological differences). Different species that coexist in the same locality remain distinct because they do not interbreed. Most biologists regard this lack of interbreeding (reproductive isolation) as the best criterion for defining different species. The situation is more complex with organisms that do not reproduce regularly by sexual matings, such as many kinds of microbes (but we can defer that discussion until later).
Although, like the force of gravity, this division of organisms into discrete species is so familiar that we take it for granted, it is not an obviously necessary state of affairs. It is easy to imagine a world without such sharp differences; in the bird example, there could be creatures that combine the characteristics of, say, robins and thrushes in different proportions, and in which mating between a given pair of parents would yield offspring with widely different character combinations. If there were no barriers to interbreeding between different species, the diversity of life that we see in the world could not exist, and there would be something approaching a continuum of forms. In fact, when or one reason or another barriers to interbreeding between formerly separate species have broken down, such highly variable offspring are produced.
A fundamental problem for evolutionists is to explain how species come to be distinct, and why reproductive isolation exists. First, we must consider the ways in which closely related species are prevented from interbreeding. Sometimes, the main barrier is a simple difference in habitats or in the time of breeding of the species. In plants, for example, there is often a characteristic brief flowering time each year, and species with non-overlapping flowering times will unable to interbreed. In animals the use of different breeding sites may prevent individuals from different species from interbreeding with each other. Subtle features of organisms, which can only be discovered by detailed studies of the species’ natural history, often prevent individuals from different species from successfully mating with each other, even if they come together in the same place at the same time.
Continued
For example, there may be an unwillingness to court individuals of the other species, because they do not produce the right smell or sound, or their courtship displays may differ. Behavioral barriers to mating are obvious in many animals, and plants have chemical means of detecting pollen from the wrong species and rejecting it. Even if mating takes place, sperm from the wrong species may be unsuccessful in fertilizing the eggs of the female.
Some species are, however, sufficiently closely related that they will occasionally mate, especially if given no choice of a member of their own species (for example, dogs, coyotes, and jackals). In many such situations, however, the first-generation hybrids fail to develop. Experimental crosses between individuals belonging to different species often produce hybrids that die at an early stage of development, whereas most offspring of crosses between individuals of the same species develop to maturity. Sometimes hybrid individuals can survive, but at a much lower frequency than non-hybrids. Even when hybrids are viable, they are often sterile and do not produce any offspring which could pass genes on to future generations; mules (which are hybrids produced by crosses between donkeys and horses) are a famous example. Complete inviability or sterility of the hybrids obviously isolates the two species.
Although these different means of preventing interbreeding are familiar, it is puzzle ti understand how these means could evolve. This is the key to understanding the origin of species. As Darwin pointed out in Chapter 9 of The Origin of Species it is most unlikely that the inviability or infertility of interspecies hybrids could be the direct product of natural selection; there can be no advantage to an individual producing inviable or sterile offspring if hybridized with a different species. It would, of course, be advantageous to avoid mating with members of another species if the hybrid offspring are inviable or sterile, but it is difficult to see how there could be any such advantage in cases when the hybrids survive perfectly well. It therefore seems likely that most barriers to interbreeding are by-products of evolutionary changes that occurred after the populations became isolated from each other by being geographically or ecologically separated.
For example, imagine a species of Darwin’s finch living on one of the Galapagos islands. . Suppose that a small number of individuals manage to fly across to another island, previously unoccupied by this species, and manage to establish a new population. If such migration events are very rare, the new and the ancestral populations will evolve independently of each other. Under the processes of mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift, the genetic compositions of the two populations will diverge. These changes will be promoted by differences in the environment experienced by the populations, to which they become adapted. The time needed to produce sufficient differences is very variable. But once two populations have become completely isolated by one or more barriers to interbreeding, their evolutionary fates will forever be independent of one another, and they will tend to diverge over time. One important cause of such divergence is natural selection; closely related species differ in many structural and behavioral characteristics that adapt them to their different ways of life, as we have noted with the Galapagos finches. Sometimes, however, there are very few evident differences between related species. This is often the case with insects; for example, the Drosophila species D. simulans and D. mauritiana both have very similar bodily structure and differ externally only in the structure of the male genitalia. Nonetheless, they are true species, and are very reluctant to mate with each other.
Concluded
Similarly, it has recently been discovered that the common European pipistrelle bat is divided into two different species. They do not interbreed in nature and differ in their call as well as in their DNA sequences. Conversely, there are many examples of marked differences between populations of the same species, with no barriers to interbreeding. Given the erratic relationship between the time since the separation of a pair of species and their divergence in morphological characteristics , biologists are increasingly using information from the DNA sequences of different species to study relationships.
A recent study showed that the sequence divergence for 53 non-coding DNA sequences between humans and chimpanzees ranged between 0 and 2.6% of the total letters and averaged only 1.24% (1.62% for the human and gorilla). These estimates show why it is now accepted that chimpanzees, rather than gorillas, are our closest living relatives. The differences are greater if humans are compared with the orang-utan, and greater still if we are compared with baboons. More distantly related mammals, such as carnivores and rodents, differ at the sequence level much more thsn do different primates. Mammals differ much more from birds than they do from each other, and so on. The patterns of relationships required by sequence comparisons are in broad agreement with what is expected from the times at which the major groups of animals and plants appear in the fossil record, as expected in the theory of evolution.
Faith: If Occam's razor dispenses with even the possibility that God is real and the Bible His word, it's going to be interesting to see what God has to say about that on Judgment Day.
Occam's razor is a philosophical principle that is a touchstone in scientific theory making.. Look it up. A 14th century logician and Franciscan friar (William of Ockham) formulated it. One can apply the principle of Occam's razor and still believe in a god. William used the principle to justify many conclusions, including the statement that "God's existence cannot be deduced by reason alone," which didn't make him a favorite of the Pope.
What the god you believe in has to say on the hypothetical Judgment Day about which you constantly speculate is not a relevant consideration in its proper application in science.
Evolution is not "Anaximanderianism;" your use of Orwellian verbiage notwithstanding. And evolution is not theology; it doesn't posit a god to explain everything we see in the world.
The creeds you've developed from the gropings of ignorant Greeks does have a fierce sectarian split between those who believe that the Ancestral Fish was itself divine and those who believe that even that fish emerged from sea scum. Regardless of this weird debate among your fellow cult members, it is safe to say that most if not all adherents of your neo-Anaximanderian faith practice hokey fossil dances which claim to channel data from dead organisms. Indeed, it's a rare neo-Anaximanderian that would find blasphemy in the presenting of skull fragments from a dead ape and declaring the skull fragments "told" them from beyond the grave that an ape gave birth to humans.
A cosmogony is a theory of the origin of the universe, not the origin of species. They are different things, not rungs in a handy hierarchy of political gerrymandering, on which you can practice your circular reasoning. Alas, Dr. S. J. Gould has unhinged you utterly. Fundamentally. And it's not a pretty thing to see.
Puh-lease. I can shut down Gould's plagiarisms of Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" theology just as easily as I've shut you down this entire comment thread - by asking for evidence, ANY evidence that a species has ever given birth to a separate, different, new species, and nothing less.
I'm not interested in Gould's or your ritual of declaring evolution to be a phenomenon that has actually occured in reality, fondling some fossilized holy relics, and declaring evolution to be a phenomenon that has actually occured in reality.
I would advise you, PsiBond, to review what constitutes the logical fallacy known as "circular reasoning" so you can stop ignorantly clinging to your mystical doctrines that declare your ancestors were fish and accept the invitation to discuss science that Faith and I keep extending to you.
Show us evidence that any species has ever given birth to a seperate, different, new species, as your scientifically illiterate theology implies and asserts has occured.
Out of respect for the diversity of religious faiths among my fellow humans, I've chided Z's insensitive eating from the flesh of your alleged aquatic brethren. All of this despite the easy bridge from your belief in ancestors that were fish to the spectacle of progressive leftists marching for a master race of allegedly fish-spawned-people under labor activist Adolf Hitler to extinguish the allegedly rat-spawned-people that became Jews.
PsiBond, I respect your right to retain, practice, and profess your vapid religion of talking fossils and men being the children of fish, in so much that your stupidity does me no harm. But, I really would like you to set aside your nonsensical fish cult and participate in the science discussion here. I invite you. I implore you.
Do what Dawkins and Gould and every other of your co-religionists have failed to do in all of their apologetics for your primitive, scientifically baseless cult.
Just as I alluded to earlier in the thread, it's pointless to frame Colonel Mustard for the murder of Mr. Boddy in the Observatory with the candlestick if Mr. Boddy never existed.
It's pointless to confer scientific legitimacy to your sect's convoluted theological defenses of believing that fish became people if you can't show that fish became people, in one generation or many, if you can't show that any species gave birth to a separate, different, new species at any point, ever.
Now I know that your first impulse is going to be to comb my response for typing and / or spelling errors to parade, given the concretely defensible nature of my belief that leftists are generally unfit to survive an intellectual discussion.
But I'm asking you politely, once again and again once again, to set aside your militantly stupid religious beliefs and join our science discussion.
Today?
Please?
With sugar on top?
A recent study showed that the sequence divergence for 53 non-coding DNA sequences between humans and chimpanzees ranged between 0 and 2.6% of the total letters and averaged only 1.24% (1.62% for the human and gorilla). These estimates show why it is now accepted that chimpanzees, rather than gorillas, are our closest living relatives.
Well, shit. I guess OJ Simpson was framed after all. He should be looking for the "real killer" at the zoo, not the golf course.
You've completely ignored the central reason evolution cannot occur, the reduction of genetic diversity with each "speciation" event. There's no way to get you to address anything I've actually argued so there's no point in continuing.
Have a nice Labor Day.
Well ,I believe psi bond does have fish in his family tree, trust me.
A wide mouthed salmon or something.
Or maybe that little fish the leftwingers are trying to keep alive in the California Central Valley in the wake of THOUSANDS of jobs lost and, consequently, thousands of foreclosures. THE PSI BOND FAMILY MUST LIVE ON :-)
Well, beamish, you personally don't evolve. No matter what evidence is presented, you just hang in there mostly incoherently but endlessly recapitulating and recycling silly, wild, unsophisticated ravings.
Evolution is not a theology; it does not require an allegiance to Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Jainist, or any other religious dogma. In fact, many Christians, Jews, Hindus, Jains, and others have accepted evolution without renouncing their religious faith. But, undaunted, you assiduously propagate the anti-intellectual big lies that obsess you, hoping to emulate the success that the rightwing Adolf Hitler had for a time.
... it's a rare neo-Anaximanderian that would find blasphemy in the presenting of skull fragments from a dead ape and declaring the skull fragments "told" them from beyond the grave that an ape gave birth to humans.
It's true that creationists indeed find blasphemy in saying that humans had apelike ancestors, but I think it unconscionable to deny what unearthed evidence clearly indicates, whatever paradigms it buries.
Although Darwin steered clear of it in The Origin of Species in order to avoid predictable outrage from those who believed in man's divine origins, one classic, concrete example of "descent with modification" often cited by evolutionary biologists is the development of modern humans----Homo sapiens----from a long line of earlier hominids and ape-like ancestors. The chain of what appear to be transitional species is well documented in the fossil record. There was the small-brained Sahelanthropus tchadensis from 6 million years ago, with its combination of chimpanzee and human qualities. The powerful, bipedal Australopithecus afarensis lived 4 million years ago. The bigger-brained, toolmaking Homo habilis arose 2.4 million years ago; skull fossils suggest a brain capable of human speech. Homo erectus, master of fire, a species that first appeared 1.8 million yeas ago, and was still living 300,000 years ago, had a brain nearly as large as that of modern humans. Finally, archaic fossils of modern humans began to appear a half million years ago. They assumed more or less modern characteristics within the last 200,000 years, though more "robust" or apelike facial features and teeth are apparent in skeletal remains as recent as 10,000 years old----evidence of continuing evolution in the very recent past. It was once theorized that apes and humans diverged from a common ancestor as far back as 39 million years ago, but recent DNA analyses suggest that the ancestral parting of the ways happened no more than 10 million years ago, and possibly within the past 5 million years----a mere blink in the evolutionary history of the world, which stretches back 3 billion years or more.
But how can natural selection bring about such changes? How could tiny, random variations gradually transform an apish animal with no self-awareness, no ability to use fire or tools or to do anything more complicated than forage for fruit and grubs, into a thinking, sentient being capable of wielding a stone knife, painting murals on a cave wall, writing a sonnet, or creating a god who disdains those who think humans descended from apelike ancestors. It defies common ense, yet if Darwin is correct, that is exactly what happened.
Concluded
One important measure of these ancient hominids is their brain size, which can be deduced from their skulls. When considered as a proportion of overall body weight, brain size is a pretty good rough measure of any species' overall intelligence, based on what we know of the relative intelligence and brain size of living animals. (Bottle-nosed dolphins and humans have proportionally the largest brains and are among the most cognitively gifted of creatures; fish have proportionally minuscule brains and are considered, in general, the least intelligent vertebrates. In fish the proportion of brain weight to body weight is 1:5000. By comparison, the proportion is 1:180 for the average mammal and 1:50 for humans.) Over time, the different species of ancient hominids seem to have developed progressively larger brains in proportion to their size, and brain size seemed to correlate with both their increasing ability to use tools and fire, and their increasing resemblance to modern humans in stature and appearance.
Natural selection has a role because, while every species has an average brain size, the brain of each individual Homo habilis or Australopithecus would vary at random. This is apparent in modern humans; our brains can range in size from 1,200 to 1,600 cubic centimeters. A similar spread occurred in the ancient hominids, living in the wild, trying to survive in a difficult environment with hostile weather conditions, fierce predators, and periodically scarce food. If larger-brained hominids had an advantage in intelligence, enabling them to better use a rock as a tool or weapon, or to plan a better hunting strategy. or to succeed in a myriad of other ways in which being smarter poses an advantage, then natural selection would favor larger brained hominids over their smaller-brained relatives. The larger-brained hominids would survive and reproduce in greater numbers, and their qualities would be concentrated in subsequent generations with the pattern repeated across thousands and millions of years.
A recent study showed that the sequence divergence for 53 non-coding DNA sequences between humans and chimpanzees ranged between 0 and 2.6% of the total letters and averaged only 1.24% (1.62% for the human and gorilla). These estimates show why it is now accepted that chimpanzees, rather than gorillas, are our closest living relatives.
Well, shit. I guess OJ Simpson was framed after all. He should be looking for the "real killer" at the zoo, not the golf course.
Well, forsooth, it seems chimpanzees and gorillas fit the genetic mug-shots of our closest living relatives, but they are not as sophisticated as we humans, of every race; they can't wield a knife if their survival depended on it.
Ecclesiastes 9:11: I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Faith:You've completely ignored the central reason evolution cannot occur, the reduction of genetic diversity with each "speciation" event. There's no way to get you to address anything I've actually argued so there's no point in continuing.
Significant issues I've raised you have either dismissed with handwaving or completely ignored. However, if you carefully re-read what I wrote, Faith, you'll understand that I have addressed the reduction of genetic diversity issue. If you want to continue, I can elaborate further.
In any case, whatever you decide, thanks, it's been fun for me.
PsiBond,
It's true that creationists indeed find blasphemy in saying that humans had apelike ancestors, but I think it unconscionable to deny what unearthed evidence clearly indicates, whatever paradigms it buries.
What "unearthed evidence?"
I've demanded several times that you present evidence that any species gave birth to a seperate, different, new species. And instead of doing so, you resume your scientifically illiterate fossil necromancy.
You show me a fossilized ape skeleton, I see a fossilized ape skeleton. And you see an ancestor. Worse, you claim that this dead ape magically speaks to you from beyond the grave, "clearly indicating" that it was your ancestor in a family line (on your mother's side?) going all the way back to a fish.
I've already mocked your primitive religious squawking for the farce that it is.
Perhaps you, PsiBond, have no idea what science looks like. That would explain your failure to respond to repeated requests for you to abandon your neo-Anaximanderian ritual necromancy and join the science discussion here.
Given the leftist tendency to target and destroy any and all slanderous notions that leftists are actually capable of intellectual discourse, it is thoroughly unsurprising that you'd compound your adamant reaffirmations of your beloved petitio principii fallacies with a hackneyed attempt to excommunicate your fellow leftist co-religionist Adolf Hitler from your neo-Anaximanderian cult of animals giving birth to people. Even the original fascists of ancient Rome believed their city was built by the human children of a wolf. Historically, it is clear that leftists have been clinging to their circularly reasoned imbecilities for a long time.
I really do not wish to explore the numerous logical impossibilities inherent in the absurd concept of a leftist adding anything meaningful to an intellectual discussion. You've spent so much of this thread making undeniably idiotic statements that only the most obtuse of readers are going to conclude that you don't speak from the left side of the political spectrum.
No more politics. No more crazed fossil necromancy rituals and half-baked skull phrenologies.
This is a science discussion. Provide evidence that any species has ever given birth to a separate, different, new species.
A recent study showed that the sequence divergence for 53 non-coding DNA sequences between humans and chimpanzees ranged between 0 and 2.6% of the total letters and averaged only 1.24% (1.62% for the human and gorilla). These estimates show why it is now accepted that chimpanzees, rather than gorillas, are our closest living relatives.
Well, shit. I guess OJ Simpson was framed after all. He should be looking for the "real killer" at the zoo, not the golf course.
Well, forsooth, it seems chimpanzees and gorillas fit the genetic mug-shots of our closest living relatives, but they are not as sophisticated as we humans, of every race; they can't wield a knife if their survival depended on it.
While it is somewhat mitigating, at least, that your particular sect of the neo-Anaximanderian cult finally includes non-Xanthochroids among the "sophisticated" enough to drink from the Humans Only water fountains, you still retain the laughably psuedoscientific eugenicist memes that compel you against all rational basis to believe that you can breed a better knife wielder. What remains unclear is which pulp sci-fi comic book series you adopted this myth from. Surely you don't also believe a bite from a radioactive spider is all that separates you from joining the Übermensch? Seriously?
If you ever do decide to join the science discussion here and get around to presenting evidence that a species could give birth to a seperate, different, new species, then we can explore your theology of evolution's other articles of faith. I'd really like to hear what changes you would make to the DNA of chimpanzees to make them "sophisticated" enough to wield knifes and read teleprompters.
Apparently I missed your addressing the problem of the reduction of genetic diversity with speciation, and would like to know what you think you said on the subject, if you would be so kind as to repeat it. You are here again merely repeating the impossible belief that natural selection could bring about evolution although it is quite demonstrable that all forms of selection and isolation only lead to inbred inability to further evolve. So if you think you answered this please repeat. Thanks.
Faith, I know there is no answer that you can accept. Nonetheless:
Although a decrease in genetic diversity occurs in most isolated populations, it does not prevent the aforementioned development of barriers to interbreeding between species after the populations become separated geologically or ecologically. Given enough evolutionary divergence, complete reproductive isolation becomes almost inevitable. It is no more surprising than the fact that British electrical plugs do not function in Continental European sockets even though each type of plug functions perfectly in with its own sockets. In human-designed machines where compatibility is desirable, constant efforts must be made to preserve it. For example, in software for PC vs. Macintosh computers. Genetic analyses of interspecies crosses show that different species really do contain different sets of genes that are dysfunctional when brought together in hybrids.As already mentioned, the first-generation male hybrids between many species of animals are sterile, while the females are fertile. Crosses are then possible between fertile hybrid females and either of the parental species. By testing the fertility of the male offspring of such crosses, we can study the genetic basis of the hybrid male sterility. This kind of study has been intensively carried out using Drosophila species. The results show clearly that the hybrid sterility is produced by interactions between different genes from the two species. In the case of the mainland versus Bogota populations of D. pseudoobscura, for example, about 15 distinct genes which differ between the two populations seem to be involved in causing the sterility of hybrid males.
The time needed to produce sufficient differences between a pair of populations to make them incapable of interbreeding is very variable. In the Drosophila pseudoobscura example, 200.000 years (over a million generations) has produced only very incomplete isolation. In other cases, there is evidence of very rapid evolution of barriers to interbreeding, as in the case of fish species of the cichlid family in Lake Victoria. Here, there are over 500 species apparently derived from one ancestral species. Yet, geological evidence shows that the lake has existed for only 14,600 years. Isolation between these species seems to be largely due to behavioral traits and coloration differences, and there is only small differentiation between the species in their DNA sequences. It seems to have taken 1000 years on average for a new species of this group to be produced, but other groups of fishes in the same lake have not evolved new species at such a high rate. Typically, several tens of thousands of years seem to be needed for a new species to be formed. But, as I said before, once two populations have become completely isolated by one or more barriers to interbreeding, their evolutionary fates will forever be independent of one another, and they will tend to diverge over time.
The two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and genetic drift, which is a stochastic process. That is, if a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error. This process of random fluctuation produced by genetic drift continues generation after generation, with no force pushing the frequency back to its initial state because the population has no "genetic memory" of its state many generations ago.
Concluded
Each generation is an independent event. The final result of this random change in allele frequency is that the population eventually drifts to p=1 or p=0. After this point, no further change is possible; the population has become homozygous. A different population, isolated from the first, also undergoes this random genetic drift, but it may become homozygous for allele "A", whereas the other population has become homozygous for allele "a". As time goes on, isolated populations diverge from each other, each losing heterozygosity. The variation originally present within populations now appears as variation between populations. In a small population the effect of genetic drift could be rapid and significant. Time and chance which happeneth to all living things yields small populations in myriad ways. And these small populations may be unrepresentative of the original population.
It's true that creationists indeed find blasphemy in saying that humans had apelike ancestors, but I think it unconscionable to deny what unearthed evidence clearly indicates, whatever paradigms it buries.
What "unearthed evidence?"
The fossils of transitional species. The scientific findings that provide no evidence of God's purported role.
I've demanded several times that you present evidence that any species gave birth to a seperate, different, new species. And instead of doing so, you resume your scientifically illiterate fossil necromancy.
Scientifically literate people know that fossils are evidence of former life forms, as archaeological artifacts are evidence of an ancient human culture; one does not need to have seen ancient tools crafted to know they are man-made.
Instead of reading the evidence of transitional species, you hand wave it away and repeat yet again your silly rhetorical ploys.
You show me a fossilized ape skeleton, I see a fossilized ape skeleton. And you see an ancestor. Worse, you claim that this dead ape magically speaks to you from beyond the grave, "clearly indicating" that it was your ancestor in a family line (on your mother's side?) going all the way back to a fish..
The line of transition from bipedal apelike creatures to hominids speaks eloquently to anyone who is scientifically literate, though creationists are deaf to it all.
I've already mocked your primitive religious squawking for the farce that it is.
No, that's only what you like to believe you have done; actually, you've mocked your own primitive religious thinking for the farce that they are. People have mocked Lincoln, and have mocked Washington, but they endure, and so does evolution. Saul Alinsky's rules don't always work.
Perhaps you, PsiBond, have no idea what science looks like. That would explain your failure to respond to repeated requests for you to abandon your neo-Anaximanderian ritual necromancy and join the science discussion here
You show no indication that you understand that historical sciences are distinct from experimental sciences. Nor do you seem to understand that the basic activity of science is theory making to explain the empirical data. Nor that theory and fact are separate things, not rungs on a hierarchy of certainty, There is no ritual of worship or prayer, as in the world religions.
Given the leftist tendency to target and destroy any and all slanderous notions that leftists are actually capable of intellectual discourse, it is thoroughly unsurprising that you'd compound your adamant reaffirmations of your beloved petitio principii fallacies with a hackneyed attempt to excommunicate your fellow leftist co-religionist Adolf Hitler from your neo-Anaximanderian cult of animals giving birth to people. Even the original fascists of ancient Rome believed their city was built by the human children of a wolf. Historically, it is clear that leftists have been clinging to their circularly reasoned imbecilities for a long time
The right has a penchant for targeting and attempting to destroy whatever they perceive to threaten the familiar world they know. Science is considered such a threat, especially evolution, which they have unsuccessfully been trying to get expelled from the public schools for nearly a century so they can teach their religion-based notion of creation.
By the way, in Roman mythology, Rome was not founded by human children of a wolf. Romulus and Remus were the sons of the war god Mars and the daughter of a king. However, according to the myth, they were nursed by a woodpecker and a she-wolf. It should be taught alongside biblical myths.Your distortion of this story, beamish, is symptomatic of your need to garble everything you can to serve your extreme political purposes. Hysterically, you make it clear that you have no allegiance to reason and truth.
Concluded
I really do not wish to explore the numerous logical impossibilities inherent in the absurd concept of a leftist adding anything meaningful to an intellectual discussion. You've spent so much of this thread making undeniably idiotic statements that only the most obtuse of readers are going to conclude that you don't speak from the left side of the political spectrum.
When I speak about evolution I don't speak from the left side of the political spectrum. Evolutionary biology is apolitical. Both liberals and many conservatives accept it.
No more politics. No more crazed fossil necromancy rituals and half-baked skull phrenologies.
Then why do you keep interjecting references to leftists and the rightwng dictator Adolf Hitler?
Follow your own advice. This rant of yours is full of wild political assertions typical of the extreme right.
This is a science discussion.
No one can conclude that by reading your ravings here.
Provide evidence that any species has ever given birth to a separate, different, new species.
I have done so. It makes no sense to insist that the apelike and hominid ancestors of humans were created separately by a god. There is no empirical evidence for divine separate creation. Provide empirical evidence for that, beamish.
beamish, I think what you and other creationists dread most is a Planet of the Apes scenario. If we recognize chimpanzees and gorillas as our closest living relatives, liberals will want recognition for our cousins’ primate rights.
You may be on to something here.
- Spain, a nation long devoted to national socialism, recently extended legal rights to apes.
- Here in the United States, election judges from the Democratic Party regularly accept the ballots of household pets and farm animals (St. Louis, Missouri is infamous for this)
- The President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, recently traveled to Egypt to praise the allegedly scientific achievements of followers of Islam, a religion long noted for claiming Jews and Christians are the decendants of monkeys and pigs.
psi bond said: "Although a decrease in genetic diversity occurs in most isolated populations, it does not prevent the aforementioned development of barriers to interbreeding between species after the populations become separated geologically or ecologically. Given enough evolutionary divergence, complete reproductive isolation becomes almost inevitable."
Obviously this is a brand new argument from you, you never did try to address any of this before. However, all you have done is support my contention, quite nicely as a matter of fact.
The decrease in genetic diversity SHOULD lead rapidly to barriers to interbreeding, psi bond, this is no answer to what I’ve been saying, it’s a confirmation of it. I’ve already answered you that I consider inability to interbreed to be an artificial definition of evolution. What you really have is simply two (or more) populations of the same species now unable to interbreed, what you DO NOT have is anything remotely in the direction of evolution, because you have DECREASED genetic diversity as well as reproductive isolation. This is exactly what I’ve been describing as the end result of the processes that lead to speciation.
Speciation is NOT a step on your ladder to evolution, it is a dead end. You now have an isolated population that may be quite healthy and go on inbreeding, but unless there is still a strong genetic diversity within this isolated population you are not going to get any further speciation. And if you do get further speciation it’s just a matter of time before you can no longer ever get it again. End of processes of evolution. You’ve reached the natural barrier that defines the Kind.
All you’ve done is elaborate the genetic mechanisms in these processes that lead to reproductive isolation. That’s interesting in itself but it provides NO hope of further evolution out of the slough of genetic depletion. Genetic depletion is the hallmark of "speciation." It is also the end of any hope of further evolution.
"The two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and genetic drift, which is a stochastic process. That is, if a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error. This process of random fluctuation produced by genetic drift continues generation after generation, with no force pushing the frequency back to its initial state because the population has no "genetic memory" of its state many generations ago."
I’ve included genetic drift in my discussions of all the processes that lead to genetic depletion, though it appears you missed that. It ultimately leads to genetic depletion although much more slowly than processes such as natural selection or geographic isolation.
Continued.
What’s interesting in your answer is that not only do you focus on all the processes I’ve already discussed as leading to decrease in genetic diversity, without acknowledging that fact, and clearly without grasping my point, but you don’t mention mutation, which is the usual answer people give to my argument. As a matter of fact, although mutation doesn’t solve the problem, it’s the only "evolutionary process" that hypothetically COULD. All the others -- natural selection, isolation, migration, bottleneck, genetic drift etc etc -- decrease genetic diversity, but mutation hypothetically could increase it. It doesn’t, for a number of reasons, but it’s the only logical attempt at an answer to my argument.
"Each generation is an independent event. The final result of this random change in allele frequency is that the population eventually drifts to p=1 or p=0. After this point, no further change is possible; the population has become homozygous. A different population, isolated from the first, also undergoes this random genetic drift, but it may become homozygous for allele "A", whereas the other population has become homozygous for allele "a". As time goes on, isolated populations diverge from each other, each losing heterozygosity. The variation originally present within populations now appears as variation between populations. In a small population the effect of genetic drift could be rapid and significant. Time and chance which happeneth to all living things yields small populations in myriad ways. And these small populations may be unrepresentative of the original population."
All very well described, psi bond, remarkably so considering that it is nothing but an elaboration of my own point; not a bit of it does anything but support what I’ve been arguing. You will get decreased genetic diversity as you get these smaller populations. Yes, the ultimate effect in all cases -- way down the line usually -- is homozygosity in the population. When you have reached that point you have reached a dead end for any further evolution.
Evolution defeats evolution, as I put it before.
I did suggest many times that you should think through my arguments. Obviously you didn't do so, or even grasp what I was saying. Nor do you understand what you yourself are saying in these posts.
Provide evidence that any species has ever given birth to a separate, different, new species.
I have done so.
No, you have not. Your theological argument for your cultish adherence to a neo-Anaximanderian fish-are-people-too mythos has "evolved" from outright ignorantly dismissing my question to invoking bizarre necromantic seances with petrified corpses to measuring skull sizes to inferring levels of intelligence and sophistication of behavior with the long discarded pseudoscience of phrenology.
But as for demonstrating actual biological evolution has occured, as for showing one species giving birth to a seperate, different, new species, you've brought no evidence whatsoever.
Provide evidence that any species has given birth to a separate, different, new species.
It makes no sense to insist that the apelike and hominid ancestors of humans were created separately by a god. There is no empirical evidence for divine separate creation. Provide empirical evidence for that, beamish.
Irrelevant. I do not classify my religious faith beliefs as scientific. You do.
Provide evidence that any species has given birth to a separate, different, new species.
Provide evidence that any species has ever given birth to a separate, different, new species.
I have done so. You rhetorically dismiss it, and disingenuously hand wave it away, but I have done so. Provide scientific evidence for your own theory, beamish.
I have done so.
No, you have not. Your theological argument for your cultish adherence to a neo-Anaximanderian fish-are-people-too mythos has "evolved" from outright ignorantly dismissing my question to invoking bizarre necromantic seances with petrified corpses to measuring skull sizes to inferring levels of intelligence and sophistication of behavior with the long discarded pseudoscience of phrenology.
I have presented what most scientists accept as evidence of evolution. The inferences regarding evolution made by scientists of many different religious faiths are based on what is supported by empirical data, not on pious interpretations of scripture or astrological signs or what the early Greek philosophers said or infallible dogma or what nonscientists think or revelations from a hypothetical supernatural being or the deeply-felt need of religious laypeople to maintain that the Bible is inerrant.
But as for demonstrating actual biological evolution has occured[sic], as for showing one species giving birth to a seperate [sic], different, new species, you've brought no evidence whatsoever.,
Evolutionary biology is an historical science, not an experimental science. The effects of hundreds of millions of years cannot be reproduced in the science lab.
The theory of evolution provides the foundation of modern genetics, biochemistry, neurobiology, physiology, and ecology. A century and a half of fossil collection, biosystematics, and biogeography have all bolstered Darwin’s claims by revealing ever more and ever more powerful evidence of common ancestry, and the creative power of natural selection.
Provide evidence that any species has given birth to a separate, different, new species.
I have done so. You rhetorically dismiss it, and disingenuously hand wave it away, but I have done so. Provide scientific evidence for your own theory, beamish.
It makes no sense to insist that the apelike and hominid ancestors of humans were created separately by a god. There is no empirical evidence for divine separate creation. Provide empirical evidence for that, beamish.
Irrelevant. I do not classify my religious faith beliefs as scientific. You do.
Evolutionary theory is not a religion. Evolutionists may be Christians or Jews or agnostics or Hindus, etc.
Evolutionary theory does not posit a god to explain the origin of species. The creationists’ theory does. Whenever creationism has been introduced into science classes in public schools, it has been found to be unconstitutional because of its religious motivation. On the other hand, evolution has not been found unconstitutional for religious reasons, and is permitted in science classes.
If you believe evolution is wrong, then the relevant question is: How do you, beamish, explain the origin of species? Different species exist. How did they come about? Why are there so many different kinds of living things? Don’t be evasive.
Provide evidence that any species has given birth to a separate, different, new species.
I have done so. You rhetorically dismiss it, and disingenuously hand wave it away, but I have done so. Provide scientific evidence for your own theory, beamish.
beamish, I think what you and other creationists dread most is a Planet of the Apes scenario. If we recognize chimpanzees and gorillas as our closest living relatives, liberals will want recognition for our cousins’ primate rights.
You may be on to something here
- Spain, a nation long devoted to national socialism, recently extended legal rights to apes.
Times of London, June 27, 2008: In what isthought to be the first time a national legislature has granted such rights to animals, the Spanish parliament’s environmental committee voted to approve resolutions committing the country to the Great Apes Project*, designed by scientists and philosophers who say that humans’ closest biological relatives also deserve rights.
The resolution, adopted with crossparty support, calls on the Government to promote the Great Apes Project internationally and ensure the protection of apes from “abuse, torture and death”. “This is a historic moment in the struggle for animal rights,” Pedro Pozas, the Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, told The Times. “It will doubtless be remembered as a key moment in the defence of our evolutionary comrades.” .
*The philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri founded the Great Ape Project in 1993, saying that hominids such as chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans should enjoy the right to life and freedom and not to be mistreated.
If you believe, as I suppose the faithful do, that apes are God’s creatures, you should be happy about it, beamish.
- Here in the United States, election judges from the Democratic Party regularly accept the ballots of household pets and farm animals (St. Louis, Missouri is infamous for this)
This is no doubt a blatant rightwing mischaracterization, beamish.
- The President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, recently traveled to Egypt to praise the allegedly scientific achievements of followers of Islam, a religion long noted for claiming Jews and Christians are the decendants of monkeys and pigs.
I believe Muslim bigots say that Jews are not the descendents of pigs and monkeys but that they are pigs and monkeys.
I, too, praise the scientific achievements of Islamic civilization (particularly its invention of algorithms), and I would praise the scientific achievements of Catholic scientists if I knew of any, even though the Catholic Church is an institution long noted for burning and torturing heretics and putting Galileo under house arrest for having asserted (in contradiction to the Bible) that the earth moves round the sun.
Creationists, who most fear being classified as ill-educated mutants, should, I believe, also have their rights protected, to the extent they are extant, though their accomplishments are antithetical to civilization’s progress.
psi bond said: "Although a decrease in genetic diversity occurs in most isolated populations, it does not prevent the aforementioned development of barriers to interbreeding between species after the populations become separated geologically or ecologically. Given enough evolutionary divergence, complete reproductive isolation becomes almost inevitable."
Obviously this is a brand new argument from you, you never did try to address any of this before. However, all you have done is support my contention, quite nicely as a matter of fact.
It’s an elaboration of what I already wrote. If you read it carefully, it does not support creationism.
The decrease in genetic diversity SHOULD lead rapidly to barriers to interbreeding, psi bond, this is no answer to what I’ve been saying, it’s a confirmation of it. I’ve already answered you that I consider inability to interbreed to be an artificial definition of evolution. What you really have is simply two (or more) populations of the same species now unable to interbreed, what you DO NOT have is anything remotely in the direction of evolution, because you have DECREASED genetic diversity as well as reproductive isolation. This is exactly what I’ve been describing as the end result of the processes that lead to speciation.
Most scientists commonly consider a population that has the ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring of both genders to constitute species. I know, however, that that definition does not serve your religious purposes. There is no reason why “decrease in genetic diversity SHOULD lead rapidly to [genetic] barriers to interbreeding.” Decreased genetic diversity will not be the end of all genetic variability in a population. Any amount of genetic variability leads in the direction of evolution when it occurs over vast amounts of geologic time, which young earth creationists will not accept because it contravenes their idea of scripture.
Speciation is NOT a step on your ladder to evolution, it is a dead end. You now have an isolated population that may be quite healthy and go on inbreeding, but unless there is still a strong genetic diversity within this isolated population you are not going to get any further speciation. And if you do get further speciation it’s just a matter of time before you can no longer ever get it again. End of processes of evolution. You’ve reached the natural barrier that defines the Kind.
This is just a repetitive rhetorical argument. Speciation is a branch on the tree of evolution, which can diversify further over large amounts of time when populations become separated through migration or countless natural accidents. It is important to remember that most species consist of numerous smaller inbreeding populations called "demes". It is these demes that evolve.
All you’ve done is elaborate the genetic mechanisms in these processes that lead to reproductive isolation. That’s interesting in itself but it provides NO hope of further evolution out of the slough of genetic depletion. Genetic depletion is the hallmark of "speciation." It is also the end of any hope of further evolution.
As the rich speciation of fish species in Lake Victoria shows, genetic depletion is not the hallmark of "speciation." Reproductive isolation is, under geographic or ecological separation.
"The two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and genetic drift, which is a stochastic process. That is, if a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error. This process of random fluctuation produced by genetic drift continues generation after generation, with no force pushing the frequency back to its initial state because the population has no "genetic memory" of its state many generations ago."
Concluded
I’ve included genetic drift in my discussions of all the processes that lead to genetic depletion, though it appears you missed that. It ultimately leads to genetic depletion although much more slowly than processes such as natural selection or geographic isolation.
I’m not saying you did not include genetic drift in your arguments, but rather that you do not show an understanding of its nature, which is stochastic. Random fluctuations do not come to an end. Even when genetic diversity in a population is low, it continues to be a source of genetic variability. When populations of the same species become isolated, genetic drift can over periods of geological time produce differentiated populations that cannot interbreed. This is often the beginning of evolution. “At the species level … traditional objections to high frequency for drift become invalid, and we should anticipate a major role for this second source of sorting. Low population size (the number of species in a clade) provides the criterion for important drift in both categories at the species level. The analog of genetic drift ---which I shall call species drift-----must act both frequently and powerfully in macroevolution. Most clades do not contain large numbers of species.”( Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 2002, p. 736)
Although it cannot be dispensed with, mutation is n ot as great a factor in evolution as natural selection and genetic drift (which was unknown to Darwin). I did not include mutation in my presentation because, in my computer simulations of evolution, mutation must be set at a very low percentage, yet it cannot be set at zero. Of course, the majority of mutations in nature are lethal or neutral and will be eliminated by natural selection.
It’s clear that you have assiduously thought through the elements of your familiar, well-worn argument, but they do not accurately represent the processes of nature. In truth, there is more in heaven and earth, Faith, than was ever dreamt of in the pseudoscience of biblical literalism. Concluding his great work, Darwin said,“There is grandeur in this view of life.
Now you can warn me of Judgment Day.
Well, as I said, you didn't think it through, you didn't recognize the implications of what you were writing and this attitude continues. There's no arguing with a person who will not think through the scientific facts he himself acknowledges, but merely flatly asserts "it doesn't support creationism," or "it doesn't lead to a dead end" etc.
Well, genetic depletion does lead to an evolutionary dead end, it can't do anything else, whether you recognize that or not. So, again, end of discussion. Unless I have the energy to come back later and spell it out just for the exercise, certainly not for someone who won't think it through anyway.
"When populations of the same species become isolated, genetic drift can over periods of geological time produce differentiated populations that cannot interbreed. This is often the beginning of evolution. “At the species level … traditional objections to high frequency for drift become invalid, and we should anticipate a major role for this second source of sorting. Low population size (the number of species in a clade) provides the criterion for important drift in both categories at the species level. The analog of genetic drift ---which I shall call species drift-----must act both frequently and powerfully in macroevolution. Most clades do not contain large numbers of species.”( Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 2002, p. 736)"
Oh dear, poor Stephen Jay Gould. Poor science. They haven't tbought it through either. They are still mesmerized by the fact that selection and drift produce phenotypic change and have not thought through what it does to the genetic potential for change. You cannot get further evolution from genetic depletion no matter how many new phenotypes you've been getting from drift and selection OUT OF the genetic complement to this point.
"Although it cannot be dispensed with, mutation is n ot as great a factor in evolution as natural selection and genetic drift (which was unknown to Darwin). I did not include mutation in my presentation because, in my computer simulations of evolution, mutation must be set at a very low percentage, yet it cannot be set at zero. Of course, the majority of mutations in nature are lethal or neutral and will be eliminated by natural selection."
Exactly. Thank you for giving the correct reason why mutation cannot save the day. Those who propose it in answer to my argument deny this obvious fact.
Genetic drift operates just as all selection processes do, psi bond, and you yourself described the mechanism very well in the previous post. I have to get back to work but I'll come back later to spell it out although you will as usual ignore what I say.
You do not get phenotypic change without a corresponding reduction in genetic potentials -- the famous "change in allele frequencies" that is sometimes used as the definition fo evolution. Reduction in genetic potentials, which characterizes the new phenotype population in comparison to the original population, ALWAYS means fewer opportunities to "evolve," although there may still be quite a bit of genetic potential left for many population changes in a given situation; in the case of bottleneck the genetic potential is abruptly curtailed with the new phenotype. This is an inexorable process that accompanies ALL phenotypic changes, no matter how slow or fast, no matter what the particular "mechanism" of the change. If you get new phenotypes you also get corresponding reduced genetic potentials. Evolutionists ignore this. When they notice it they usually postulate mutation as the answer to it although as psi bond has already shown mutation cannot change things.
Evolution defeats evolution.
Yes, I'm still coming back later concerning genetic drift.
Psi bond, this argument is pretty much my own, at least the terms of it are. I think I even came up with "evolution defeats evolution." Pithy, don't you think?
Genetic drift refers to random events that SELECT, psi bond. Go read the article at Talk Origins again. They don't know what they are talking about either, so it's the blind leading the blind, but their examples are clear -- some alleles are selected over others to characterize the new population created through "drift," which is exactly what happens in ALL the "mechanisms of evolution"-- they simply happen by different inciting events, random chance in the case of drift.
Poor scientists are so confused -- they actually think that natural selection produces a different effect than migration, bottleneck, genetic drift and so on, but it's all the same thing. I see Talk Origins classifies bottleneck and founder effect as forms of genetic drift, which is interesting. They think the fact that it's random instead of forced by circumstances makes a difference, but it doesn't. It's all the same effect -- some alleles are brought to expression and others are either lost or suppressed in the new population. This is simply another way of describing the change in gene or allele frequency that is sometimes used as the definition of evolution.
That's what happens is ALL THESE PROCESSES. THEY ARE ALL SELECTION PROCESSES. THE ONLY WAY YOU GET A NEW PHENOTYPE IS BY THE SELECTION OF A NEW COMBINATION OF ALLELES OVER THE OLD.
This IS evolution, yes, and again, EVOLUTION DEFEATS EVOLUTION. Again, whenever you get a change in the characteristics of a population, you get a REDUCTION in the allelic or genetic possibilities for further change. This is rudimentary my dear Watson but the scientists have failed to take it into account. Amazing but true. They just go on and on and on AS IF all these changes are open-ended, without thinking about the fact that genetically speaking they are inexorably running into a dead end for evolution.
This is from Talk Origins on genetic drift:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genetic-drift.html
But random genetic drift is even more that this. It also refers to accidental random events that influence allele frequency.
See? They think that mere randomness changes things. Sorry, ANYTHING that alters the frequency of alleles has the same effect, whether it's random or pressured as in natural selection. Most of the processes that bring this about ARE random, such as migration, genetic drift, bottleneck, founder effect and so on. The effect is nevertheless the same. SOME ALLELES are "selected" over others and come to characterize the new population in a way that differentiates it from the old. This may lead to inability to interbreed with the former population. You may call this speciation, fine with me. But the point is that eventually these processes lead to a genetic dead end for evolution. This is as true for genetic drift whehter you include bottleneck and other random events in it or not.
Talk Origins just goes on and on as if random selection could have a different effect genetically than natural selection (or for that matter domestic intentional selection):
"Chance events can cause the frequencies of alleles in a small population to drift randomly from generation to generation. For example, consider what would happen if [a]... wildflower population ... consisted of only 25 plants. Assume that 16 of the plants have the genotype AA for flower color, 8 are Aa, and only 1 is aa. Now imagine that three of the plants are accidently destroyed by a rock slide before they have a chance to reproduce. By chance, all three plants lost from the population could be AA individuals. The event would alter the relative frequency of the two alleles for flower color in subsequent generations. This is a case of microevolution caused by genetic drift...
Yes, and the effect is not a whit different than if human beings intentionally destroyed all the AA individuals from the population, or for some reason AA color was a gourmet feast according to a particular predator, which would bring natural selection to bear on the situation TO EXACTLY THE SAME EFFECT, the result being that a less tasty flower color would come to characterize the population.
ARE YOU THINKING YET?
"Disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or fires may reduce the size of a population drastically, killing victims unselectively. The result is that the small surviving population is unlikely to be representative of the original population in its genetic makeup - a situation known as the bottleneck effect.... Genetic drift caused by bottlenecking may have been important in the early evolution of human populations when calamities decimated tribes.
The most major bottleneck in the history of the world was at the Flood. We're all descended from Noah's three sons and their wives.
However, note again that the Talk Origins people are just so enraptured by the different ways allele frequency changes they just can't recognize that the fact that it changes at all follows the same exact pattern of speciation inevitably associated with genetic depletion.
And they continue:
The gene pool of each surviving population may have been, just by chance, quite different from that of the larger population that predated the catastrophe." (Campbell, N.A. in Biology 2nd ed. Benjamin/Cummings 1990 p.443)
Yes, indeed. Speciation, change in allele frequencies, GENETIC DEPLETION. Funny they always leave THAT part of the equation out.
Several examples of bottlenecks have been inferred from genetic data. For example, there is very little genetic variation in the cheetah population. This is consistant with a reduction in the size of the population to only a few individuals - an event that probably occurred several thousand years ago.
More like a couple thousand or so but yes, the cheetah is a good example of what happens at the end of these processes, OR all at once if the process is a drastic one like bottleneck. You get homozygosity WHICH IS THE INABILITY TO FURTHER EVOLVE FOR THAT PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTIC. The more you get of this the less ability to evolve you have. And usually you also get vulnerability to extinction but some types are hardier than others so not always.
An observed example is the northern elephant seal which was hunted almost to extinction. By 1890 there were fewer than 20 animals but the population now numbers more than 30,000. As predicted there is very little genetic variation in the elephant seal population and it is likely that the twenty animals that survived the slaughter were more "lucky" than "fit".
Yup, whether lucky or fit you arrive at the same situation, a selected phenotype with genetic depletion which means further evolution is not going to happen for the fixed genes.
Another example of genetic drift is known as the founder effect. In this case a small group breaks off from a larger population and forms a new population. This effect is well known in human populations;
"The founder effect is probably responsible for the virtually complete lact of blood group B in American Indians, whose ancestors arrived in very small numbers across the Bering Strait during the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. More recent examples are seen in religious isolates like the Dunkers and Old Order Amish of North America. These sects were founded by small numbers of migrants from their much larger congregations in central Europe. They have since remained nearly completely closed to immigration from the surrounding American population. As a result, their blood group gene frequencies are quite different from those in the surrounding populations, both in Europe and in North America.
Yup, exactly what I'm talking about, psi bond. They are different from the rest of the population because of the random but nevertheless selective process of their migration. Humans don't lose reproductive ability with other groups but this can happen with other forms of life. In any case they have fewer genetic possibilities for further change, psi bond. Don't you get it yet? Well, I know Talk Origins doesn't so I guess why should you? But I keep hoping better things for you.
"The process of genetic drift should sound familiar. It is, in fact, another way of looking at the inbreeding effect in small populations ... Whether regarded as inbreeding or as random sampling of genes, the effect is the same. Populations do not exactly reproduce their genetic constitutions; there is a random component of gene-frequency change." (Suzuki et al. op. cit.)
Yuppity yup yup yup. Poor scientists. They're looking at the trees and completely missing the forest. Oh dear.
There are many well studied examples of the founder effect. All of the cattle on iceland, for example, are descended from a small group that were brought to the island more than one thousand years ago. The genetic make-up of the icelandic cattle is now different from that of their cousins in Norway but the differences agree well with those predicted by genetic drift.
YES, BUT WHY DON'T YOU POINT OUT THAT THEY HAVE FEWER GENETIC POSSIBILITIES FOR FURTHER CHANGE/EVOLUTION THAN THEIR COUSINS? Because this would completely defeat the theory of evolution. But I think they are so strongly committed to evolution they simply can't SEE it. It's blind faith in the end that keeps them skirting around this obvious killer of their theory.
Similarly, there are many pacific islands that have been colonized by small numbers of fruit flies (perhaps one female) and the genetics of these populations is consistant with drift models.
See, they can go on and on chatting about all these examples that if only they recognized the genetic factor involved they'd have to acknowledge the end of evolution. But Stephen Jay Gould can just go on and on spinning tales about all these observed changes as if the processes of change themselves were open ended, when in fact they have a built-in ending point that brings evolution to a screeching halt.
Oh but their next comment is a doozy so I'll put that in a separate post.
Thus, it is wrong to consider natural selection as the ONLY mechanism of evolution and it is also wrong to claim that natural selection is the predominant mechanism.
Uh huh, well that's true. All these random alterations have to be taken into account, but what they are failing to notice is that every one of them SELECTS, brings some alleles to the fore while eliminating or suppressing others -- it doesn't matter whether they are random or the result of a predator who makes an intentional selection or an environment that does the same by being hostile to a certain type, or human selection. The overall result in change in characteristics along with genetic reduction-on-out-to-complete homozygosity is loss of ability to further evolve.
This point [that natural selection isn't the only factor] is made in many genetics and evolution textbooks, for example;
"In any population, some proportion of loci are fixed at a selectively unfavorable allele because the intensity of selection is insufficient to overcome the random drift to fixation.
Here they are assuming that natural selection would OVERCOME the more likely to be deleterious effect of random drift becuase presumably it selects favorable types. Well, if you define favorable types as those specifically fitted to a particular niche, yes of course it's going to be stronger than a type randomly relegated to who knows what allele combination that may or may not fit. But this only obscures the fact that in BOTH cases you have REDUCED genetic diversity, and therefore REDUCED ability to further evolve, and that ultimately these trends that bring about speciation along with this genetic reduction reach an ending point that spells finis to evolution.
Random changes may of course bring about LESS fit phenotypes, making them more vulnerable to extinction But not necessarily so. The cheetah for instance is not as vulnerable as this formula would lead us to expect given its highly genetically fixed condition and inability to further evolve, which is understood to have been the result of a random event a bottleneck.
In any case natural selection can itself lead to allele fixation. There is no reason why any selecting factor wouldn't. ALL of them ULTIMATELY would.
Very great skepticism should be maintained toward naive theories about evolution that assume that populations always or nearly always reach an optimal constitution under selection.
Yes, I suppose some arguments do go in that naive direction. But my argument tends in the other direction, toward ultimate extinction as a far more likely end result of all the mechanisms of evolution than anything you could call beneficial. But if my debator will not think he'll never get the point. But of course he doesn't want to anyway, as all those committed to evolution are at some point blind to anything that seriously questions their faith.
The existence of multiple adaptive peaks and the random fixation of less fit alleles are integral features of the evolutionary process. Natural selection cannot be relied on to produce the best of all possible worlds." (Suzuki, D.T., Griffiths, A.J.F., Miller, J.H. and Lewontin, R.C. in An Introduction to Genetic Analysis 4th ed., W.H. Freeman, New York 1989)
Indeed not. In some cases quite the opposite.
And:
"One of the most important and controversial issues in population genetics is concerned with the relative importance of genetic drift and natural selection in determining evolutionary change. The key question at stake is whether the immense genetic variety which is observable in populations of all species is inconsequential to survival and reproduction (ie. is neutral), in which case drift will be the main determinant, or whether most gene substitutions do affect fitness, in which case natural selection is the main driving force.
It's a very good thing that there IS this "immense genetic variety" built into the genome of all species, or all life would have died out on earth by now. Because clearly all the species were created at one time a few thousand years ago and are simply running out their complement of genetic possibilities. In a perfect world, the world of Eden, in which there was no death, a wonderful variety of life forms would simply go on developing and it wouldn't matter when they reached the point of genetic fixation because they wouldn't die or be vulnerable to disease as living things often are now at that point, they would simply be the wonderful expression of their particular genetic mix for us to appreciate.
The arguments over this issue have been intense during the past half- century and are little nearer resolution though some would say that the drift case has become progressively stronger. Drift by its very nature cannot be positively demonstrated. To do this it would be necessary to show that selection has definitely NOT operated, which is impossible.
It doesn't matter though, folks. ALL mechanisms that SELECT some alleles over others create the SAME situation of genetic reduction which is what ultimately defeats evolution.
Much indirect evidence has been obtained, however, which purports to favour the drift position. Firstly, and in many ways most persuasively is the molecular and biochemical evidence..." (Harrison, G.A., Tanner, J.M., Pilbeam, D.R. and Baker, P.T. in Human Biology 3rd ed. Oxford University Press 1988 pp 214-215)
The book by Harrison et al. is quite interesting because it goes on for several pages discussing the controversy. The authors point out that it is very difficult to find clear evidence of selection in humans (the sickle cell allele is a notable exception). In fact, it is difficult to find good evidence for selection in most organisms - most of the arguments are after the fact (but probably correct)!
The relative importance of drift and selection depends, in part, on estimated population sizes. Drift is much more important in small populations. It is important to remember that most species consist of numerous smaller inbreeding populations called "demes". It is these demes that evolve.
Studies of evolution at the molecular level have provided strong support for drift as a major mechanism of evolution. Observed mutations at the level of gene are mostly neutral and not subject to selection. One of the major controversies in evolutionary biology is the neutralist-selectionist debate over the importance of neutral mutations. Since the only way for neutral mutations to become fixed in a population is through genetic drift this controversy is actually over the relative importance of drift and natural selection.
Amazing how they keep missing the most important point about ALL causes of change in allele frequencies.
I see they are particularly confused about Natural Selection because presumably it selects types that are more hardy, more "fitted" and so on, but they seem to forget their own recognition that they are only relatively "fit" -- in relation to a particular niche, in relation to the designs of a particular predator, or possibly a certain dietary limitation in the environment.
Most random changes are perfectly hardy too. Ring species randomly develop for instance. The cheetah apparently randomly developed -- according to the evolutionists. It wasn't selected for its superior speed apparently, although it could have been.
It's THEY who are mesmerized by Natural Selection as some kind of guarantee of positive adaptations, I'm certainly not. zinglu
PsiBond,
Despite your dogmatic assertions to the contrary, I have stumped you with the question that has stumped and continues to stump every advocate of your theology of evolution.
You can not show any species giving birth to a separate, different, new species because it doesn't happen, and Faith has been graciously providing you with the science lessons behind why it CAN'T happen.
My ancestors were of the species homo sapiens sapiens, humans, and at no point in my geneology or even the history of the Earth going back billions of years were any of my homo sapiens sapiens ancestors born to any other organism than an homo sapiens sapiens. I infer this truth from the observable fact that species do not and can not give birth to a seperate, different, new species.
Miscalling the mythos of your theology of evolution "historical science" is cute and quaint, but equally unenlightening in its scientifically baseless wild speculations.
My challenge to your neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution points directly at what divides your primitive necromantic fossil communions and your ressurections of the phrenological psuedoscience of reading the shapes of skulls to determine intellectual capacities from actual science.
To complete the demonstration that you have not accepted and refuse to accept both Faith's invitation and my invitation to join the science discussion here we have you wanting to engage in comparative theology.
You can't overcome the hurdle of species being unable to produce separate, different, new species.
I can't imagine the theological gymnastics and convulsions you'll engage in trying to explain how your alleged fish ancestor evolved from a chain of organisms that descend ultimately from proteins formed abiogenetically from inorganic D-enantiomers magically arranged into organic L-enantiomers by primordial lightning strikes on geological deposits of all the necessary component elements.
Though that too might prove for an interesting discussion, if you could just manage to release your fearfully clinging grasp upon your demon haunted candles-in-the-dark neo-Anaximanderian religion of dead fish becoming people and accept the invitation to join the science discussion here.
I don't think you will.
beamish: Despite your dogmatic assertions to the contrary, I have stumped you with the question that has stumped and continues to stump every advocate of your theology of evolution.
No, beamish, you have stunted your growth by clinging onto a theology that impels you to adamantly refuse to accept any and all reasonable answers that I have given, and that are accepted by rational people of all faiths. With luck, evolution-denial is a recessive trait in the population.
You can not show any species giving birth to a separate, different, new species because it doesn't happen, and Faith has been graciously providing you with the science lessons behind why it CAN'T happen.
There are plentiful clues in the fossil record strongly suggesting that evolutionary stuff happens.
For you, science is pseudoscience, and pseudoscience is science. Nonethreless, evolution is accepted science. In truth, Faith has been liberally providing pseudoscience lessons explaining why it can't literally arise in her barren mind. If you strip the earth of geologic time, you cripple evolution. Indeed, you kill evolution, a murder that she devoutly wishes for.
My ancestors were of the species homo sapiens sapiens, humans, and at no point in my geneology or even the history of the Earth going back billions of years were any of my homo sapiens sapiens ancestors born to any other organism than an homo sapiens sapiens. I infer this truth from the observable fact that species do not and can not give birth to a seperate, different, new species.
No observable evidence supports the idea that Homo sapiens sapiens has been on the earth for billions of years, or even that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. You also betray your ignorance of science, particularly Linnaean taxonomy, when you speak of “the species homo sapiens sapiens.” Homo sapiens sapiens would be a subspecies of the species Homo sapiens.
Miscalling the mythos of your theology of evolution "historical science" is cute and quaint, but equally unenlightening in its scientifically baseless wild speculations.
Calling it historical science is accurate. It studies earth’s past, as does geology, another historical science. It is fallacious to assume that science that you refuse to accept is scientifically baseless.
My challenge to your neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution points directly at what divides your primitive necromantic fossil communions and your ressurections of the phrenological psuedoscience of reading the shapes of skulls to determine intellectual capacities from actual science.
Repeating the same nonsensical claims about evolutionary theory, you demonstrate your powerful obsession with your theology. Evolution is not theology. Evolutionary theory is not a religion. Evolutionists may be Christians or Jews or agnostics or Hindus, etc. If it were a religion or a theology, it could not be taught in the public schools, and the courts would have ruled it unconstitutional years ago. Even creationists have not tried to get it removed from the curriculum on that basis.
To complete the demonstration that you have not accepted and refuse to accept both Faith's invitation and my invitation to join the science discussion here we have you wanting to engage in comparative theology.
The evolution/creation debate is a conflict between science and religion. Evolution explains the diversity of life by natural causes, while creationists, cutting themselves badly on Occam’s razor, invoke their god.
Concluded
You can't overcome the hurdle of species being unable to produce separate, different, new species.
The heliocentric theory cannot be demonstrated in the lab. Neither can theories of continental drift. Speciation cannot be demonstrated in the lab. It can be demonstrated in the fossil record. On the other hand, God cannot be demonstrated in the lab or the fossil record.
I can't imagine the theological gymnastics and convulsions you'll engage in trying to explain how your alleged fish ancestor evolved from a chain of organisms that descend ultimately from proteins formed abiogenetically from inorganic D-enantiomers magically arranged into organic L-enantiomers by primordial lightning strikes on geological deposits of all the necessary component elements.
Darwinian evolution is not concerned with the origin of life. As you indicate, in the material you reference in the above paragraph, other scientists from other disciplines have studied that question. But, I know that creationists are eager to extend their fight to include abiogenesis.
But abiogenesis does not contravene the Book of Genesis. God is purported to have made the man from the inorganic dust from the ground. The woman, of course, is another story. She is organic.
Though that too might prove for an interesting discussion, if you could just manage to release your fearfully clinging grasp upon your demon haunted candles-in-the-dark neo-Anaximanderian religion of dead fish becoming people and accept the invitation to join the science discussion here.
No, that is the stuff of a different, essentially unrelated scientific discussion, but one about which I doubt that you, given your demon-haunted theology, could show yourself less emotionally invested and more dispassionate.
I don't think you will.
Do you also have faith I will be damned on Judgment Day?
What is your theory for explaining the many different kinds of living organisms on earth? You could answer this question honestly.
But I don’t think you will.
“The poor scientists are confused”? Only creationists understand the results of the scientists’ research? And those who don’t agree with your understanding of evolution have not “thought it through”? They are not doing real science, which is what you claim to be doing?
No, Faith, you are badly confused. You are confused on many points. To consider one: “Genetic drift operates just as all selection processes do,” you say. Genetic drift is not a selection process. In contrast to natural selection, which makes gene variants more common or less common depending on their reproductive success, the changes due to genetic drift are not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures, and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to reproductive success. It is a purely stochastic sampling process.
A genotype does not have just one gene. It has many of them. When one gene becomes fixed, there are more that are not fixed and can produce change. Indeed, as the fossil evidence shows, phyletic lines develop species-rich branches over deep time to increase the diversity of the phylogenetic tree.
If, in every population, alleles at all loci become fixed and immutable over time, as you tiresomely maintain in hundreds of posts, then, given deep geologic time, all species should now be extinct. However, that is not yet true, you proclaim, because, by biblical calculations that you, having religious faith, consider credible, the earth is quite young, only about 6000 years old, and the scientific dating methods are wrong, according to your personal view. In other words, you discard science in order to disprove science. Naïvely, you deny the credible results of science so you can demonstrate that the results of science are incredible and mistaken. Therein is your dead-end circular reasoning.
Psi bond, this argument is pretty much my own, at least the terms of it are. I think I even came up with "evolution defeats evolution." Pithy, don't you think?
I've heard the same argument made before. I've also heard creationists who make it make vain claims for their originality. Like you, they are convinced they are uniquely endowed with the gift of original thought.
Your proposal for a creationist poster for an anti-Darwin march is misguided. I don’t think you’ve thought it through. "Evolution defeats evolution" is circular and contradictory. It acknowledges evolution exists in order to deny it can occur. You could as well say, "success defeats success." As if it were always the case that success, once attained, precludes future success. Which, of course, is patent nonsense. If one allele spreads through the population because of its selective advantage, it doesn't preclude other genes at other sites in the chromosome from subsequently becoming advantageous and thus being selected at a future date. But, with a biblically condensed time span, all the mechanisms of evolution ultimately prove ineffective. The Bible imposes its own dead end
With religious devotion to your self-assigned task, you have appropriated a widely-cited article on Talk.origins and annotated it at length (in an extremely condescending tone that pretends to be extremely authoritative) with your one-dimensional view of evolution as a dead end, fantasizing that you are delivering, from on high, science lessons to poor, deluded scientists. That may be a common creationist tactic. Yes, I suppose some laypeople devoutly believe they have attained a godlike understanding of complex natural processes, and have fully persuaded themselves that their nonscientific view has all the power of revelation, but, nonetheless, I much prefer the scientific approach, one that is restricted, guided, and modified by whatever the empirical evidence supports----ancient and modern paradigms be damned. As Darwin might conclude, there is grandeur in that view.
Your self-important, rigid, alternative view that damns all others with warnings of Judgment Day, can only be, for evolutionary intellectual growth, a sterile rite, a dead end.
I'll just bunt these softballs away until PsiBond decides to join the science discussion...
No, beamish, you have stunted your growth by clinging onto a theology that impels you to adamantly refuse to accept any and all reasonable answers that I have given, and that are accepted by rational people of all faiths. With luck, evolution-denial is a recessive trait in the population.
"National Socialism is nothing but applied biology." - Rudolph Hess, left-wing labor activist and Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, 1934
Do tell us more on your views of what the dominant master "genetic" ideological traits should be, PsiBond.
There are plentiful clues in the fossil record strongly suggesting that evolutionary stuff happens.
For you, science is pseudoscience, and pseudoscience is science. Nonethreless, evolution is accepted science. In truth, Faith has been liberally providing pseudoscience lessons explaining why it can't literally arise in her barren mind. If you strip the earth of geologic time, you cripple evolution. Indeed, you kill evolution, a murder that she devoutly wishes for.
Your apopheniac delusions aren't serving you well here. It's bad enough you believe dead fish are your ancestors and apes are your cousins (on your mom's side?) without you believing Faith or anyone else could "murder" an inanimate object, much less a primitive theological doctrine.
No observable evidence supports the idea that Homo sapiens sapiens has been on the earth for billions of years, or even that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. You also betray your ignorance of science, particularly Linnaean taxonomy, when you speak of “the species homo sapiens sapiens.” Homo sapiens sapiens would be a subspecies of the species Homo sapiens.
No observable evidence supports the idea that the "evolution" of one species into a seperate, different, new species has ever happened. Linnaean taxonomy speculates at phylogeny, and the science of molecular phylogenetics is rapidly trashing those presumptions and classifications. The extent of the damage DNA research has done to increasingly archaic 18th Century taxonomic classifications is still being realized. A human by any other name is still a human. My ancestors were humans. They were never "ape-like." They were never apes, and they were never fish. They were humans. As far as humans not being around alongside dinosaurs, why would you expect to find the remains of intelligent beings trapped in the conditions required for fossilization? The fact of the matter is you're employing the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam - the fossil record is hardly a complete catalog of all lifeforms ever to exist on Earth and the times they existed simply because fossil formation requires rare, special, and often catastrophic conditions to occur. Your argument for humans not living alongside dinosaurs is that fossilized human remains have not been found that date back contemporaneously with dinosaurs. Not that fossilized human remains might have been miscategorized as another species? Not that intelligent humans tend to avoid getting caught in the conditions that created dinosaur fossils? Your unscientific fossil necromancy lacks the sophistication to presume itself a true or complete catalog of life on Earth in any uniform or universal sense.
More PsiBond bunting...
Calling it historical science is accurate. It studies earth’s past, as does geology, another historical science. It is fallacious to assume that science that you refuse to accept is scientifically baseless.
I haven't refused any science. I have refused your necromancy that alleges that fossils tell you they are your ancestor. I have refused your phrenology that posits intelligence comes from skull shapes and braincase sizes. I have refused your apopheniac delusions entirely.
Feel free to join the science discussion.
Repeating the same nonsensical claims about evolutionary theory, you demonstrate your powerful obsession with your theology. Evolution is not theology. Evolutionary theory is not a religion. Evolutionists may be Christians or Jews or agnostics or Hindus, etc. If it were a religion or a theology, it could not be taught in the public schools, and the courts would have ruled it unconstitutional years ago. Even creationists have not tried to get it removed from the curriculum on that basis.
Perhaps the belief that Jews are monkeys and pigs allows Islam to be taught in public schools alongside the neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution. (see previous comment's quote from the leftist Rudolph Hess)
The evolution/creation debate is a conflict between science and religion. Evolution explains the diversity of life by natural causes, while creationists, cutting themselves badly on Occam’s razor, invoke their god.
The evolution/creation debate is a conflict between two competing theologies. Evolution imagines all life can be traced to a "Most Recent Common Ancestor" and ultimately a "Last Universal Ancestor" a problem bookended by abiogenesis theory and the fact any species does not, can not, and has not EVER give birth to a seperate, different, new species. Occam's Razor says people who infer that a species gave birth to a seperate, different, new species with phrenological speculations and necromancy with fossils are delusional apopheniacs.
Do you also have faith I will be damned on Judgment Day?
Many people will be damned on Judgement Day in manners according to their own religions.
Likely, you'll die with everyone else in 2012 under Al Gore's prophecy of global destruction at the hands of angered Mother Earth spirits.
What is your theory for explaining the many different kinds of living organisms on earth? You could answer this question honestly.
But I don’t think you will.
Well, I don't want to give you the birds and bees speech your Dad should have, but when two organisms of the same species fall in love... they mate, and produce offspring of the same species.
“Genetic drift operates just as all selection processes do,” you say. Genetic drift is not a selection process.
In actual fact it is, psi bond, but you won't consider the context in which I make this point. It has the same effect as all the other selection processes WITH RESPECT TO GENETIC DIVERSITY -- that is, like all the other processes or mechanisms, it produces phenotypic change by reducing genetic diversity.
In contrast to natural selection, which makes gene variants more common or less common depending on their reproductive success, the changes due to genetic drift are not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures, and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to reproductive success. It is a purely stochastic sampling process.
Yes, it is random factors in this case that make "gene variants more common or less common" in a population and in some cases not with the clearcut effects of natural selection (although even there you get odd genetic changes that do not impinge on the selected factor as well) -- but in the case of bottleneck and founder effect, which Talk Origins classifies as genetic drift, you get strikingly more or less common variants, psi bond, and my overall point is that you get REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ALL CASES. YOU DO NOT GET PHENOTYPIC CHANGE WITHOUT CONCOMITANT REDUCED GENETIC POTENTIAL.
A genotype does not have just one gene. It has many of them. When one gene becomes fixed, there are more that are not fixed and can produce change.
Yes that is true, you can still get change in other characteristics -- up to a point.
Indeed, as the fossil evidence shows, phyletic lines develop species-rich branches over deep time to increase the diversity of the phylogenetic tree.
Whatever that means. Which evo site are you quoting here? All the fossil record shows is the wonderful variety of variations possible within species, all of which lived together in the pre-Flood world.
If, in every population, alleles at all loci become fixed and immutable over time, as you tiresomely maintain in hundreds of posts,
Find one point where I said ALL loci, psi bond. I've been trying to stick to the overall point I'm making and have not gone out on such a limb as you are imputing to me. I am well aware that not ALL loci become fixed, only if MANY do then the creature is in a state where further variation of those traits cannot occur then the creature is commonly regarded as genetically vulnerable and in many cases vulnerable to extinction.
However, in the case of a bottleneck-created variation, you can be sure that although the other genes are not YET fixed they are well on their way to it, their genetic possibilities are severely reduced, and this is the condition I have been talking about all along. Fixed loci are merely the end point of the process beyond which all change is impossible. At remaining loci where there is still some genetic potential it is going to be reduced because the population reduction that brought about the fixed loci also reduced all the rest. It's in the nature of the event itself.
Whenever you get a population reduction you get a reduction in genetic possibilities at ALL loci for ALL genes, even if there are not yet any fixed ones.
then, given deep geologic time, all species should now be extinct.
Given "deep time," of course, all would be extinct, but this is one of the proofs that deep time is a fiction. The inexorable reduction in diversity with population aplits and reductions -- which is an observable reality if only you would open your eyes -- can only play out an original given complement of genetic possibilities. I believe the reality of these things shows that there was tremendous genetic variability built in at the creation, and although it is reduced in order to bring about new varieties the genetic potential is not completely reduced except at extremes. It is even possible for a species to continue indefinitely without extinction in our fallen world if severe population reductions don't occur.
However, that is not yet true, you proclaim, because, by biblical calculations that you, having religious faith, consider credible, the earth is quite young, only about 6000 years old, and the scientific dating methods are wrong, according to your personal view.
Yes, the actual facts are in accord with a young age of the earth. The actual fact is that each "speciation" event occurs from a condition of reduced genetic variability and otherwise does not occur. This is what you keep failing to focus on. Fixed loci are only the end result of what is an inexorable series of reductions of genetic variability.
The point is this is the INEVITABLE DIRECTION of all phenotypic change -- direction, psi bond, direction. It never moves in the opposite direction. You never get increased genetic variability but always only decreased genetic variability.
Again, I'm talking about an observable fact, a fact which many of your own posts here have corroborated. This accords with a young earth, and couldn't possibly occur in the old earth scenario. It's a proof against an old earth.
In other words, you discard science in order to disprove science.
No, true science proceeds as always doing what true science does, discovering all kinds of interesting and useful things in this world. And again, without the Biblical perspective on a law-determined natural world created by a lawgiving God science would never have existed in the world at all.
However, as I've also said before, evolution is not genuine science according to the usual definitions of science because it cannot test or prove or disprove any of it. Evolution does not do science, it cannot do science, it can only speculate on past events.
Naïvely, you deny the credible results of science
Psi bond, you really need to stop and think some time. What you are calling science simply is not science. It is pure imaginative speculation, castle-building. Some time just stop and think whether this might be so about a particular assertion you find in the evolutionist literature.
so you can demonstrate that the results of science are incredible and mistaken. Therein is your dead-end circular reasoning.
Oh dear, you are grasping at straws now.
Psi bond, this argument is pretty much my own, at least the terms of it are. I think I even came up with "evolution defeats evolution." Pithy, don't you think?
I've heard the same argument made before. I've also heard creationists who make it make vain claims for their originality. Like you, they are convinced they are uniquely endowed with the gift of original thought.
My you've really worked yourself up now. No, you haven't seen this particular argument spelled out as I spell it out by anyone but me. I'm not bragging, I just have found it to be the case. I work on it myself, I don't consult creationists. I've had creationists tell me it won't fly because evolutionists won't accept it. Well, they won't accept anything else either, and I think this argument has solid factual grounds so I work on it.
Your proposal for a creationist poster for an anti-Darwin march is misguided. I don’t think you’ve thought it through. "Evolution defeats evolution" is circular and contradictory. It acknowledges evolution exists in order to deny it can occur.
Pardon me for expecting you to be able to think it through. My mistake. Evolution of the "micro" sort DOES occur, psi bond, it's all we've been talking about. "Speciation" does occur, I've been using that term and made it clear what I mean by it. Nobody denies that evolution occurs, it's very old human knowledge that species vary within themselves. Evolutionists merely assume that the process of variation within species is open ended from species to species. Assume it I say. Build castles of this idea I say. The facts belie it but they go on imagining it nevertheless.
But as I've been arguing, the very mechanisms that bring about such variations -- which we may call "evolution" because it's what evolutionists call it, and also for the sake of my pithy saying --lead not to increased genetic potential to vary but to decreased genetic potentials. Evolution defeats evolution says this very well. It sums up the whole argument I've been making. And it accords with the observable facts.
You could as well say, "success defeats success." As if it were always the case that success, once attained, precludes future success. Which, of course, is patent nonsense.
See, now you are being silly and as usual refusing to think. I've explained above what the little formula means. Think please.
If one allele spreads through the population because of its selective advantage, it doesn't preclude other genes at other sites in the chromosome from subsequently becoming advantageous and thus being selected at a future date.
True, it merely precludes other alleles for the SAME characteristic from being expressed. I've never said otherwise. You are talking about a stage on the way to the fixed loci, a very early stage.
The selection of ANY allele over others drives out the others -- this must be the case if the characteristic is to be durable.
This is the more drastic if the population is split or reduced. Even over time with random drift within a population an allele may take over and drive out competitors at that locus.
It's the driving out of competitors that I'm talking about. That's the reduced genetic diversity that ALWAYS accompanies phenotypic change whether the change is random or selected. (I call it all "selection" because some are put in place over others and come to dominate the phenotype, but if the word is confusing I'll try to find another term for it. Meanwhile it would help communication if you would extend yourself to grasp what I mean by it).
But, with a biblically condensed time span, all the mechanisms of evolution ultimately prove ineffective. The Bible imposes its own dead end
No, psi bond, the actual genetic facts impose the dead end, and they do happen to accord with the Biblical record. The fact is that "speciation" plays out a given genetic complement in a time span of thousands rather than millions of years. Fact, fact, fact.
With religious devotion to your self-assigned task, you have appropriated a widely-cited article on Talk.origins and annotated it at length (in an extremely condescending tone that pretends to be extremely authoritative) with your one-dimensional view of evolution as a dead end, fantasizing that you are delivering, from on high, science lessons to poor, deluded scientists.
I believe I actually ANSWERED that article, psi bond, but of course you don't bother to address the points I made. For you this is all apparently to be solved by authority and rank-pulling?
You are SO sensitive to this "condescending" tone of mine, my "haughtiness" etc. Oh dear, I think I'm merely stating facts. I can't help it if what the scientists are saying does not accord with reality.
I suppose THEIR haughtiness, and yours, the sneering attitude to creationists, doesn't count? Because you consider yourself to be defending Science? Is that how it works?
That may be a common creationist tactic.
What? Answering our opponents with scientific arguments? Yes, I suppose it is a common creationist tactic.
Yes, I suppose some laypeople devoutly believe they have attained a godlike understanding of complex natural processes, and have fully persuaded themselves that their nonscientific view has all the power of revelation, but, nonetheless, I much prefer the scientific approach, one that is restricted, guided, and modified by whatever the empirical evidence supports----ancient and modern paradigms be damned. As Darwin might conclude, there is grandeur in that view.
I like "evolution defeats evolution" myself. But to each his own.
Your self-important, rigid, alternative view that damns all others with warnings of Judgment Day, can only be, for evolutionary intellectual growth, a sterile rite, a dead end.
You have certainly outdone yourself in this post with the excoriating rhetoric, the flights of indignation, PB. You've damned me and Beamish to Evo Hell for eternity as it is (even hoping our genetic type will die out, tch tch). But of course we all enjoy our little jabs and flourishes, why do you take it so seriously? Why don't you just address the facts?
Because perhaps none of this is REALLY about science for you? Perhaps it's really about God for you? I can't think of any other reason why you'd get so exercised about a discussion of scientific fact. That's the thing about creationism. It doesn't matter what we prove, evolutionists are really fighting God at bottom. Makes scientific discussion quite difficult.
I didn't answer this adequately:
Yes, I suppose some laypeople devoutly believe they have attained a godlike understanding of complex natural processes,
This is an unwarranted response to my claims here. I've been making one simple SCIENTIFIC point over and over, as well as I can, I've not gone deeply into complexities of any sort. I've referred to a very accessible level of genetic knowledge, claiming nothing very sophisticated but only what a person without scientific training should be able to grasp about how population genetics works. I claim no godlike anything. The fact is that evolutionism has failed to take into account this simple knowledge, because of course if it did it would self-destruct. Hence it assiduously maintains its fantasy castle with tales of how one species supposedly derived from another, and can go on with this webspinning until doomsday I suppose, though the fact is that it is laboring under a delusion, a simple delusion about a simple fact of nature.
In context I have to suspect your complaint is mostly a distraction since you have not been able to answer, or even understand, or really, not even TRIED to understand, my argument.
...and have fully persuaded themselves that their nonscientific view has all the power of revelation,
I've stuck to scientific principles all along and made my case quite logically, without the slightest appeal to anything outside the scientific questions as far as the argument itself goes. I've referred occasionally to my Biblical understanding for the sake of orientation, but not as part of my argument, psi bond, and you are being dishonest to suggest otherwise.
but, nonetheless, I much prefer the scientific approach, one that is restricted, guided, and modified by whatever the empirical evidence supports.
The fact is that I have stuck completely to a scientific approach, guided entirely by the empirical evidence. The EVIDENCE is that as speciation occurs, genetic variability decreases. That's FACT. That's EVIDENCE. Your own posts have given support to this fact, this evidence.
----ancient and modern paradigms be damned. As Darwin might conclude, there is grandeur in that view.
This is a lot of hot air in this context in which I've been presenting a reasoned fact-based argument which you have been unable to answer.
Your self-important, rigid, alternative view that damns all others with warnings of Judgment Day, can only be, for evolutionary intellectual growth, a sterile rite, a dead end.
Anyone reading through the previous discussion must wonder what on earth you are talking about. I brought up Judgment Day, what, once? -- ages ago. In some very specific context in which God Himself was the target of my opponent. Otherwise I've been focusing on the scientific fact that speciation comes only at the cost of genetic depletion, a fact which utterly defeats all hope for evolution except within the species.
You seem to be reduced to sputtering namecalling by your own inability to grasp the argument -- or unwillingness to face it. Seriously.
I'll just bunt these softballs away until PsiBond decides to join the science discussion...
You’re not bunting, but hitting fouls, beamish, relying, in your attempts to score, on political insinuations and rhetorical deceptions. The ones you let go by without comment were strikes.
No, beamish, you have stunted your growth by clinging onto a theology that impels you to adamantly refuse to accept any and all reasonable answers that I have given, and that are accepted by rational people of all faiths. With luck, evolution-denial is a recessive trait in the population.
"National Socialism is nothing but applied biology." - Rudolph Hess, left-wing labor activist and Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, 1934
Creationism is nothing but applied theology -- psi bond
Quoting your rightwing mentor, beamish, will not advance your case. I invite you, beamish, to lay off the silly political allegations that I have already discredited at length elsewhere, and restrict your remarks to the scientific matters at hand.
Do tell us more on your views of what the dominant master "genetic" ideological traits should be, PsiBond
I don’t know about dominance; that’s the obsession of the far right’s ideology. But I would opine that a mental trait that should help to enable success in the modern technological world is a healthy respect for science, one that does not consider it fodder for partisan battles and culture wars. I also believe it helps to recognize a jest, like mine about evolution denial possibly being a recessive trait.
There are plentiful clues in the fossil record strongly suggesting that evolutionary stuff happens.
For you, science is pseudoscience, and pseudoscience is science. Nonethreless, evolution is accepted science. In truth, Faith has been liberally providing pseudoscience lessons explaining why it can't literally arise in her barren mind. If you strip the earth of geologic time, you cripple evolution. Indeed, you kill evolution, a murder that she devoutly wishes for.
Your apopheniac delusions aren't serving you well here. It's bad enough you believe dead fish are your ancestors and apes are your cousins (on your mom's side?) without you believing Faith or anyone else could "murder" an inanimate object, much less a primitive theological doctrine.
No, on the contrary, beamish, your theological commitments are serving you ill here. I did not say, despite your misreading, that Faith could “murder” an inanimate object. Like all creationists, Faith devoutly wishes to “defeat” evolution. Hence, “murder” is used metaphorically. Surely, you can understand that. I don’t believe dead fish are our ancestors. However, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans are our cousins, legally so in Spain.
No observable evidence supports the idea that Homo sapiens sapiens has been on the earth for billions of years, or even that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. You also betray your ignorance of science, particularly Linnaean taxonomy, when you speak of “the species homo sapiens sapiens.” Homo sapiens sapiens would be a subspecies of the species Homo sapiens.
No observable evidence supports the idea that the "evolution" of one species into a seperate, different, new species has ever happened.
That is merely the ardent contention of the form of religious extremism peculiar to the U.S. known as creationism.
It is based on a misconception that I described previously. One species does not actually evolve into a different species. Populations of one species can diverge from an original population indefinitely over geologic time, as the fossil record shows, and the end result can be a new species, the population of which cannot interbreed with the ancestral population.
Concluded
Linnaean taxonomy speculates at phylogeny, and the science of molecular phylogenetics is rapidly trashing those presumptions and classifications. The extent of the damage DNA research has done to increasingly archaic 18th Century taxonomic classifications is still being realized.
Therefore, thanks to your googled info, my point that science is not dogmatic and inflexible like creationism is proved. Q.E.D.
A human by any other name is still a human.
That I not a disppouted point, beamish.
My ancestors were humans. They were never "ape-like." They were never apes, and they were never fish. They were humans.
What is your evidence for this undoubted dogmatic assumption?
As far as humans not being around alongside dinosaurs, why would you expect to find the remains of intelligent beings trapped in the conditions required for fossilization?
Because intelligent human beings have been buried or swept away in floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters.
The fact of the matter is you're employing the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam - the fossil record is hardly a complete catalog of all lifeforms ever to exist on Earth and the times they existed simply because fossil formation requires rare, special, and often catastrophic conditions to occur.
It is a fallacy predicated on ignorance to assume that because the fossil record is incomplete, no valid scientific inferences can be drawn therefrom.
Your argument for humans not living alongside dinosaurs is that fossilized human remains have not been found that date back contemporaneously with dinosaurs. Not that fossilized human remains might have been miscategorized as another species?
There are no bones of the apelike ancestors either among the dinosaur remains. What evidence do you have for your accusation? Well, yes, one can fabricate any accusation to support a theological proposition that cannot be empirically verified. For example, maybe dinosaur bones were not real, just an omniscient god’s trick to test for piety among his subjects. I’ve heard that one, too----from creationists.
Not that intelligent humans tend to avoid getting caught in the conditions that created dinosaur fossils?
There are fossil remains of humans, but they are, as determined by reliable scientific dating methods much more recent than those of dinosaurs. If humans and dinosaurs coexisted, then, at the very least, there should not be the 65 million-year gap that there is in the fossil evidence between the disappearance of dinosaurs and the appearance of man.
Your unscientific fossil necromancy lacks the sophistication to presume itself a true or complete catalog of life on Earth in any uniform or universal sense.
This is the old unsophisticated creationist argument, a relic from the early days after Darwin’s work was published, when the fossil record was much less rich than it is today.
It contends that the gaps in the fossil record prove evolution could not have happened. However, today, many transitions between groups, such as reptiles to mammals, have excellent fossil records.
More PsiBond bunting...
More rhetorical deception from beamish.
Calling it historical science is accurate. It studies earth’s past, as does geology, another historical science. It is fallacious to assume that science that you refuse to accept is scientifically baseless.
I haven't refused any science. I have refused your necromancy that alleges that fossils tell you they are your ancestor. I have refused your phrenology that posits intelligence comes from skull shapes and braincase sizes. I have refused your apopheniac delusions entirely.
You have refused to accept any scientific knowledge that is not derived from experiment. Presumably, then, in a homicide case, you would reject the conclusion of death by gunshot if that is the inference bigoted notions of made by a forensic expert who said the nature of the wound told him that.
Feel free to join the science discussion.
Feel free at any time to get over your misconceptions about what science is and join a serious discussion, instead of babbling of Hess and the Jews, of bigoted ideas about pigs and monkeys, Anaximander, etc.
Repeating the same nonsensical claims about evolutionary theory, you demonstrate your powerful obsession with your theology. Evolution is not theology. Evolutionary theory is not a religion. Evolutionists may be Christians or Jews or agnostics or Hindus, etc. If it were a religion or a theology, it could not be taught in the public schools, and the courts would have ruled it unconstitutional years ago. Even creationists have not tried to get it removed from the curriculum on that basis.
Perhaps the belief that Jews are monkeys and pigs allows Islam to be taught in public schools alongside the neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution. (see previous comment's quote from the leftist Rudolph Hess)
The scientific truth is that Jews are of the same species as you. They are not conspecific with monkeys and pigs. As noted previously, your rightwing mentor Rudolph Hess does not bolster your case. The fact you evade here is that, in no court battle, have creationists challenged the teaching of evolution with the contention that it is an introduction of religion by the government.
The evolution/creation debate is a conflict between science and religion. Evolution explains the diversity of life by natural causes, while creationists, cutting themselves badly on Occam’s razor, invoke their god.
The evolution/creation debate is a conflict between two competing theologies. Evolution imagines all life can be traced to a "Most Recent Common Ancestor" and ultimately a "Last Universal Ancestor" a problem bookended by abiogenesis theory and the fact any species does not, can not, and has not EVER give birth to a seperate, different, new species.
Based on scientific evidence that you reject, the Last Universal Ancestor lived on earth about 3.5 billion years ago. Anything that doesn’t fit the creationist theory is dismissed by creationists. Hand waved out of mind.
Occam's Razor says people who infer that a species gave birth to a seperate, different, new species with phrenological speculations and necromancy with fossils are delusional apopheniacs.
Occam’s razor is not what you think it is. It does not say that scientific conclusions supported by overwhelming evidence that creationists scoff at, are wrong if they conflict with biblical myths.
Concluded
Do you also have faith I will be damned on Judgment Day?
Many people will be damned on Judgement Day in manners according to their own religions.
In other words, each religion has valid criteria for damnation on Judgment Day. That is to say, you are a religious relativist.
Do you believe that the criteria for damnation in one faith can apply as well to members of a different faith?
Likely, you'll die with everyone else in 2012 under Al Gore's prophecy of global destruction at the hands of angered Mother Earth spirits.
I’ve heard that some Christian millenarians believe it will be sooner. Also followers of Maya prophecy think so. I don’t believe Gore ever said the world will end in 2012. You made that up like you make up most of your argument, out of thin air.
What is your theory for explaining the many different kinds of living organisms on earth? You could answer this question honestly.
But I don’t think you will.
Well, I don't want to give you the birds and bees speech your Dad should have, but when two organisms of the same species fall in love... they mate, and produce offspring of the same species.
Well, I don’t want to give you the idea I am glad to say I was right, but, when I said I did not think you would answer the question honestly, I was utterly, unequivocally, uncannily, undeniably right. I didn’t ask you how you explain sexually reproducing species. Let’s try this again:
What is your theory for explaining the diversity of species in the earth’s biota?
You could answer this question honestly.
But I don’t think you will.
“Genetic drift operates just as all selection processes do,” you say. Genetic drift is not a selection process.
In actual fact it is, psi bond, but you won't consider the context in which I make this point. It has the same effect as all the other selection processes WITH RESPECT TO GENETIC DIVERSITY -- that is, like all the other processes or mechanisms, it produces phenotypic change by reducing genetic diversity.
Selection is a causal theory of change based on distinctive traits of definable individuals in a specified environment. On the other hand, genetic drift is a stochastic source for the variation that produces the raw genetic materials of change. The point can hardly be denied. You are wrong contextually and conceptually.
In contrast to natural selection, which makes gene variants more common or less common depending on their reproductive success, the changes due to genetic drift are not driven by environmental or adaptive pressures, and may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to reproductive success. It is a purely stochastic sampling process.
Yes, it is random factors in this case that make "gene variants more common or less common" in a population and in some cases not with the clearcut effects of natural selection (although even there you get odd genetic changes that do not impinge on the selected factor as well) -- but in the case of bottleneck and founder effect, which Talk Origins classifies as genetic drift,
The founder effect and the population bottleneck, a special case of the founer effect, are the loss of genetic variation, but some genetic variablility will remain. Although the founder effect can affect the population far into the future, itds effect may be overtcome in deep time, the possibiliy of which you reject on biblical grounds.
you get strikingly more or less common variants, psi bond, and my overall point is that you get REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ALL CASES. YOU DO NOT GET PHENOTYPIC CHANGE WITHOUT CONCOMITANT REDUCED GENETIC POTENTIAL.
I don’t believe that point has been proven. Repetition is not proof. Nor does uppercasing raugment the case for its validity. Selection tends toward reduced genetic diversity but stochastic variation can tend in the opposite direction.
A genotype does not have just one gene. It has many of them. When one gene becomes fixed, there are more that are not fixed and can produce change.
Yes that is true, you can still get change in other characteristics -- up to a point.
Would you call that the biblical point? The fact that variation is circumscribed does not rule out the continued selection over time of various traits that become near optimal under non-simultaneous environmental pressures.
Indeed, as the fossil evidence shows, phyletic lines develop species-rich branches over deep time to increase the diversity of the phylogenetic tree.
Whatever that means. Which evo site are you quoting here? All the fossil record shows is the wonderful variety of variations possible within species, all of which lived together in the pre-Flood world.
I am not quoting an evo site here. I am relying on scientific knowledge. What I am saying is that the fossil evidence indicates to scientists that monophyletic lines proliferate over deep time and become branches in the phylogenetic tree. These branches can proliferate into further branching, thus increasing the size of the tree, which is a measure of its diversity.
If, in every population, alleles at all loci become fixed and immutable over time, as you tiresomely maintain in hundreds of posts,
Concluded
Find one point where I said ALL loci, psi bond. I've been trying to stick to the overall point I'm making and have not gone out on such a limb as you are imputing to me. I am well aware that not ALL loci become fixed, only if MANY do then the creature is in a state where further variation of those traits cannot occur then the creature is commonly regarded as genetically vulnerable and in many cases vulnerable to extinction.
That all of them become fixed at some finite point in time is a point on which your theory depends. If a trait becomes fixed that is at a later time highly disadvantageous, then the population will become vulnerable. But given the very large number of genes in the genome and the sources of stochastic variation and other natural contingencies, it is unlikely that all of them will become fixed at any one point in time.
However, in the case of a bottleneck-created variation, you can be sure that although the other genes are not YET fixed they are well on their way to it, their genetic possibilities are severely reduced, and this is the condition I have been talking about all along. Fixed loci are merely the end point of the process beyond which all change is impossible. At remaining loci where there is still some genetic potential it is going to be reduced because the population reduction that brought about the fixed loci also reduced all the rest. It's in the nature of the event itself..
Here you enter the realm of highly fuzzy speculation. There is no evidence that some fixed loci will reduce the variability of all the rest of the remaining loci.
Whenever you get a population reduction you get a reduction in genetic possibilities at ALL loci for ALL genes, even if there are not yet any fixed ones.
I see no a priori reason why this should be true. Can you cite specific empirical evidence that confirms this dubious dogmatic assumption?
then, given deep geologic time, all species should now be extinct.
Given "deep time," of course, all would be extinct, but this is one of the proofs that deep time is a fiction. The inexorable reduction in diversity with population aplits and reductions -- which is an observable reality if only you would open your eyes -- can only play out an original given complement of genetic possibilities. I believe the reality of these things shows that there was tremendous genetic variability built in at the creation, and although it is reduced in order to bring about new varieties the genetic potential is not completely reduced except at extremes. It is even possible for a species to continue indefinitely without extinction in our fallen world if severe population reductions don't occur.
There have been five or six documented major mass extinctions in geologic time that wiped out most species. But life kept making a comeback from the founder colonies that these events established, and the diversity of species rebounded. However, you are bound to deny these scientific findings because they are inconsistent with the science you read. With eyes wide shut, into the scripture you revere.
However, that is not yet true, you proclaim, because, by biblical calculations that you, having religious faith, consider credible, the earth is quite young, only about 6000 years old, and the scientific dating methods are wrong, according to your personal view.
Yes, the actual facts are in accord with a young age of the earth. The actual fact is that each "speciation" event occurs from a condition of reduced genetic variability and otherwise does not occur. This is what you keep failing to focus on. Fixed loci are only the end result of what is an inexorable series of reductions of genetic variability.
Geological facts, astronomical facts, and other facts are not in accord with a young age of the earth. The fossil record shows that speciation does not preclude further speciation in a phyletic line.
The point is this is the INEVITABLE DIRECTION of all phenotypic change -- direction, psi bond, direction. It never moves in the opposite direction. You never get increased genetic variability but always only decreased genetic variability.
Phenotypic change is directed by selective environmental pressure. It has no fixed direction. You are confusing change with genetic variability.
Again, I'm talking about an observable fact, a fact which many of your own posts here have corroborated. This accords with a young earth, and couldn't possibly occur in the old earth scenario. It's a proof against an old earth.
I have said nothing to corroborate that decreased genetic variability determines a particular direction for change in a population. The appearance of parasitic life forms indicates marked change in a phyletic line that could not have occurred before the appearance of the host animal. This is a strong indication that all life forms did not appear at the beginning. Such phenomena support an old earth.
In other words, you discard science in order to disprove science.
No, true science proceeds as always doing what true science does, discovering all kinds of interesting and useful things in this world.
No, Faith, you misunderstand the nature of science. Basic science, i.e., pure science, of which applied science is a beneficiary, is concerned with finding sustainable explanations for natural phenomena. Evolutionary theory makes sense of biology. The general theory of relativity does the same for physics in the in the external world. Quantum mechanics does it for subatomic phenomena, as the atomic theory does for matter at the atomic and molecular level, and so on. The interesting and useful things you speak of come as corollaries of these grand theories. Even the counterintuitive results of quantum theory seem likely to eventually lead to the development of superfast, vastly more powerful computers that will enable significantly more complex simulations.
And again, without the Biblical perspective on a law-determined natural world created by a lawgiving God science would never have existed in the world at all.
Science did not originate with the Bible but with the ancient Greeks, who laid the foundations of Western science. The Bible gives a false picture of the natural world. It gives us the geocentric system, a flat earth locusts with four legs, the idea that living forms are divided into kinds that reproduce only their own kind and are incapable of change, and other pre-scientific nonsense. The laws that modern science has discovered are counterintuitive to what is assumed in the Bible.
However, as I've also said before, evolution is not genuine science according to the usual definitions of science because it cannot test or prove or disprove any of it. Evolution does not do science, it cannot do science, it can only speculate on past events.
It explains the laws shaping life on earth. It is sustained and validated by the records of past events and present phenomena. It that is not so, it is modified, which is constantly occurring.
Naïvely, you deny the credible results of science.
Psi bond, you really need to stop and think some time. What you are calling science simply is not science. It is pure imaginative speculation, castle-building. Some time just stop and think whether this might be so about a particular assertion you find in the evolutionist literature.
sPut aside your smugness for a moment, Faith, and stop and think what castle building is. If it is built on sand that washes away, it will not last. If it is built on firm ground, it could last a thousand years. Evolutionary theory is built on respect for empirical evidence. If some part of it is not sustained by the evidence, it is thrown out and replaced with a modification. Creationism is not like that because it is dogmatically held to be inerrant. If scientific evidence does not fit creationism, the evidence is modified or denied.
so you can demonstrate that the results of science are incredible and mistaken. Therein is your dead-end circular reasoning.
Oh dear, you are grasping at straws now.
Oh, my, you are falling back on your argument made of straw now. You have no sensible response, so you resort to haughty posturing, hoping no one will notice.
Psi bond, this argument is pretty much my own, at least the terms of it are. I think I even came up with "evolution defeats evolution." Pithy, don't you think?
I've heard the same argument made before. I've also heard creationists who make it make vain claims for their originality. Like you, they are convinced they are uniquely endowed with the gift of original thought.
My you've really worked yourself up now.
This isn’t really an important issue to me; I am just dispassionately stating facts.
Concluded
No, you haven't seen this particular argument spelled out as I spell it out by anyone but me. I'm not bragging, I just have found it to be the case. I work on it myself, I don't consult creationists. I've had creationists tell me it won't fly because evolutionists won't accept it. Well, they won't accept anything else either, and I think this argument has solid factual grounds so I work on it.
If you want ot believe it’s original, thsat’s fine with me; I’m just observing that I have met this exact argument before. Evolutionists won’t accept it because it is not built on solid factual grounds that they accept, and, also, because it shows a naïve grasp of natural processes, not to mention of the nature of science itself.
Your proposal for a creationist poster for an anti-Darwin march is misguided. I don’t think you’ve thought it through. "Evolution defeats evolution" is circular and contradictory. It acknowledges evolution exists in order to deny it can occur.
Pardon me for expecting you to be able to think it through. My mistake. Evolution of the "micro" sort DOES occur, psi bond, it's all we've been talking about. "Speciation" does occur, I've been using that term and made it clear what I mean by it. Nobody denies that evolution occurs, it's very old human knowledge that species vary within themselves. Evolutionists merely assume that the process of variation within species is open ended from species to species. Assume it I say. Build castles of this idea I say. The facts belie it but they go on imagining it nevertheless.
Calm down. Your assumption is wrong: I did think it through. You are too quick to imagine nobody thinks things through but you. What you obviously meant from all that you have been saying is this: Microevolution defeats macroevolution. But to the average guy who reads your bumper sticker or protest poster, that message will not come through. The message “evolution defeats evolution” will only appear as a contradiction. In any case, it is very revealing. You are not interested in doing real science. Your goal is to defeat evolution, which is the sacred goal for all creationists.
But as I've been arguing, the very mechanisms that bring about such variations -- which we may call "evolution" because it's what evolutionists call it, and also for the sake of my pithy saying --lead not to increased genetic potential to vary but to decreased genetic potentials. Evolution defeats evolution says this very well. It sums up the whole argument I've been making. And it accords with the observable facts.
At most, your repetitiveness accords with your dedication. See above my comments on what you regard as certainties. As for “Evolution defeats evolution”, it does not say it very well at all to the average guy. I suggest something more explicit for marching in the street.
You could as well say, "success defeats success." As if it were always the case that success, once attained, precludes future success. Which, of course, is patent nonsense.
See, now you are being silly and as usual refusing to think. I've explained above what the little formula means. Think please.
It is silly for you to be so hung up on your intuitively ambiguous wording. I’ve explained already that I understood it at the outset and why I think it won’t survive the reaction of the average guy. Read please and reconsider. But however you decide, I won’t care.
If one allele spreads through the population because of its selective advantage, it doesn't preclude other genes at other sites in the chromosome from subsequently becoming advantageous and thus being selected at a future date.
True, it merely precludes other alleles for the SAME characteristic from being expressed. I've never said otherwise. You are talking about a stage on the way to the fixed loci, a very early stage.
You are apparently assuming here that all loci will become fixed at some stage, something denied saying previously.
The selection of ANY allele over others drives out the others -- this must be the case if the characteristic is to be durable.
For a given locus, this is the case by definition of selection.
This is the more drastic if the population is split or reduced. Even over time with random drift within a population an allele may take over and drive out competitors at that locus..
There is no argument on this point.
It's the driving out of competitors that I'm talking about. That's the reduced genetic diversity that ALWAYS accompanies phenotypic change whether the change is random or selected.
Of course, there may be reduced variability at a given locus. But whether this eliminates subsequent changes that adapt to changes in environmental pressure is not settled. Nor is it settled that all loci are acted on in this way at the same time or nearly the same time.
(I call it all "selection" because some are put in place over others and come to dominate the phenotype, but if the word is confusing I'll try to find another term for it. Meanwhile it would help communication if you would extend yourself to grasp what I mean by it).
Trust me, I hear you and understand what you are struggling to say.
But, with a biblically condensed time span, all the mechanisms of evolution ultimately prove ineffective. The Bible imposes its own dead end.
No, psi bond, the actual genetic facts impose the dead end, and they do happen to accord with the Biblical record. The fact is that "speciation" plays out a given genetic complement in a time span of thousands rather than millions of years. Fact, fact, fact.
No, Faith, the Bible imposes a dead end. You said it yourself. After the Fall, all species were damned by (an angry) God. That is what I was referring to. That you said that is, “Fact, fact, fact.” That it accords with the history of life is not “Fact, fact, fact”. It’s what I would call castle building in the air.
With religious devotion to your self-assigned task, you have appropriated a widely-cited article on Talk.origins and annotated it at length (in an extremely condescending tone that pretends to be extremely authoritative) with your one-dimensional view of evolution as a dead end, fantasizing that you are delivering, from on high, science lessons to poor, deluded scientists.
I believe I actually ANSWERED that article, psi bond, but of course you don't bother to address the points I made. For you this is all apparently to be solved by authority and rank-pulling?
No, I don’t believe you ANSWERED it. You just gave your view of it. I did not address your “answer” in detail because it would be a pointless effort. It showed a number of misunderstandings of the scientific concepts therein that I don’t believe I could ever get you to agree are misunderstandings at all. You are the one pulling rank by warning us all of Judgment Day, about which you hint you have an insider’s knowledge.
You are SO sensitive to this "condescending" tone of mine, my "haughtiness" etc. Oh dear, I think I'm merely stating facts. I can't help it if what the scientists are saying does not accord with reality.
I am not SO sensitive because I have encountered the same attitude previously in creationists. You could help it if you stop to think that the understanding of reality you have is different than theirs.
I suppose THEIR haughtiness, and yours, the sneering attitude to creationists, doesn't count? Because you consider yourself to be defending Science? Is that how it works?.
Science needs no defense from me. It’s rationality is its own best defense. You seem SO sensitive to my sneering attitude to creationists. I don’t believe I have one. Well, maybe to beamish, given his pompous posturing and silliness. I think, therefore I sneer. Somebody must have said that.
That may be a common creationist tactic..
What? Answering our opponents with scientific arguments? Yes, I suppose it is a common creationist tactic.
No, answering evolutionists with pseudoscientific arguments. That is a common creationist tactic.
Yes, I suppose some laypeople devoutly believe they have attained a godlike understanding of complex natural processes, and have fully persuaded themselves that their nonscientific view has all the power of revelation, but, nonetheless, I much prefer the scientific approach, one that is restricted, guided, and modified by whatever the empirical evidence supports----ancient and modern paradigms be damned. As Darwin might conclude, there is grandeur in that view.
I like "evolution defeats evolution" myself. But to each his own.
Faith-driven pseudoscience or reason-driven science. May the fittest one survive in the marketplace of ideas.
Your self-important, rigid, alternative view that damns all others with warnings of Judgment Day, can only be, for evolutionary intellectual growth, a sterile rite, a dead end.
You have certainly outdone yourself in this post with the excoriating rhetoric, the flights of indignation, PB. You've damned me and Beamish to Evo Hell for eternity as it is (even hoping our genetic type will die out, tch tch).
I made a jest about recessive traits. You distort when you say I was hoping one genetic type would die out; tch tch. Evo Hell does not exist, by the way. At least there is no empirical evidence for it. I have not damned you folks there. If anything, I damn you only to the marketplace of ideas. Let the marketplace determine which of these, evolution or creationism, is more fruitful for the advancement of knowledge.
Concluded
But of course we all enjoy our little jabs and flourishes, why do you take it so seriously? Why don't you just address the facts?
Why take it so personally? It is not so intended. Everyone likes a little fun, even on the most serious of topics. I have addressed what you want to call the facts.
Because perhaps none of this is REALLY about science for you? Perhaps it's really about God for you? I can't think of any other reason why you'd get so exercised about a discussion of scientific fact. That's the thing about creationism. It doesn't matter what we prove, evolutionists are really fighting God at bottom. Makes scientific discussion quite difficult.
It makes discussion difficult when you propagate foolish myths mischaracterizing what this long conflict filling up the blogosphere is really about. Within the context of this conflict, God is irrelevant, for me and, I think, for other evolutionists. What’s really at stake is the definition of science itself that society will sanction.
I didn't answer this adequately:
Yes, I suppose some laypeople devoutly believe they have attained a godlike understanding of complex natural processes.
This is an unwarranted response to my claims here. I've been making one simple SCIENTIFIC point over and over, as well as I can, I've not gone deeply into complexities of any sort. I've referred to a very accessible level of genetic knowledge, claiming nothing very sophisticated but only what a person without scientific training should be able to grasp about how population genetics works. I claim no godlike anything. The fact is that evolutionism has failed to take into account this simple knowledge, because of course if it did it would self-destruct. Hence it assiduously maintains its fantasy castle with tales of how one species supposedly derived from another, and can go on with this webspinning until doomsday I suppose, though the fact is that it is laboring under a delusion, a simple delusion about a simple fact of nature.
My response is entirely warranted by your unwarranted godlike confidence and lack of doubt that you have mastered concepts that professionals master by working intimately with them. Your whining should be tiresome by now to everyone except you and beamish. You believe that by drawing out one strand from the pile, one aspect of an enormously complex area of study, you can spin a theory to explain it all that is true and revolutionary. Laypeople have been trying for more than a hundred years to overthrow accepted science on this theory or that one. If scientists give them scant attention, it is because they are almost always misguided and self-deluded and unable to understand their limitations. Long ago, Martin Gardner wrote some classic essays on this sort of folks.
In context I have to suspect your complaint is mostly a distraction since you have not been able to answer, or even understand, or really, not even TRIED to understand, my argument.
Oh, I have. You must have missed it. Or you have not even tried to understand what I wrote.
...and have fully persuaded themselves that their nonscientific view has all the power of revelation.
I've stuck to scientific principles all along and made my case quite logically, without the slightest appeal to anything outside the scientific questions as far as the argument itself goes. I've referred occasionally to my Biblical understanding for the sake of orientation, but not as part of my argument, psi bond, and you are being dishonest to suggest otherwise.
No, I have been quite honest in observing that objections you have to evolution are driven by your belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
From the beginning, you have said that when the science differs with the Bible and the evidence is inconclusive, you have faith in the Bible, rather than in the best natural explanation offered, or, even, presumably, in another explanation by natural means yet to be discovered.
but, nonetheless, I much prefer the scientific approach, one that is restricted, guided, and modified by whatever the empirical evidence supports.
The fact is that I have stuck completely to a scientific approach, guided entirely by the empirical evidence. The EVIDENCE is that as speciation occurs, genetic variability decreases. That's FACT. That's EVIDENCE. Your own posts have given support to this fact, this evidence.
Round and round you ramble. You interpret my posts so as to claim they give you support. They do not. The scientific approach does not countenance denying or distorting scientific evidence in order to claim the earth has no history beyond a few thousand years, or that fossils are all the same age, or that the immense diversity of life occurred all at once, or that there are no transitions between species in the fossil record, among other things.
Concluded
----ancient and modern paradigms be damned. As Darwin might conclude, there is grandeur in that view.
This is a lot of hot air in this context in which I've been presenting a reasoned fact-based argument which you have been unable to answer.
The above is just a lot of whining mischaracterizing, for your self-aggrandizement, what you have been doing here.
Your self-important, rigid, alternative view that damns all others with warnings of Judgment Day, can only be, for evolutionary intellectual growth, a sterile rite, a dead end.
Anyone reading through the previous discussion must wonder what on earth you are talking about. I brought up Judgment Day, what, once? -- ages ago. In some very specific context in which God Himself was the target of my opponent. Otherwise I've been focusing on the scientific fact that speciation comes only at the cost of genetic depletion, a fact which utterly defeats all hope for evolution except within the species.
You mentioned Judgment Day enough to make it clear where you are coming from. It is not where modern scientists come from who do serious research. The last time you brought it up was in relation to the statement that Occam’s razor eliminates God from scientific calculations. God was not being targeted, only being removed as an unnecessary assumption in scientific theories. You’ve been focusing on denying that it is an unproved contention not a scientific fact that speciation comes only at the cost of genetic depletion.
You seem to be reduced to sputtering namecalling by your own inability to grasp the argument -- or unwillingness to face it. Seriously.
Your inability to persuade evolutionists that you are the anointed one bearing the true word seems to have driven you to muttering frivolous charges. I have not called you any pejorative epithet. Nor would I.
Quoting your rightwing mentor, beamish, will not advance your case. I invite you, beamish, to lay off the silly political allegations that I have already discredited at length elsewhere, and restrict your remarks to the scientific matters at hand.
I did not quote any right-wingers at all. I quoted Rudolph Hess, a leftist who like his fellow leftists in Germany's Nazi Party shared the so-called Progressive racist ideologies at the heart of the early 20th Century eugenics movement. Just because the Nazis were unsucessful at bringing about Marx's "World Without Jews" does not mean you may exclude them from your fellow leftists for their percieved failure to adhere to strict Marxism. Nonetheless it is surprising, given your track record of beating your absurd points of view to death, that you never got around to posting on the internet your alleged "discrediting" of my argument that the Nazis were leftists. Perhaps you've deluded yourself into thinking you did.
I think I can diagnose your problem, PsiBond. Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. It is also the delusion you seem to suffer from.
Especially when you make the bizarre claim that the size and shape of a fossilized skull allows you to measure the intelligence of the dead organism (paleo-phrenology?) and when you make the claim that a fossil tells you it is your ancestor (necromancy).
The data you've assembled to attempt to demonstrate a pattern for your neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution is random and meaningless. Apophenia.
You continue to dodge the central scientific objection to your primitive religious squawking, and that is that a species has never, does not, and can not give birth to another, separate, different, new species.
The mythical idea of human beings as biological offspring of any organism other than human beings is destroyed by the above stated scientific fact. Faith says "evolution defeats evolution." I would change that to "science refutes evolution."
We're back to square one. Let go of your tired necromancies and your phrenology psuedoscience and your apopheniacal delusions of seeing ancestors in fish and cousins in apes.
Quite babbling. Join the science discussion. Show how your alleged fish ancestor (holy or otherwise) magically overcame the barrier that prevents a species from giving birth to a separate, different, new species.
Well, I don’t want to give you the idea I am glad to say I was right, but, when I said I did not think you would answer the question honestly, I was utterly, unequivocally, uncannily, undeniably right. I didn’t ask you how you explain sexually reproducing species. Let’s try this again:
What is your theory for explaining the diversity of species in the earth’s biota?
You could answer this question honestly.
But I don’t think you will.
I have answered this question. Spider monkeys give birth to spider monkeys. Corn seeds grow into corn plants. Elephants give birth to elephants. Humans give birth to humans.
You've stated that the theology of evolution is not concerned with the origin of life. Faith and I have stated that we're not interested in your theology where it contradicts the scientific fact that species do not give birth to separate, different, new species.
You're locked into your Anixamanderian mythology of all life springing from a single "Last Universal Ancestor" at the root of a "phylogenetic tree" branching out to include all life forms on Earth descending ultimately from this "Last Universal Ancestor."
What if all of those branches you wish to glue to your absurdity are in fact each seperate "phylogenetic trees" branching out as varieties within their species from an original member of their species? Why can't there be millions of "Last Ancestors" for each phylogenetic variety within a species? Why imagine against elegantly demonstrated science that an organism of one species could ever give birth to an organism of another species?
You don't want to touch the theories of abiogenesis or even exogenesis / panspermia.
You want to ask "where did all these different kinds of lifeforms come from."
My answer remains the same. They came from their mothers.
The founder effect and the population bottleneck, a special case of the founer effect, are the loss of genetic variation, but some genetic variablility will remain.
You really don't read well at all. I've over and over affirmed that SOME genetic variability ALWAYS remains, but that the overall TREND is to decrease and ultimate depletion. And bottleneck and founder effect are merely extremes of the trend, not special cases.
Although the founder effect can affect the population far into the future, itds effect may be overtcome in deep time, the possibiliy of which you reject on biblical grounds.
No I reject it on scientific grounds. Deep time would only lead to extinction, as already said, and this is because the trend is inexorably to genetic depletion. And by the way, the only way deep time COULD overcome the problem is if you put mutation into the mix, which is what my usual opponents argue, but you've already quite rightly shown that mutation couldn't do that anyway.
you get strikingly more or less common variants, psi bond, and my overall point is that you get REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ALL CASES. YOU DO NOT GET PHENOTYPIC CHANGE WITHOUT CONCOMITANT REDUCED GENETIC POTENTIAL.
"I don’t believe that point has been proven. Repetition is not proof. Nor does uppercasing raugment the case for its validity."
Do you realize that this is the VERY FIRST time you've even acknowledged my argument? That is the reason for the uppercase and the repetition, to bring it to your attention. Now, please try to keep it in mind.
The proof is a simple matter of THINKING IT THROUGH, another thing I haven't been able to get you to do. You cannot get the expression of a particular allele in a population UNLESS ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for that trait are somehow suppressed. Natural Selection sometimes completely eliminates them from the population -- the snake eats the newts that aren't expressing the poison factor. Bottleneck and founder effect "select" randomly rather than for survival benefit but WHAT they "select" is what remains AFTER ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for a given trait are ELIMINATED. Remember this is a kind of genetic drift. Genetic drift of a quieter sort also eventually drives out some alleles as a random allele comes to expression. Sometimes it merely becomes latent. THIS IS WHAT I AM REFERRING TO AS LOSS OF GENETIC VARIABILITY. If the variability remained you would not have the new trait, you would not have speciation. Speciation REQUIRES the elimination of genetic competition, speciation REQUIRES genetic depletion.
This ought to be starting to get through to you now.
Selection tends toward reduced genetic diversity but stochastic variation can tend in the opposite direction.
No, it cannot. It produces new traits, right? It leads to speciation, right? The only way that can happen is by the elimination of competing alleles for the new traits. It doesn't matter if this is brought about by random events, known or unknown causes, sexual selection, aggressive or mild natural selection, migration, genetic drift, bottleneck or founder effect.
Whenever you get a new trait it is at the expense of other potential traits, and that means at the expense of the GENES for those traits.
PB: A genotype does not have just one gene. It has many of them. When one gene becomes fixed, there are more that are not fixed and can produce change.
Faith: "Yes that is true, you can still get change in other characteristics -- up to a point."
PB: Would you call that the biblical point? The fact that variation is circumscribed does not rule out the continued selection over time of various traits that become near optimal under non-simultaneous environmental pressures.
Indeed, so long as there is still variability present, but you are making the usual mistake that I'm laboriously trying to answer. Continued selection of various traits over time ALWAYS entails continued LOSS of COMPETING traits over that time, which means loss or at least suppression of the alleles for those traits. If competing alleles succeed instead, that trait will be lost, an old trait perhaps reinstated. For a trait to be established, competing alleles MUST be lost. This is what speciation IS.
I suppose you mean by "non-simultaneous environmental pressures" changes in the environment over time that can bring out new adaptations? Yes, of course. And genes for many different traits will also be affected simultaneously with every selection/elimination whether random or aggressively selected. It is merely necessary to focus on one trait for the sake of trying to get the point across, but these processes are going on with respect to many traits at all times, and the traits involved switch under different circumstances.
But in all this, the point remains: whenever a particular trait is selected, or randomly brought to expression and maintained in a population, other traits and their alleles have to be eliminated. This is the inevitable reduction in genetic variability I've been trying to get across.
It is the very process of speciating, or "evolving" that brings about this reduction in ability to further evolve. Hence, evolution defeats evolution.
That all of them become fixed at some finite point in time is a point on which your theory depends.
No, this is not so, but thank you VERY much for at least engaging the actual argument for a change. Fixation is merely the end result of the processes we are talking about, and it could occur for any number of loci, it doesn't matter. It's the end point of a trend and it's the trend that I'm trying to focus on. The trend is that the bringing to expression of ANY trait (through selection or random events or whatever) REQUIRES the loss of genetic material for competing expressions of that trait. To get a population of all blue eyed people you eliminate all the alleles for brown eyes.
If a trait becomes fixed that is at a later time highly disadvantageous, then the population will become vulnerable.
It will become vulnerable with respect to THAT PARTICULAR TRAIT, remember. If the trait happens to be a nose that glows in the dark and attracts a predator, there's no way you're going to be able to get rid of that glowing nose if its gene locus is fixed for a glowing nose.
But given the very large number of genes in the genome and the sources of stochastic variation and other natural contingencies, it is unlikely that all of them will become fixed at any one point in time.
If a particular trait that is fixed has become disadvantageous, the presence of OTHER nondisadvantageous traits and their alleles isn't going to alter that fact. You aren't going to be able to get rid of the glowing nose. Now it IS possible that something like better night vision could develop so that the predator could be detected before it is attracted to the glowing nose, or greater speed to outrun the competitor could develop. But you aren't going to be able to get rid of the glowing nose if it's genetically fixed.
Faith: "However, in the case of a bottleneck-created variation, you can be sure that although the other genes are not YET fixed they are well on their way to it, their genetic possibilities are severely reduced, and this is the condition I have been talking about all along. Fixed loci are merely the end point of the process beyond which all change is impossible. At remaining loci where there is still some genetic potential it is going to be reduced because the population reduction that brought about the fixed loci also reduced all the rest. It's in the nature of the event itself.."
PB: Here you enter the realm of highly fuzzy speculation. There is no evidence that some fixed loci will reduce the variability of all the rest of the remaining loci.
Again, I'm SO pleased you are actually thinking about all this. Let me try to answer. It's not fuzzy, simply hard to explain, and it does require thinking it through. The point I'm trying to make is that if you've reached the point where SOME loci are fixed you are describing a situation something like the cheetah which has undergone a bottleneck, or a series of speciation events that led to the fixed loci for some traits. If that has happened you can be sure that ALL traits and their genes have been similarly affected. Whenever you have a serious population reduction you don't just eliminate the alleles for a chosen few traits, although those may be the ones that come to dominate in the new population, you necessarily reduce allelic variability for ALL traits. It's in the nature of population reduction that this must be so. You are eliminating from the new reduced population many allelic possibilities for many traits -- simply because you have a new smaller collection of genomes with fewer alleles available per trait.
Faith: "Whenever you get a population reduction you get a reduction in genetic possibilities at ALL loci for ALL genes, even if there are not yet any fixed ones."
PB: I see no a priori reason why this should be true. Can you cite specific empirical evidence that confirms this dubious dogmatic assumption?
This is really a side issue so it would probably be best to drop it but I've tried to explain it above. How could a population be drastically reduced and all genes for all traits not affected?
But I'd rather keep the focus on the general point I'm trying to make. Remember, I'm talking about reduction of variability, not complete elimination. I'm talking about a trend over time, over many speciation events or just a single drastic speciation event it doesn't matter. The overall trend is always to genetic reduction, the hypothetical end point being complete homozygosity, but whether this point is ever reached or not the trend remains always in that direction. Speciation REQUIRES elimination of competing alleles, requires genetic reduction, genetic depletion etc. Genetic depletion means the possibility of further speciation is reduced. Even if other traits remain variable, the trend remains the same: as soon as a trait is selected, whether randomly or by survival pressure, other alleles for that trait are suppressed and may be eliminated from the population altogether. A population could drift for a very long time without becoming vulnerable to extinction, but the trend is merely slower in that case, it's still the same trend. Once you have a definite new trait you have the reduction of genetic variability for that trait. Evolution defeats evolution.
Corollary: The only way to avoid genetic depletion is not to evolve at all, not to speciate, not to split into smaller populations and develop new traits from the reduced genetic possibilities.
So you either get relative stasis or you get evolution with genetic depletion.
You never get genetic increase. Therefore the Theory of Evolution is wrong.
I got to pondering herd animals as possible exemplars of genetic stasis-to-very slow evolution, the Wildebeest coming to mind. These seem to be content to remain in very large herds and probably rarely split.
Perhaps they have been forced by circumstances to split at times, but it seems that there are only two "species" of Wildebeest currently, implying only one particular split at some time or other. (The question of this animal's history of population separations and speciation isn't discussed at Wikipedia, though maybe it is somewhere else).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildebeest
The two "species" each appear to have strong traits that are distinct from the other --the "Black Wildebeest": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gnou_Thoiry_19803.jpg
and http://www.lalibela.net/content/wildlife_encyclopedia/black_wildebeest/2.jpg
and the "Blue Wildebeest" --http://k41.pbase.com/u46/h4xintl/upload/29790206.BlueWildebeest.jpg
The black type inhabits southern Africa, the blue type elsewhere.
I could keep researching and find out more but let me speculate that at some point in the past an original herd that didn't look quite like either of these types, or perhaps like an amalgam of the two, split into separate populations which developed in isolation from each other. That would make sense wouldn't it?
Another possible scenario is that a small number split off from a very large herd and migrated far enough from it to become genetically isolated. It therefore developed its own distinctive traits while the larger herd, because it was so much larger, wasn't much affected genetically by the loss of the smaller number and retained its original character.
Either scenario could explain the current situation. A DNA analysis might illuminate which occurred. If one of the types has few alleles at some loci or if it has fixed loci, that would show it was originally made up of a very small population, and it would be a good guess that the other type would show the much greater variability of a continuously large herd. (if it also showed genetic depletion then we'd have to postulate an original herd from which both current species split off in small numbers while the original herd died out, say from some catastrophe. It's also possible that genetic drift or factors within the herd that randomly favored some characteristic or another could have brought out new traits over time and consequently reduced the genetic variability, and this would be hard to distinguish from natural selection if it had occurred.)
This is just a rumination for fun, but it was occasioned by wondering if I could find an example of genetic stability or stasis -- or nonevolution -- and it seemed to me that such a herd animal would likely come the closest.
Faith,
Why is it necessary to explain the existence of "blue" and "black" wildbeests (who gnu?) as one splitting from the other? Can they interbreed? Do they in fact belong on separate "phylogenic trees?"
Could it be possible that blue and black wildbeests have always been born to blue and black wildebeests and there's no relation between them in reproductive biological / genetic history whatsoever? What if the only thing they have in common is the artificial label "wildebeest?"
Found a discussion of "temporal" genetic stability in salmon populations:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119423616/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Just thought this was interesting.
The evolutionary potential of a population is closely related to two key population genetic parameters, namely the effective population size (Ne) and migration rate (m).
I'm not sure what "effective" population means, but it sounds like what I was saying about the Wildebeest herds -- the greater the m and the smaller the migrating population the larger the "evolution" or development of new traits (and the smaller the genetic diversity).
Furthermore, knowledge of these parameters is required in order to assess potential constraints on local adaptation and for the development of biologically sound management strategies. We addressed these key issues by investigating the temporal and spatial genetic structure of over 2000 adult Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) collected from 17 sites in the Teno and Näätämö rivers in northernmost Europe with up to five time points spanning temporal intervals up to 24 years (∼4 generations). In all cases except one, local populations were found to be temporally stable within the river system.
Estimates of Ne were generally a magnitude larger for the mainstem and headwater populations (MS+HW, Ne∼340–1200) than for the tributary populations (Ne∼35–160), thus explaining the higher genetic diversity and lower divergence of the MS+HW populations compared to tributaries.
Yes, the bigger the (original) population, the higher the genetic diversity and lower the "divergence" or evolution of new traits. (I put "original" in parentheses because it's possible to have a very large population that originated from a bottleneck and has a very high number of traits that are distinct from the original, plus the concomitant low genetic diversity -- the seal population that PB brought up a while back for instance is an example.)
The overall migration rates to tributaries were low, and in some cases, low enough for local adaptations to potentially evolve, despite their lower Ne. Signs of a population bottleneck and natural recruitment from nearby populations were detected in one local population.
Evolution in action. Note: High genetic diversity appears to be something they want to conserve.
This highlights a fact which is relevant for the conservation and management of highly substructured population systems in general: that even when the overall census size is large, local populations can be vulnerable to perturbations. To preserve the current and to regain the historical distribution of salmon within the river system, we propose that the status of the total population complex should be evaluated at the local population level rather than from descriptive statistics at the system level.
Despite the technical talk I think I get the idea here that they don't want the salmon to evolve. They want to maintain population stability and genetic stability. This is usually the concern of conservationists who are the scientists that DO think about the problems brought about by reduced genetic diversity. They are the ones who are concerned about vulnerability to distinction, and apparently in the case of salmon, the mere problem of a change in characteristics brought about by evolution when they want to maintain a certain standard. They want to "preserve the current and to regain the historical distribution of salmon within the river system" and migration and population splits interfere with that objective. They don't WANT evolution in this situation in other words.
Now, I regard this as workaday science so don't let anyone accuse me of working against science. These kinds of studies in the field ARE science. But please note: they are not addressing the question I am addressing. They are taking evolution for granted and at the level they are studying it IS to be taken for granted. It is the normal variation of a species brought about by anything that isolates part of a population from the rest, whether natural selection or migration to river tributaries. These scientists also usually note the fact that a reduction in genetic diversity accompanies these changes, but they aren't addressing its implications for the theory of evolution, which are absolutely lethal, but merely adressing the practical problems of conserving species, keeping them from changing their character or evolving out to vulnerability to extinction or whatever their particular area of study involves.
The conservationists know about this problem, in other words, but theoretical evolutionists hardly ever address it. It spells doom for the theory.
Oy, Beamish, I'm having enough trouble pinning this discussion down to something manageable without trying to take on the question you are raising, whether the two kinds of wildebeests are completely separate unrelated animals. But my answer is that evolution on this level, the level of "microevolution" happens all the time and is the most likely explanation of the wildebeests as well as many other creatures.
"Speciation" DOES occur, and is easily exemplified in domestic breeding if you want to see just how many variations can be got from one main stock or Kind, say dogs, say cats. Horses and cattle too although they aren't quite as dramatically variable as dogs and cats. Still you get pygmy types and Clydesdales and so on, and we KNOW in these cases they WERE bred from horse stock.
I think it's pretty obvious that two such similar herds as the blue and black wildebeests had to have been developed the same way. And I will go further and suggest that it's very possible that there was an original bovine beast that was represented on the ark from which ALL the bovine "species" descended.
I don't KNOW this but I think it quite likely, and it takes care of the problem of people complaining that all the different species we now see could not have fit on the ark. Well, they could fit if you take this level of evolution into account. All the current species were "in the loins of" the parent of the Kind the way Levi was in the loins of Abraham (see the Book of Hebrews).
And consider just the human population. From Noah's three sons had to come ALL the races of the earth. We were not created separately, we're all one human race, whites, blacks, Asians, Native Americans etc. Same with the wildebeests.
If they can't interbreed that means nothing. Some highly inbred dogs can't breed with other dogs; cheetahs don't interbreed with lions and tigers. And I even think it possible that our little domestic cats came from the same parent as the lion. Possible I say -- it's also possible that God created some separate cat "species." But gee, cats are SO cattish, ALL of them, big and small, seems to me they all had to come from one original parent in Eden. And dogs are SO consistently doggy, all of them, no matter how different from each other in other respects. And so on.
There will always be the question where things belong on the "phylogenetic tree" and as far as I know all we can do is guess, but I believe the observed facts of speciation, both domestic and natural, show that a huge ability to creatively vary was built into the genome of the original Kinds.
What I'm doing here is showing that there is a natural limit to this variation process, and this limit defines a boundary of the Kind, but you can take this out in so many different directions (German shepherds, Chihuahuas, Great Danes, Pekinese, Rottweilers etc.) it makes it hard to get back to the original of the Kind. Something wolflike in the dog lineage perhaps? But the wolf no doubt also "evolved" from the original which was very different. Who knows?
There may be a clue in the DNA, but that would take a creationist who really understands DNA to figure out (not that an evolutionist couldn't but they are philosophically prevented from doing so, despite all their affirmations of scientific objectivity).
Faith,
The reason I ask is that the more advanced molecular phylogenics and our understanding of DNA has become, the more rendered obsolete Linnaean taxonomical classifications have become.
Well, all Linneaus had was his genius for classification. Then the evolutionists made a tree of descent out of it. In the end I think Linnaeus' intuited categories will come close to identifying the Kinds, with some give or take between levels, but there is certainly no descent outside those groupings.
If you can explain the DNA situation simply I'm curious what you mean.
Faith,
18th Century Linnaean taxonomic classification conventions are taking a beating from the relatively young science of molecular phylogenetics and genome mapping. Some taxons once considered separate unit classifications have had to be combined because they were incorrectly presumed to be unrelated while other taxon units have had to be divided or separated into different taxons because they were incorrectly presumed to be related.
Linnaean taxonomy has always had built in difficulties classifying organisms that reproduce asexually. But that's just the obvious iceberg tip. Beneath the surface, the conventions taken for granted in Linnaean taxonomic naming of species as a whole are unraveling with our growing, but still quite limited knowledge of DNA.
This is because the schema behind naming a "species" in Linnaean taxonomy has four working definitions, all of which are not necessarily compatible with one another.
In short, "species" could mean:
"morphological species" - organisms are classified by their obvious differences in appearances. This is "eagles have talons, ducks have webbed feet" level classifications of birds, for example. This definition of "species" naming is the oldest, most prevalent used in Linnaean taxonomy. It is also the hardest hit by modern molecular phylogenetics because it is really becoming only useful for classifying plant life.
"biological / isolation species" - defined by the ability to interbreed and exchange genetic material. Horses and donkeys may interbreed, but they are considered separate "species" because their offspring are always infertile / sterile and incapable of reproducing. The flaws of this classification style are obvious - it can't classify asexually reproducing organisms, and because it relies on classifying living organisms by mating habits and the viability of their offspring, it can't classify unobservable, extinct organisms.
"mate-recognition species" - organisms that recognize each other as potential mates. The classification has the same flaws of "isolation species" classification - it can't classify asexually reproducing organisms or non-living, extinct organisms.
"Darwinian species" - attempts to quantify a species phylogenetically by a speculated evolutionary "common ancestor," with all the baggage we've discussed on presuming "macro-evolution" and trying to make the fossils and mating habits fit. And of course, rare is the rock you can perform a DNA test on, so this system is ultimately guesswork writ large.
The study of DNA is stomping the "life" out of taxonomic classifications previously based on the non-uniform use of any / some / all of the four conventions above.
In short, the likelihood of organisms having been taxonomically misclassified is GROWING with our grasp of DNA sequences, and it is shining quite the controversial light upon "evolutionary" presumptions of phylogenetic precursor / common ancestry. No longer can the idea of common ancestry be taken for granted, and presuming a genetic relationship to untestable fossilized organisms remains the farce it was before DNA was discovered, but now even more so.
Well, thanks for the info. I'd like to see exactly which connections evolutionists take for granted is called into question -- maybe I can find something online.
Faith,
Well, thanks for the info. I'd like to see exactly which connections evolutionists take for granted is called into question -- maybe I can find something online.
The largest leap of faith the theology of evolution makes is the point I've been hammering PsiBond with throughout this thread, which is a that species does not ever give birth to a separate, different, new species. Your approach to the argument runs parallel to mine in the observation that mules and hinnies are cross-breeds offspring of horses and donkeys that can not reproduce themselves, the genetic depletion there is so great that to get a mule or a hinny you need a donkey and a horse. Mules and hinnies can't breed with each other or produce offspring with other mules or other hinnies. On a very rare occasion (around 60 recorded incidents in over 500 years of historical observation) a mule mating with a horse or donkey or a hinny mating with a horse or donkey might produce offspring, but it too is infertile.
Evolutionists have to believe in far more virgin births than we do.
Quoting your rightwing mentor, beamish, will not advance your case. I invite you, beamish, to lay off the silly political allegations that I have already discredited at length elsewhere, and restrict your remarks to the scientific matters at hand.
I did not quote any right-wingers at all. I quoted Rudolph Hess,…..
Hess was a member of the rightwing Nazi Party, which was given absolute power by rightwingers who were in charge of the government of the German republic. If you want, beamish, we can resume this topic of argument, which I already settled when you wouldn’t reply to the questions I posed in a now defunct marathon thread. But, remember, you did say you want to keep politics out of this discussion on evolution. We could also intersperse our remarks on the origin of species with remarks on the origin of life. And we can weave in remarks on health care reform, the financial meltdown, the national debt, the energy crisis, Iran, North Korea, Joe Wilson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, global warming, and anything else you care to discuss. However, it may be difficult for the average reader to follow. But I’m equipped for it.
I think I can diagnose your problem, PsiBond. Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. It is also the delusion you seem to suffer from.
You learn a new word, beamish, and then wear it out with gross misuse. It seems humankind suffers from apophenia, as a matter of human nature. We all look for patterns, mathematical or otherwise, in the abundant sense data of the natural world and in our everyday lives, even in random events like coin tosses. Creationists try to apply the patterns of what are supposed to be God’s words to the world of nature. But the sun does not revolve around the earth, the earth is not flat, the age of the earth is not a few thousand years, the age of the universe is in the billions of years, no flood in historic times ever covered the whole earth, fossils were not all created at the same time, all species did not arise all at once, all organisms are not descended bottleneck-fashion from what Noah could give space to on his mythical ark----to name a few of the assumptions that creationists hold onto that don’t hold water. As is obvious to rational people, creationism defeats creationism.
You continue to dodge the central scientific objection to your primitive religious squawking, and that is that a species has never, does not, and can not give birth to another, separate, different, new species.
The population of one species can be the ancestral source of the population of another species, as transitional fossils show.
The mythical idea of human beings as biological offspring of any organism other than human beings is destroyed by the above stated scientific fact. Faith says "evolution defeats evolution." I would change that to "science refutes evolution."
What you call “the above stated scientific fact” is your often-stated creationist misconception.
Faith says "evolution defeats evolution." I would change that to "science refutes evolution.
Actually, given its unscientific assumptions, creationism defeats creationism. Verily, it has come to pass, science defeats creationism.
Quite babbling. Join the science discussion. Show how your alleged fish ancestor (holy or otherwise) magically overcame the barrier that prevents a species from giving birth to a separate, different, new species.
I don’t have to, beamish. Many scientists have done that already, far more ably that I can, to the satisfaction of reasonable folks. They have done it in both the courtroom and the schoolroom. Only in America do organized bands of religious folks take issue with their presentations.
What is your theory for explaining the diversity of species in the earth’s biota?.
I have answered this question. Spider monkeys give birth to spider monkeys. Corn seeds grow into corn plants. Elephants give birth to elephants. Humans give birth to humans.
No, beamish, you are not answering the question. It does not resolve the question of the origin of species. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that you’re right, still, the assumption that each kind reproduces precisely its own kind does not answer why different kinds exist. How is it that there are so many different kinds, many of them with perceptible or genetically measurable similarities?
What theory do you have to account for that?
You want to ask "where did all these different kinds of lifeforms come from."
My answer remains the same. They came from their mothers.
That’s a pre-scientific, not a scientific answer. Where did their mothers come from?
In other words, where did the first organisms of each of the many different kinds come from?
The founder effect and the population bottleneck, a special case of the founder effect, are the loss of genetic variation, but some genetic variablility will remain.
You really don't read well at all. I've over and over affirmed that SOME genetic variability ALWAYS remains, but that the overall TREND is to decrease and ultimate depletion. And bottleneck and founder effect are merely extremes of the trend, not special cases.
Faith, the problem here is your reading skills.
If I state something that you have said, even over and over again, it is because I need to remind you of it to continue further. There is no need to get excited like you do. You misread again if you think I said bottleneck and founder effects are special cases of a TREND. What I said, read it again, is that bottleneck is a special case of founder effect.
Although the founder effect can affect the population far into the future, itds effect may be overtcome in deep time, the possibiliy of which you reject on biblical grounds.
No I reject it on scientific grounds. Deep time would only lead to extinction, as already said, and this is because the trend is inexorably to genetic depletion. And by the way, the only way deep time COULD overcome the problem is if you put mutation into the mix, which is what my usual opponents argue, but you've already quite rightly shown that mutation couldn't do that anyways.
You are misreading, again. What I said you reject on biblical grounds is not the overcoming of the effect, but the possibility of deep time.
Deep time would only lead to extinction, I said, if your theory were true. But it doesn’t, so it ain’t. Everyone sensible, and beamish, too, accept that the earth is billions of years old. Hence your theory does not hold up. Flood geology does not hold water.
Mutation does have a non-negligible effect in deep time, not in biblical time. Most mutations are selected out, but in the long run some are bound to be beneficial. Mutation is another random source of variation that does not come to an end when genetic variability decreases.
you get strikingly more or less common variants, psi bond, and my overall point is that you get REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ALL CASES. YOU DO NOT GET PHENOTYPIC CHANGE WITHOUT CONCOMITANT REDUCED GENETIC POTENTIAL.
"I don’t believe that point has been proven. Repetition is not proof. Nor does uppercasing augment the case for its validity.".
Do you realize that this is the VERY FIRST time you've even acknowledged my argument? That is the reason for the uppercase and the repetition, to bring it to your attention. Now, please try to keep it in mind.
Well, I’m sorry you feel I have slighted your theory. However, the way you fiercely preach it, I could not help but have it in mind.
The proof is a simple matter of THINKING IT THROUGH, another thing I haven't been able to get you to do. You cannot get the expression of a particular allele in a population UNLESS ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for that trait are somehow suppressed. Natural Selection sometimes completely eliminates them from the population -- the snake eats the newts that aren't expressing the poison factor. Bottleneck and founder effect "select" randomly rather than for survival benefit but WHAT they "select" is what remains AFTER ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for a given trait are ELIMINATED. Remember this is a kind of genetic drift. Genetic drift of a quieter sort also eventually drives out some alleles as a random allele comes to expression. Sometimes it merely becomes latent. THIS IS WHAT I AM REFERRING TO AS LOSS OF GENETIC VARIABILITY. If the variability remained you would not have the new trait, you would not have speciation. Speciation REQUIRES the elimination of genetic competition, speciation REQUIRES genetic depletion.
I’m afraid, Faith, that you have fallen into the error of thinking the patterns of nature are necessarily as simple as armchair speculating prefers to make them.
Concluded
In nature, the researcher finds that the patterns are only useful approximations. As often happens in science, the patterns produced by theory may need to be modified in the light of the evidence. Speciation does not require the elimination of each alternate of every allele that is selected. Speciation does not require homozygosity. Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is not loss of the capability of genetic variation. It is about that that I have asked you for specific supporting evidence. In response, you have given me a speculative castle in thin air.
This ought to be starting to get through to you now.
Yes, it is getting through to me: Your theory is based on abstract speculation, based on your limited understanding of the facts developed by research. You have no solid research results to back it up. It is reminiscent of the old geocentric theory. It looked good and satisfying to those engaging in pure speculation or reading their bibles literally, but it did not hold up when scientific research was done and its results taken into account.
Selection tends toward reduced genetic diversity but stochastic variation can tend in the opposite direction.
No, it cannot. It produces new traits, right? It leads to speciation, right? The only way that can happen is by the elimination of competing alleles for the new traits. It doesn't matter if this is brought about by random events, known or unknown causes, sexual selection, aggressive or mild natural selection, migration, genetic drift, bottleneck or founder effect.
Nature is not as simple as you make it seem. Phenotypic traits are not always trustworthy guides for identifying species. For example, some species of mosquitoes appear morphologically identical, but differ genetically and do not intervbreed. These are called cryptic species. Some of these are carriers of malaria and others are not. One conspicuous attribute of molecular evolution is that differences between homologous molecules can readily be quantified and expressed as, for example, proportions of nucleotides or amino acids that have changed. Rates of evolutionary change can therefore be more precisely established with respect to DNA or proteins than with respect to phenotypic traits of form or function.
Whenever you get a new trait it is at the expense of other potential traits, and that means at the expense of the GENES for those traits.
I get it: This is your mantra. It is an article of religious faith, Faith, that it leads to the ultimate end of the capability for genetic variation.
PB: A genotype does not have just one gene. It has many of them. When one gene becomes fixed, there are more that are not fixed and can produce change.
Faith: "Yes that is true, you can still get change in other characteristics -- up to a point."
PB: Would you call that the biblical point? The fact that variation is circumscribed does not rule out the continued selection over time of various traits that become near optimal under non-simultaneous environmental pressures.
Indeed, so long as there is still variability present, but you are making the usual mistake that I'm laboriously trying to answer. Continued selection of various traits over time ALWAYS entails continued LOSS of COMPETING traits over that time, which means loss or at least suppression of the alleles for those traits. If competing alleles succeed instead, that trait will be lost, an old trait perhaps reinstated. For a trait to be established, competing alleles MUST be lost. This is what speciation IS.
You are making the mistake that you understand the natural phenomenon of speciation. Loss of competing traits does not happen simultaneously across the genome for every allele. There is no research to support that supposition. Nor does it occur progressively and linearly over deep time, the possibility (the possibility of deep time, that is) of which you reject.
I suppose you mean by "non-simultaneous environmental pressures" changes in the environment over time that can bring out new adaptations? Yes, of course. And genes for many different traits will also be affected simultaneously with every selection/elimination whether random or aggressively selected. It is merely necessary to focus on one trait for the sake of trying to get the point across, but these processes are going on with respect to many traits at all times, and the traits involved switch under different circumstances..
Once you accept the reality of non-simultaneous environmental pressures you should understand that different traits will not be selected for at a single time in the history of a species, that many traits remain in play over long periods of deep time, the possibility (the possibility of deep time, that is) of which you reject.
Concluded
But in all this, the point remains: whenever a particular trait is selected, or randomly brought to expression and maintained in a population, other traits and their alleles have to be eliminated. This is the inevitable reduction in genetic variability I've been trying to get across.
Such is the mantra that you have tried to get across, and if anyone, whether scientist or layman, doesn’t agree that this is a revelation, he has to be dense, in your humble view. But you have no verification that this is precisely the case, no specific research carried out in the natural world beyond your head.
It is the very process of speciating, or "evolving" that brings about this reduction in ability to further evolve. Hence, evolution defeats evolution.
Yet speciation has rebounded again and again after many mass extinctions that occurred in deep time. But creationists deny this because these events demonstrating the vitality of speciation are not told of in the Bible. The Bible is their ultimate reference in matters of science. Hence, creationism defeats creationism.
That all of them become fixed at some finite point in time is a point on which your theory depends.
No, this is not so, but thank you VERY much for at least engaging the actual argument for a change.
Thank you, for manifestly demonstrating your inability to read. Engaging your zealous argument is what I have been doing here.
Fixation is merely the end result of the processes we are talking about, and it could occur for any number of loci, it doesn't matter. It's the end point of a trend and it's the trend that I'm trying to focus on. The trend is that the bringing to expression of ANY trait (through selection or random events or whatever) REQUIRES the loss of genetic material for competing expressions of that trait. To get a population of all blue eyed people you eliminate all the alleles for brown eyes.
If fixation is the end result in your theory, then, that all of them become fixed at some finite point in time is a point on which your theory depends. If it occurs for a certain number of loci that is less than the total number of loci, then it is speculation that the trend will eventually complete itself. A blond-haired population will still have dark-haired people in it. Evolution is not like a Manichaean division of everyone into good and evil persons.
If a trait becomes fixed that is at a later time highly disadvantageous, then the population will become vulnerable.
It will become vulnerable with respect to THAT PARTICULAR TRAIT, remember. If the trait happens to be a nose that glows in the dark and attracts a predator, there's no way you're going to be able to get rid of that glowing nose if its gene locus is fixed for a glowing nose.
As everyone nose, you could cover it up, thus becoming less vulnerable.
But given the very large number of genes in the genome and the sources of stochastic variation and other natural contingencies, it is unlikely that all of them will become fixed at any one point in time.
If a particular trait that is fixed has become disadvantageous, the presence of OTHER nondisadvantageous traits and their alleles isn't going to alter that fact. You aren't going to be able to get rid of the glowing nose. Now it IS possible that something like better night vision could develop so that the predator could be detected before it is attracted to the glowing nose, or greater speed to outrun the competitor could develop. But you aren't going to be able to get rid of the glowing nose if it's genetically fixed.
Why. Faith, have you not addressed what I said? Noses are not the entire genome, don’t you knose? It is unlikely that all alleles will become fixed at some historic point in time.
Faith: "However, in the case of a bottleneck-created variation, you can be sure that although the other genes are not YET fixed they are well on their way to it, their genetic possibilities are severely reduced, and this is the condition I have been talking about all along. Fixed loci are merely the end point of the process beyond which all change is impossible. At remaining loci where there is still some genetic potential it is going to be reduced because the population reduction that brought about the fixed loci also reduced all the rest. It's in the nature of the event itself.."
PB: Here you enter the realm of highly fuzzy speculation. There is no evidence that some fixed loci will reduce the variability of all the rest of the remaining loci.
Again, I'm SO pleased you are actually thinking about all this.
I guess I should be displeased that you think I haven’t been considering your theory. But laypeople who have what they claim are revolutionary theories always think that.
Let me try to answer. It's not fuzzy, simply hard to explain, and it does require thinking it through. The point I'm trying to make is that if you've reached the point where SOME loci are fixed you are describing a situation something like the cheetah which has undergone a bottleneck, or a series of speciation events that led to the fixed loci for some traits. If that has happened you can be sure that ALL traits and their genes have been similarly affected. Whenever you have a serious population reduction you don't just eliminate the alleles for a chosen few traits, although those may be the ones that come to dominate in the new population, you necessarily reduce allelic variability for ALL traits. It's in the nature of population reduction that this must be so. You are eliminating from the new reduced population many allelic possibilities for many traits -- simply because you have a new smaller collection of genomes with fewer alleles available per trait.
In trying to answer, you only mire yourself deeper in abstract pseudoscientific supposition. The number of amino acid differences between homologous proteins of any two given species is nearly proportional to the time of their divergence from a common ancestor, scientific research has shown. These differences increase over time.
Faith: "Whenever you get a population reduction you get a reduction in genetic possibilities at ALL loci for ALL genes, even if there are not yet any fixed ones."
PB: I see no a priori reason why this should be true. Can you cite specific empirical evidence that confirms this dubious dogmatic assumption?.
This is really a side issue so it would probably be best to drop it but I've tried to explain it above. How could a population be drastically reduced and all genes for all traits not affected?
In other words, you want to brush it aside, but you have no answer to my question. Perhaps, not all genes are affected because they retain the capacity for variation and are not reduced simultaneously at all loci. Perhaps, nature, being perverse, will not comply with your creationist expectations for it.
Concluded
But I'd rather keep the focus on the general point I'm trying to make. Remember, I'm talking about reduction of variability, not complete elimination. I'm talking about a trend over time, over many speciation events or just a single drastic speciation event it doesn't matter. The overall trend is always to genetic reduction, the hypothetical end point being complete homozygosity, but whether this point is ever reached or not the trend remains always in that direction. Speciation REQUIRES elimination of competing alleles, requires genetic reduction, genetic depletion etc. Genetic depletion means the possibility of further speciation is reduced. Even if other traits remain variable, the trend remains the same: as soon as a trait is selected, whether randomly or by survival pressure, other alleles for that trait are suppressed and may be eliminated from the population altogether. A population could drift for a very long time without becoming vulnerable to extinction, but the trend is merely slower in that case, it's still the same trend. Once you have a definite new trait you have the reduction of genetic variability for that trait. Evolution defeats evolution.
Reiterating your theory in 200 words, all familiar, only underscores your lack of an answer to the question I asked you.
The hypothetical end that your speculation demands is never attained in nature. Random drift is not constantly in one direction in deep time. That is the nature of random fluctuation. Dogmatic insistence that all species, being sinful in God’s eyes or vision enabling system, must be in decline after the Fall is an article of faith for creationists that is not borne out by the empirical evidence that nature provides. Thus, creationism defeats creationism.
Corollary: The only way to avoid genetic depletion is not to evolve at all, not to speciate, not to split into smaller populations and develop new traits from the reduced genetic possibilities.
Your corollary assumes that genetic depletion is comprehensive over the genome. With that assumption taken for granted you “prove” that new traits cannot develop. You are concluding what you put into your assumption at the beginning. Your corollary fails the test of logic.
So you either get relative stasis or you get evolution with genetic depletion.
You either stick by your illogical corollary or you reject it for what it is.
You never get genetic increase. Therefore the Theory of Evolution is wrong.
Differences in amino acids increase over time. Different genes at different times become phenotypically expressive. They are not affected in unison by speciation.
Therefore, assuming logic is illogical, the Theory of Evolution is wrong, in your wrong view.
I got to pondering herd animals as possible exemplars of genetic stasis-to-very slow evolution, the Wildebeest coming to mind. These seem to be content to remain in very large herds and probably rarely split.
Perhaps they have been forced by circumstances to split at times, but it seems that there are only two "species" of Wildebeest currently, implying only one particular split at some time or other. (The question of this animal's history of population separations and speciation isn't discussed at Wikipedia, though maybe it is somewhere else)…...
Some may want to speculate that wildebeests have only recently split off from the phyletic line that includes antelopes, cattle, goats, and other even-toed horned ungulates. Howver, your theory makes such speculation impermissible. Or, because of their dependence for survival on swarm intelligence for river crossings in their search for greener pastures, there is little opportunitiy for or advantage in the establishment of new herds and the operation of founder effect. Or, you could say that Someone decided that two species of Connochaetes were enough.
By the way, the white-tailed wildebeest C. gnou of South Africa almost became extinct, but was saved by breeding on farms. Which may explain some things.
However, wildebeests may be species of antelope, as some say. Pondering herd animals can be bewildering.
How is it that there are so many different kinds, many of them with perceptible or genetically measurable similarities? What theory do you have to account for that?
The theology of evolution assumes the existence of a last universal ancestor at the base of a single phylogenetic tree from which all species past, present, and presumably future ultimately descend from.
Given that all species classified by their morphology, reproductive viability, and mate recognition behaviors can not nor ever have given birth to a seperate, different, new species, where did the alleged "last universal ancestor" come from? Abiogenesis? Exogenesis? If abiogenesis and / or exogenesis, then why assume one giant universal phylogenetic tree from a single last universal ancestor? Why not two independent phylogenetic trees from two separate and unique ancestors? And why not 4 phylogenetic trees from 4 separate and unique ancestors? Or 8? 16? 32? 64? 128? and so on... And since multiple unique base ancestors can't be ruled out, and the fossil record is hardly a catalog of all life forms present in the fossilized organism's contemporaneous ecology, why do the unique base ancestors of these phylogenetic trees necessarily have to have emerged at the same time via abiogenesis or exogenesis? Why couldn't the abiogenetic and / or exogenetic event(s) that resulted in the assumed emergence of a "last universal ancestor" happen again and again resulting in unique base ancestors for seperate, independent phylogenetic trees?
Fossil evidence can not rule this out because a.) rare is the fossil you can do any known method of DNA testing upon and b.) the fossil record is in fact a mere infinitesimal fraction of the catalog of all life that had existed at the age date assumed for the geological strata they were found in.
Given what we know about members of a species - they mate within their species to produce viable offspring also of their species and on and on - then the alleged "last universal ancestor" could not produce anything but another viable member of its own species.
Aside from that death blow to the theology of evolution, there is a greater problem for your persistently pious necromantic babbling about how a holy rock you can't test the DNA in is proof that the biologically impossible happened.
The theology of evolution's kooky universal phylogenetic tree doctrine still has to explain where the Great Anaximanderian Fish, the last universal ancestor came from. Which leads back to abiogenetic and exobiogenetic theories.
Which leads to the speculative possibility of multiple unrelated origin points for the various species - a forest of independent phylogenetic trees sprouting up rather than a singular universal phylogenetic tree.
Which leads to the speculative possibility of enough independent phylogenetic trees to render the question of a "last universal ancestor" for all species on Earth to be a meaningless question. Origins of each species could trace back to independent, unique bases of separate phylogenetic trees.
You want to ask "where did all these different kinds of lifeforms come from." My answer remains the same. They came from their mothers.
That’s a pre-scientific, not a scientific answer. Where did their mothers come from? In other words, where did the first organisms of each of the many different kinds come from?
The same place your alleged "last universal ancestor" would have come from if there were only one and not many phylogenetic trees. Not tree. Individual, genetically unrelated unique ancestors. Plural. Prove me wrong. Show me evidence of a species giving birth to a separate, different, new species.
It’s sad, Faith, but I am an imperfect vessel, not fit to receive your glorious message of faith that creationism is the true science.
You have given no scientific grounds to discard the dating methods that scientists accept (even beamish accepts them). Nor have you given any scientific reason to believe: Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is loss of the capability of genetic variation. Abundant scientific evidence indicates otherwise..
Indeed, theory making is futile that has no backing in empirical evidence. Key elements of creationism have no such backing. Creationism is built on a fundamental misreading of allegorical biblical stories as an unquestionable foundation for scientific inquiry. As a result, creationism defeats creationism.
How is it that there are so many different kinds, many of them with perceptible or genetically measurable similarities? What theory do you have to account for that?
The theology of evolution assumes the existence of a last universal ancestor at the base of a single phylogenetic tree from which all species past, present, and presumably future ultimately descend from.
There is no theology of evolution. Evolution is based on reasoning from evidence. If the possibility of multiple independent last universal ancestors had a firm foundation in scientific evidence, then that would be the theory that scientists would adopt to explain the evidence they have. But given the evidence they do have, it turns out the only current justification for subscribing to that theory is (taking a scalping from Occam’s razor) a tenacious faith in a creator god or, alternately, a fondness for science fiction that inspires theories of exogenesis/panspermia from different separate locations in outer space.
Panspermia was first mentioned by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th century BCE. It was next mentioned in 1743 in the writings of Benoît de Maille, who suggested that germs from space had fallen into the oceans and grown into fish and later amphibians, reptiles and then mammals. Thus, the theory (actually an hypothesis) does not rule out a single phylogenetic tree containing all species, and humans may be the descendants of fish whose ultimate origin was extraterrestrial.
Wikipedia states: There is as yet no compelling evidence to support or contradict it, although the majority view holds that panspermia – especially in its interstellar form – is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space. One new twist to the theory by engineer Thomas Dehel (2006) proposes that plasmoids ejected from the magnetosphere may move the few spores lifted from the Earth's atmosphere with sufficient speed to cross interstellar space to other systems before the spores can be destroyed.
Some modern scientists have considered this theory and are proponents of it. However, that panspermia would produce separate phylogenetic trees for each of the species on earth is extremely unlikely.
Given that all species classified by their morphology, reproductive viability, and mate recognition behaviors can not nor ever have given birth to a seperate, different, new species, where did the alleged "last universal ancestor" come from? Abiogenesis? Exogenesis? If abiogenesis and / or exogenesis, then why assume one giant universal phylogenetic tree from a single last universal ancestor? Why not two independent phylogenetic trees from two separate and unique ancestors? And why not 4 phylogenetic trees from 4 separate and unique ancestors? Or 8? 16? 32? 64? 128? and so on... And since multiple unique base ancestors can't be ruled out, and the fossil record is hardly a catalog of all life forms present in the fossilized organism's contemporaneous ecology, why do the unique base ancestors of these phylogenetic trees necessarily have to have emerged at the same time via abiogenesis or exogenesis? Why couldn't the abiogenetic and / or exogenetic event(s) that resulted in the assumed emergence of a "last universal ancestor" happen again and again resulting in unique base ancestors for seperate, independent phylogenetic trees?.
You should read Darwin, beamish:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." [stress added] (Origin of Species, 1st. Edition 1859).
Continued
Thus, Darwin did not assume that all life on earth had a single universal ancestor. However, molecular biology lends credibility to that conclusion. Molecular biology proves evolution in two ways: First, by showing the unity of life in the nature of DNA and the working of organisms at the level of enzymes and other protein molecules; second, and most important for evolutionists, by making it possible to reconstruct evolutionary relationships that were previously unknown from morphology alone, and to confirm, refine, and time all evolutionary relationships from the universal common ancestor up to all living organisms. The evolutionary relationships among all organisms, from bacteria and protozoa to plants, animals, and humans can now be reconstructed with as much detail as wanted by means of molecular biology. Darwin could not have hoped for more.
Fossil evidence can not rule this out because a.) rare is the fossil you can do any known method of DNA testing upon and b.) the fossil record is in fact a mere infinitesimal fraction of the catalog of all life that had existed at the age date assumed for the geological strata they were found in.
However, the fossils show a pattern of progression from single-celled prokaryotes that lived in the absence of oxygen found in the oldest strata to reptiles and mammals in the most recent. No pre-Cambrian rabbits have ever been found. The original creationist criticism that the fossil record is incomplete is a relic of an earlier era when it was much less complete than today. Creationist extremists will claim that the fossil record is useless, but, in fact, much of scientific value has been learned from it. A 1994 study tested whether new fossil discoveries tend to fill predicted gaps or create new gaps. It found the former.
Given what we know about members of a species - they mate within their species to produce viable offspring also of their species and on and on - then the alleged "last universal ancestor" could not produce anything but another viable member of its own species.
Yes, if population genetics is as simple as your speculation supposes. You suggest here that each species forms a unique unbranched phylogenetic tree.
Aside from that death blow to the theology of evolution, there is a greater problem for your persistently pious necromantic babbling about how a holy rock you can't test the DNA in is proof that the biologically impossible happened.
The so-called death blow is only a misconstrued construct in your idiosyncratic thinking, and not a blow to evolution, as you imagine, which is not, as misconceived by you, a theology. Evolution is not guided by dogmatic doctrines found in scriptures, as in creationism, but by reasoning from empirical evidence.
The theology of evolution's kooky universal phylogenetic tree doctrine still has to explain where the Great Anaximanderian Fish, the last universal ancestor came from. Which leads back to abiogenetic and exobiogenetic theories.
Your misconception is metastasizing, beamish. A Fish is not the last universal ancestor. Anaxagoras may have been your conceptual ancestor, however. And Benoît de Maille’s panspermic fish may be your biological ancestor.
Which leads to the speculative possibility of multiple unrelated origin points for the various species - a forest of independent phylogenetic trees sprouting up rather than a singular universal phylogenetic tree.
There is no denying that one can speculate about the possibility of multiple unrelated origin points for the various species. The question that needs to be asked is, “Is it likely?” It is possible but not likely given all that scientists have discovered.
Concluded
All organisms are made up of the same basic components, which are similarly assembled and used. In all organisms, from bacteria to humans, the instructions that guide the development and functioning of organisms are encased in the same hereditary material, DNA, which provides the instructions for the synthesis of proteins. The thousands of diverse proteins that exist in organisms consist of the same 20 amino acids in all organisms. All sorts of organisms share the genetic code, by which the information contained in the DNA of the cell nucleus is passed on to proteins. All organisms use similar metabolic pathways to produce energy and make up the cell components. This unity of life reveals the genetic continuity and common ancestry of all organisms.
It’s odd, beamish: You have been criticizing scientists for supposedly “pure” speculation, and here you are offering your own speculation as an ideal substitution with little or no evidence.
Using Occam’s razor, scientists eliminate your idea as an unnecessary complication of theory, one that is not implied by empirical data. A theory that posits 1.5 million trees, which is how many species are known (it is estimated that the actual number may be 10 to 15 million, conservatively), more than half of them species of insects, is hardly a unifying theory that opens productive avenues for scientific research.
Which leads to the speculative possibility of enough independent phylogenetic trees to render the question of a "last universal ancestor" for all species on Earth to be a meaningless question. Origins of each species could trace back to independent, unique bases of separate phylogenetic trees.
However, the question I asked you is not meaningless. I asked for your theory of the origin of species, which is a question that Darwin devoted most of his life to answering. Whether there are many independent phylogenetic trees, as you speculate, or just one, what was the cause of the appearance of approximately 1.5 million species on the earth?
You want to ask "where did all these different kinds of lifeforms come from." My answer remains the same. They came from their mothers.
That’s a pre-scientific, not a scientific answer. Where did their mothers come from? In other words, where did the first organisms of each of the many different kinds come from?
The same place your alleged "last universal ancestor" would have come from if there were only one and not many phylogenetic trees. Not tree. Individual, genetically unrelated unique ancestors. Plural. Prove me wrong. Show me evidence of a species giving birth to a separate, different, new species.
The question you keep asking is a misconceived question predicated on a fallacy, as I’ve tried to tell you. And you are begging my question again. Why are you being so evasive about this?
Do you believe that the last universal ancestor for each of as many trees as you want to posit came into existence through natural causes? Or was the cause a supernatural one?
Do you believe that each or some of the trees (which you appeared previously to say originated billions of years ago) produced lineages of descendent species? It appears you do not believe that. Hence, none of the trees can have any branches. Do you believe that each of the more than a million species known that reproduce their own reproductively distinct kind is the beginning and end of its own unbranched separate tree?
Psi bond, I am not engaged in "theory making" here, I have in fact been giving empirical evidence, contrary to your assertion. I'm talking about a fact, a KNOWN fact, something that actually happens, something that conservationists deal with every day although its implications for the Theory of Evolution are ignored.
And this does not represent anything I've said:
Nor have you given any scientific reason to believe: Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is loss of the capability of genetic variation. Abundant scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
That is in fact sheer gobbledygook. Clearly you have not been following the argument.
Conservationists are often engaged in trying to prevent speciation or "evolution" from happening because it DOES lead to genetic depletion which is not good for the species, or just because they want to maintain a stable population for the human food supply, as in the case of the salmon discussion I posted about 30 posts above.
PsiBond,
The physical, observable evidence for one "last universal ancestor" forming the base of an ever-branching phylogenetic tree encompassing every species past and present and the physical, observable evidence for up to over a million of them forming individual, unique phylogenetic trees is precisely the same - there is no physical, observable evidence to bias one conceptualization better than the other.
Molecular phylogenetics can only go as far as DNA testing is possible. While it has been useful in supporting the idea of speciation / "micro-evolution" of selected breeds within a species back to a "most recent common ancestor" it has so far been unable to bridge what are seperate phylogenetic branches in the universal tree proposed by the neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution, which are in my view are seperate phylogenetic trees independently realized from each other.
Whether we're asking where the holy One universal phylogenetic tree or the several independent phylogenetic trees came from, the answers lie in theories of abiogenesis and / or exogenesis, neither of which are incompatible with each other, and neither of which are incompatible with the speculative concept idea of one macro-evolutional phylogenetic tree, or the speculative concept of countless independent micro-evolving phylogenetic trees, or the idea of different types of lifeforms appearing at different times on Earth, connected phylogenetically or not.
The fossil record data does not and can not inherently dispute any of the above because DNA testing of fossilized organisms is largely impossible. And even if it were possible (or even plausible) to do a DNA test on a petrified morphological impression, the conditions required to form a fossil are never uniform or universal (you might say nature selects against fossil formation, hehe) so we never get a full paleo-ecological record of all the lifeforms present at times represented by geological stratification (the uniformity of which is also debatable). We only know about the few paleo-ecological organisms that fell into the conditions necessary to create fossils. We can look at a photograph of a closed box. From the photograph, we can't possibly know if there's anything in the box. Fossils, ultimately, are useless to molecular phylogenetics.
On the compatibility of abiogenesis and exogenesis, abiogenetic theory only proposes "chemical evolution," in other words the idea that life could rise from inanimate matter.
Exogenesis only proposes that life on Earth could have originated from elsewhere in the Universe (in turn, that extraterrestrial life could traces back to its own exogenetic and abiogenetic events).
Mixing the theories together, one could conceptualize multiple scenarios.
If the Universe itself is an abiogenetic stockpile of chemical elements just waiting for the conditions required to spark an abiogenetic event then it is concievable that life could arise from inanimate matter at any time and at any place anywhere in the Universe those conditions are met. None of the life originating in an abiogenetic event need be constrained to a single-celled, self-replicating organism, the complexity of the life created by the abiogenetic event is only determined by meeting the conditions necessary. The self replicating colony of organisms could innately have swarm intelligence or even specialize in embryological fashion so that a symbiotic network relationship inherent in the structure taken as a whole IS a lifeform. Anything from a virus to a full grown six armed blue man with an elephant head could arise from an abiogenetic event, as long as the conditions are met to cause the inanimate chemical components to do so. Exogenesis only adds "any time, anywhere" the conditions are met to it.
We don't know what conditions for any level of complexity of abiogenetic events are, only that at least one and potentially several thousands or millions of abiogenetic events have occured on Earth within the last 4.54 Billion years. We don't know from abiogenesis theory how many lifeforms on Earth might have possibly originated from extraterrestrial abiogenetic events, such as during the formation of the solar system itself. Perhaps Earth is suitable for abiogenetic carbon-based lifeforms to thrive upon. And perhaps alteration of enviromental conditions can select against the survival of certain prior abiogenetically originated lifeform populations at the same time the alteration of environmental conditions is itself an abiogenetic event giving rise to an entirely different, unrelated organism.
Exogenetically, the Earth is orbiting a star moving through a Universe of "primordial soup."
The Bible tells you how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.
-- Paul John Paul II
Psi bond, I am not engaged in "theory making" here, I have in fact been giving empirical evidence, contrary to your assertion. I'm talking about a fact, a KNOWN fact, something that actually happens, something that conservationists deal with every day although its implications for the Theory of Evolution are ignored.
Faith, evidence alone is meaningless. Evidence means something if it does or does not support a theory intended to explain the underlying phenomenon. Scientists understand this. Creationism is a theory, albeit not a scientific one; you are a creationist; purported evidence that you present is intended to support your creationist theory. A favorite strategy of creationists, one that you have adopted, is to attempt to adduce evidence that appears to poke holes in the theory of evolution. Creationists erroneously think that pointing out supposed problems in evolutionary theory lend more credibility to their own theory, which is a story of a fall from perfection. Or, as Phillip E. Johnson said, “It [evolution]is a story about learning to rely entirely on human intelligence, not a story of the helplessness of that intelligence in the face of the inescapable fact of sin.”
And this does not represent anything I've said.
[You have given no scientific grounds to discard the dating methods that scientists accept (even beamish accepts them).] Nor have you given any scientific reason to believe: Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is loss of the capability of genetic variation. Abundant scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
That is in fact sheer gobbledygook. Clearly you have not been following the argument.
This second time around, you may try to dismiss it as irrelevant gobbledygook (if it is gobbledygook, how do you know it’s irrelevant?), but most people will understand it as common sense. It is not “a KNOWN fact” that decrease in genetic variability is equivalent to a loss of the capacity for genetic variation. After all, there typically are thousands of genes in the genome (even the bacterium Escherichia coli has 4,400 genes; Homo sapiens has about 20,000, while maize has about 50,000, and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster has about 14,000 genes). And the number of nucleotides is orders of magnitude larger. The well-established evidence of the re-population of the earth after mass extinctions and the millions of species in the earth’s biota today are evidence against this supposedly KNOWN fact (actually, a theory). Clearly, you haven’t been following or thinking through your argument for the theory you promote here, if you think that that is irrelevant.
Molecular phylogenetics can only go as far as DNA testing is possible. While it has been useful in supporting the idea of speciation / "micro-evolution" of selected breeds within a species back to a "most recent common ancestor" it has so far been unable to bridge what are seperate phylogenetic branches in the universal tree proposed by the neo-Anaximanderian theology of evolution, which are in my view are seperate phylogenetic trees independently realized from each other.
Evolution is not a theology since it is dedicated to reasoning from whatever the evidence is, regardless of preconceptions, religious or otherwise.
The unity and interconnectedness of life rather than the independence and uniqueness of every species is strongly suggested by molecular studies.
You show a poor understanding of how molecular biology is applied to phylogenetics. Let me try to explain simply. Gene sequences preserve something much closer to the fabric of evolution than fossils ever can. Take any gene you want. Its sequence is a long parade of letters, the order of which encodes the succession of amino acids in a protein. There are typically a couple hundred amino acids in a protein, each one of which is encoded by a triplet of letters in DNA. Eukaryotic genes often include long interludes of non-coding DNA, interspersed between shorter coding stretches. Adding it all up, the sequence of a gene is typically thousands of letters long. Then there are tens of thousands of genes, each set up in a similar way. All in all, a genome is a ribbon with millions or billions of letters, the order of which has a great deal to say about the evolutionary heritage of its owner.
The same genes, encoding proteins for the same tasks, are found in diverse species, from bacteria to mankind. Over evolutionary time, detrimental mutations in gene sequences are weeded out by selection. This has the general effect of retaining the same letters at the same positions in a gene sequence. From a purely practical point of view, that means we can recognize related genes in different species despite the passage of unimaginable eons. As a rule of thumb, though, only a small proportion of the thousands of letters in a gene are particularly important; the rest can vary more or less freely as mutations build up over time, because the changes don’t matter much and so are not eliminated by selection. The more time that passes, the more these mutations accumulate, and so the more distinct two gene sequences become. Species that share a relatively recent common ancestor, such as chimpanzees and humans, have numerous gene sequences in common, then, while those with a more distant common ancestor, such as daffodils and humans, retain less. The principle is much the same with languages, which drift apart over time, steadily losing any semblance of common ancestry but for a few points of hidden similarity that tie them together.
Gene trees are based on the difference in gene sequence between species. Although there is a degree of randomness about the accumulation of mutations, these balance out if averaged over thousands of letters, giving a statistical probability of relatedness. Using a single gene, we can reconstruct the family tree of all eukaryotic organisms with a degree of precision that is beyond the wildest dreams of fossil hunters (even of those who found a mummified dinosaur in Montana with most of its skin and stomach contents intact).
Concluded
If you harbor any doubts simply repeat the analysis with a different gene, and see if you reproduce the same pattern. Because eukaryotic organisms have hundreds, if not thousands, of genes in common, the approach can be repeated again and again, and the single trees superimposed over each other. With a little computing power, a consensus tree can be built, giving the most probable relationship between all eukaryotic organisms. Such an approach is a far cry from gaps in the fossil record. We can see exactly how we are related to plants, fungi, algae, and so on. Darwin knew nothing about genes, but it is the fine structure of genes, more than anything else, that has eliminated from the Darwinian view of the world all the gaps that creationists love to jump onto or into.
Molecular phylogenetic, is figuratively speaking, a technology for seeing into a box that is closed by making photographs using high-penetration X-rays.
Generations of scientists may yet have to come and go before the question of the origin of life is finally solved. That it will be solved eventually is as certain as anything can ever be amid the uncertainties that surround us.
-- Earl Albert Nelson, There is Life on Mars, 1956
Who told you that abiogenesis and exogenesis are incompatible? Not Wikipedia.
Of course, beamish, it’s amusing to speculate about such things free from the sobering constraints of supporting evidence and the tyranny of Occam’s razor. To push your extraterrestrial theory further, we can suppose that ours was a barren universe until the spores of life leaked into it in the aftermath of an ancient collision with a parallel universe. Alternately, the spores may have been planted by sapient beings in the sister universe as an experiment intended to confirm a scientific theory or settle a child’s bet. Or it may just be cross-universe agribusiness.
The idea of different types of life forms appearing at different times on earth, as a result of nuggets of organic compounds from outer space, may be consumed by the reality that any such protein-rich material would most likely be quickly devoured by the already established life forms.
However, although fun, all this unfettered speculation strays cosmically far from the grim concerns of creationists and evolutionists on earth, unless we were to debate whether these hypothesized extraterrestrial spores each produced a separate dead-end species (as Faith would require), or, rather, began a process of evolution of genetically related forms, from one-celled organisms to multicellular ones and vertebrates, such as, but not limited to, fish, reptiles, mammals, and man.
beamish: Exogenetically, the Earth is orbiting a star moving through a Universe of [hot tomato]"primordial [brand] soup."
Does this mean that, given the theory of pandemic exogenesis you ardently speculate about in the absence of evidence and seem to subscribe to, the building blocks of life, that you imagine are abundantly distributed throughout the universe (which, according to the view you propose, gave rise separately to each species on earth) did not have a supernatural origin? That is, that the origin of life is due strictly to exogenetic abiogenesis, and not to God?
Or, as I suspect, are you just continuing to dodge my question by interposing another layer of abstract speculation and idle conjecture between it and the honest answer you refuse to give?
It doesn't matter how many genes there are, how many opportunities to vary, the TREND toward genetic reduction is INEVITABLE with every selection or population isolation. You NEVER get an increase with any of the mechanisms of evolution. NEVER.
ASK THE CONSERVATIONISTS. You didn't bother to go back and look at the post about the salmon problem, did you?
This genetic reduction is death to evolution because it means nothing will ever "evolve" or "speciate" beyond the build-in genetic allotment for a particular species.
Why do conservationists get worried about a species that has fixed loci for only a dozen or fewer genes if thousands of genes are available for variation?
You are just throwing out abstractions with that claim anyway, but I've taken it into account already: You can run any group of genes you want, they will still all run out to genetic depletion, they will never increase in variability. Fortunately species have so much variability originally built in, it takes time and drastic events to bring about severe depletion, but nevertheless many have already reached that point, many have met with extinction on account of it, and the trend never changes
REPOPULATION may occur WITH reduced variability. I have certainly NOT overlooked that, I've brought it up myself. The severely genetically reduced seal population you mentioned earlier nevertheless increased dramatically IN NUMBERS. Population NUMBERS is a different thing from GENETIC DIVERSITY. You could have billions of a genetically reduced species and it would still be genetically reduced and limited for further speciation. I have over and over accounted for this. It is YOU who aren't thinking.
Also, let me explain why this is gobbledygook:
Nor have you given any scientific reason to believe: Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is loss of the capability of genetic variation. Abundant scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
GENETIC VARIABILITY = (equals) GENETIC DIVERSITY = (equals) CAPABILITY OF GENETIC VARIATION. The terms are synonymous. Therefore you are saying nothing.
Also, I don't worry about what theory is left standing after evolution falls; we'll deal with that when we get there. Meanwhile evolution hasn't a leg to stand on when you face the actual facts I've been spelling out here.
And again, psi bond, when there is a drastic reduction in any set of genes at all, this means the species has gone through a severe selection or population-reduction event, and when that occurs genetic variability across ALL genes is NECESSARILY reduced. I do wish you would just THINK about the genetic picture a little. You CAN'T have enormous variability in some genes when others are drastically reduced, because the same events that brought about that reduction also necessarily reduce the available of alleles for all genes. You may of course still have some variability. Do THINK ABOUT the genetic picture a little.
Think what happens when a group of say ten leaves a population of a few hundred. As in that salmon example. When a few salmon get themselves up a tributary they naturally rather drastically speciate and differentiate themselves from the main population in the river. Think about this at the GENETIC level. If they happened to be yellow-eyed salmon that went up the tributary and left all green-eyed salmon behind for instance. Think about that situation for MANY DIFFERENT genes not just genes for eye color. At the same time the green eye was left behind a gene for a certain shaped fin was also left behind so now we get a new fin shape as well as yellow eyes; and another gene for something else also left behind a few dozen allelic possibilities and etc. etc. etc. Of course in reality you'll get a difference in proportions more often than a complete selection of a particular trait, so you'll get MORE yellow eyes in the new population but not a complete absence of green eyes, etc. But over time and multiple reproductions yellow eyes will come to characterize this new population. And the same sort of change of proportions is going on in all the other genetic factors simultaneously. The usual: Speciation coming about as a result of genetic depletion. That's how it works.
PsiBond,
Whether you believe in one universal abiogenetic event or several independent ones of varying complexity, you still are faced with the goal post of identifying what conditions sparked the abiogenetic event. God's hand, or inherent properties of chemical elements under special conditions, life arose from non-life "somehow."
Genetic variation within a species (what is called "micro-evolution") does occur. Species becoming another species ("macro-evolution")does not occur anywhere but in the circularly reasoned speculations of those who subscribe to the theology of evolution.
You are sadly mistaken if you believe molecular phylogenetics has bolstered Darwinian evolution theology on a "macro" scale.
I applaud your attempts to join the science discussion. You're almost there.
Also, let me explain why this is gobbledygook:
Nor have you given any scientific reason to believe: Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is loss of the capability of genetic variation. Abundant scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
GENETIC VARIABILITY = (equals) GENETIC DIVERSITY = (equals) CAPABILITY OF GENETIC VARIATION. The terms are synonymous. Therefore you are saying nothing..
Loss of genetic variability owing to a decrease in genetic diversity is not the same as loss of the capability of genetic variation. Only if the decrease is total, involving every gene in the genome, does decrease in genetic diversity result in the loss of the capability of genetic variation. It cannot be a matter of issuing a decree of oversimplification like the one above, making the two equivalent. Nature works heedless of human decrees. Genetic depletion has never been observed to eliminate the capability of genetic variation. Genetic depletion can, of course, make a population vulnerable to particular environmental threats. Still, in nature, in deep time, the major groups of living organisms have recovered and diversified after major disasters that wiped out many species across the phylogenetic spectrum. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. The decimation of species in ecological niches allows new species to move in that can evolve adaptations to them.
Also, I don't worry about what theory is left standing after evolution falls; we'll deal with that when we get there. Meanwhile evolution hasn't a leg to stand on when you face the actual facts I've been spelling out here.
There is a difference between theory and fact, especially scientific theory and empirical fact, that you consistently fail to grasp here. I don’t know how to spell it out more simply.
Whether or not you personally avow it is your goal is unimportant (I’m sure your only motive is to set poor scientists on the right path), but what I am referring to is the longtime well-documented drive by creationists to try to knock the legs out from under the scientific theory of evolution so as to promote the respectability and prop up the standing of creationism and covert biblical literalism in the public schools and the public marketplace of ideas.
There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams
Whether you believe in one universal abiogenetic event or several independent ones of varying complexity, you still are faced with the goal post of identifying what conditions sparked the abiogenetic event. God's hand, or inherent properties of chemical elements under special conditions, life arose from non-life "somehow."
Whether you know it or not, beamish, that is, in effect, a long-winded platitude. Of course, life had an abiogenetic origin, with or without God’s intervention, unless we posit illogically that life has always existed in some form in a universe without beginning or end.
Nonetheless, you are mistaken here about one point: A theory of the origin of life is not, as you seem to assume, the “goal post” of a theory of the origin of species. The two address separate questions. The scientific theory explaining the former may be in a primitive state while the scientific theory for the latter is well developed.
In your humble theory, beamish, is the origin of life due to God, or to wholly natural causes?
Genetic variation within a species (what is called "micro-evolution") does occur. Species becoming another species ("macro-evolution")does not occur anywhere but in the circularly reasoned speculations of those who subscribe to the theology of evolution.
Macroevolution does appear likely if one does not unreasonably deny the obvious implications of the existence of transitional species and categorically deny the strong evidence from molecular phylogenetics.
“Species becoming other species” is a circular form of fallacious thinking. Organisms do not produce copies of themselves to create the next generation----they produce complex sets of organism-building instructions that are subject to multiple sources of variation.
Evolution is not a theology since it has no use for religious doctrines, and is accepted by people of all religious faiths or none.
You are sadly mistaken if you believe molecular phylogenetics has bolstered Darwinian evolution theology on a "macro" scale.
You are sadly mistaken if you think it means anything to obstinately declare that there is nothing to molecular phylogenetics or the unity of life that it bolsters. You are, of course, entitled to this extreme opinion, but scientists who have worked on the problems do not share it.
Evolution is not theology; only its opponents willfully mischaracterize it as such.
I applaud your attempts to join the science discussion. You're almost there.
Notwithstanding your unwarranted smugness, in the self-important remarks that you deliver here, you are far off the beam, beamish, with regard to a scientific discussion. You need to ground your remarks in what the firm evidence from earth tells us.
In any serious scientific discussion, the hypothesis positing millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees is a preposterous notion.
PsiBond,
In any serious scientific discussion, the hypothesis positing millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees is a preposterous notion.
Perhaps it is a religious reflex that causes you to retreat from joining a science discussion when it is pointed out that you're beginning to approach one.
I never contended that a phylogenetic tree would be unbranched. Just that there are several phylogenetic trees tracing back to their own unique root "last ancestors" emerging from separate abiogenetic events.
My theory stops at what molecular phylogenetics proves.
Your theology wants to uproot my phylogenetic "forest" and attempt to glue the root ends of them to the trunks or branches of each other with question marks and proclaim a single universal phylogenetic tree.
My theory can be illustrated with a "forest" of unconnected, individually branched phylogenetic trees which matches what molecular phylogenetics can demonstrate.
Your theology creates a diagram of ignorance, wondering how an influenza virus "evolved" into a horse.
Loss of genetic variability owing to a decrease in genetic diversity is not the same as loss of the capability of genetic variation. Only if the decrease is total, involving every gene in the genome, does decrease in genetic diversity result in the loss of the capability of genetic variation.
There is no doubt a problem with how terminology is getting used here, but I’ve been trying to make it clear that I’m talking about an overall REDUCTION in genetic diversity, not a LOSS, at least not a TOTAL LOSS. Homozygosity IS a total loss for THOSE genes and THAT has come up, but total loss for ALL genes, no. That total loss is a hypothetical toward which all the reduction processes tend but it may not ever be reached in reality. In fact a species may become extinct from the loss of variability at only a few loci, well before any supposed total loss could occur.
The REDUCTION of genetic variability is INEXORABLE. This is the point that matters. The TREND is to reduction, and never to increase. Ever. As I said, go ask the conservationists. Go think about the salmon situation I posted about.
Genetic depletion has never been observed to eliminate the capability of genetic variation.
I believe in the case of the cheetah it has, and that seal that was nearly killed off. It is observed by conservationists all the time, but it's a lot clearer if you use the proper term "REDUCE" instead of "ELIMINATE." You are totalizing something I have not totalized.
The point as far as the implications for evolution go is that the trend is to reduction, while evolution, to be true, requires an increase instead.
Genetic depletion can, of course, make a population vulnerable to particular environmental threats.
And that is because it reduces the capability of further variation – REDUCES. At the extremes, even if there are still genes with allelic options available, further variation really is for all intents and purposes impossible.
The trend is inescapable IN REALITY, therefore evolution cannot happen beyond the set genetic complement built into the species.
Still, in nature, in deep time, the major groups of living organisms have recovered and diversified after major disasters that wiped out many species across the phylogenetic spectrum.
No, you are confused. What has happened, and NOT IN DEEP TIME BUT IN ORDINARY TIME, is that SOME genetic variability is left after a great deal has been wiped out, and that REMAINDER is what diversifies. It leads to "speciation" as always. I believe this is clear in the examples of the salmon and especially the ring species, where this sort of diversification and new population growth happen time after time after time WHILE THE OVERALL TREND IS REDUCTION IN GENETIC DIVERSITY / VARIABILITY etc. This can repeat itself over and over before the reduction becomes restrictive enough to prevent further speciation.
In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. The decimation of species in ecological niches allows new species to move in that can evolve adaptations to them.
Translation: in a series of layers of rocks it has been found that there are gaps in what evolutionists expect to find, so they interpret this as events in which animal species died. Although I don’t know what “allowing new species to move in” has to do with what we’re discussing. In any event, the idea of loss and recovery as read from the rocks is merely an unprovable interpretation based on the theory of evolution.
However, the principle of recovery after great loss of population is real enough in real time and can be discussed more productively apart from the fossils.
If we are talking about the continued variation and repopulation of the SAME species after a KNOWN great loss, such as a bottleneck that wiped out a huge proportion of a population, then this is the diversification of the REMAINDER of the genetic potential as I say above. There is nothing in this I haven't accounted for, in fact many times in this discussion. This recovery of population and diversity has happened over and over and over and yet, again, the overall trend is nevertheless always inexorably to overall reduction of the capacity for variation.
I happen to believe the Flood wiped out well over 99% of all living things, remember, and yet I believe that there was enough genetic variability left in that less-than-1% to populate the earth with all the diverse life we see today. This was done with what was LEFT after over 99% was wiped out. You just haven't been following the argument or you wouldn't be trying to tax me with something that's so intrinsic to everything I've already argued as if I'd ignored it.
It's NOW that the playing out of the dance of selection and population reductions is starting to become a problem in the world. We are NOW at the point where the genetic limits are starting to be reached for some species. It is NOW that the end point of the "processes of evolution" can be seen to be the opposite of what the Theory of Evolution predicts. It is NOW that we are reaching the limits of the wonderfully abundant genetic versatility originally built into the species. It is NOW that we can begin to see that it DID start with an original built-in complement that can do nothing but decrease with speciation events. The same trend goes on even when the variability remains rich though it may only become a problem when most of it has been depleted.
So, in the example of the Founder Effect of Noah's family being the progenitors of all population and diversification since the Flood -- just take it as a hypothetical --
the genetic variability of the human race and all other living things was reduced drastically to put it mildly. It is hard to comprehend how much genetic potential would have been lost in such an event, all the variations that existed before the Flood and no longer exist. The quantity and variety is staggering to think about. That was a great loss, a great loss in genetic diversity, a great loss in genetic variability. It's totally gone, never to be recovered.
And yet, from that mere tiny number that was left we got all the amazing diversity we now see.
But clearly, there must be an end point to such processes. Some species have already reached it, but there's still a lot of variability left in others. But the overall trend can't be denied.
If you want to insist that there is an INCREASE in genetic variability after a great loss of population, you are going to have to explain the mechanism that would make such a thing possible. All the mechanisms that lead to speciation work in the opposite direction, producing changes in the phenotype only because of the inevitable concomitant reduction of genetic variability.
Reminder. I hope you regard my thoughts about the bottleneck at the Flood as a hypothetical to show that I expect genetic variability to remain after most speciation events. Otherwise you're going to go off on a lot of useless pontificating against creationists which misses the point. The point is only that genetic variability is always reduced although there may be a great deal left. If you balk at the Noah story, then substitute your fossil record mass population deaths. I know they aren't real because the rocks don't record the passage of time, but since you regard them as reality, the same kind of reasoning applies to them as applies to Noah. It's only in very recent time that genetic depletion is starting to become a problem, though it's always been the trend with speciation events.
Faith: If you want to insist that there is an INCREASE in genetic variability after a great loss of population, you are going to have to explain the mechanism that would make such a thing possible. All the mechanisms that lead to speciation work in the opposite direction, producing changes in the phenotype only because of the inevitable concomitant reduction of genetic variability.
No, Faith, I do not say there is “an INCREASE in genetic variability after a great loss of population.” I say that the capability of genetic variation is retained. Despite your previous efforts to conflate the two for the sake of your theory, this capability is not synonymous with genetic variability expressed in the phenotype.
Of course, much in the study of evolution remains to be discovered. However, a mechanism increasing genetic diversity that has not been discussed in this thread heretofore is horizontal gene transfer . According to Wikipedia:
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), also Lateral gene transfer (LGT), is any process in which an organism incorporates genetic material from another organism without being the offspring of that organism. By contrast, vertical transfer occurs when an organism receives genetic material from its ancestor, e.g. its parent or a species from which it evolved. Most thinking in genetics has focused upon vertical transfer, but there is a growing awareness that horizontal gene transfer is a highly significant phenomenon, and amongst single-celled organisms perhaps the dominant form of genetic transfer.
Viruses are ubiquitous, as they are found in almost every ecosystem on earth, and are the most abundant type of biological entity on the planet. In evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer increasing genetic diversity
Horizontal gene transfer was first described in Japan in a 1959 publication that demonstrated the transfer of antibiotic resistance between different species of bacteria. In the mid-1980s, Syvanen predicted that lateral gene transfer existed, had biological significance, and was involved in shaping evolutionary history from the beginning of life on Earth. As Jain, Rivera and Lake (1999) put it: "Increasingly, studies of genes and genomes are indicating that considerable horizontal transfer has occurred between prokaryotes." (see also Lake and Rivera, 2007). The phenomenon appears to have had some significance for unicellular eukaryotes as well. As Bapteste et al. (2005) observe, "additional evidence suggests that gene transfer might also be an important evolutionary mechanism in protist evolution."
During microbial evolution, the ability of bacteria and archaea to adapt to new environments most often results from the acquisition of new genes through HGT.
From another site: Junk DNA is the most obvious general evidence of HGT in eukaryotes. Junk DNA is the name given to the seemingly non-functional repetitive DNA sequences that are a major portion of the genomes of many plants and animals. This DNA usually includes multiple copies of various 'Jumping genes' which can proliferate within a genome after they have been transferred from another species. Examples in the human of such mobile elements are 'Hsmar1' and 'Hsmar2' which are related to the widely studied 'mariner' transposon. Close relatives of mariner mobile DNA have been discovered in organisms as diverse as mites, flatworms, hydras, insects, nematodes, mammals and humans. Retroviruses and retrotransposons are other examples of mobile horizontally transferred DNA found in animals.
HGT material can pass between organisms that are not even of the same species, genus, sub-kingdom or kingdom of life form. Clearly, when HGT is considered with other sources of variability, the potential for genetic variation may be seen to be virtually limitless in deep time.
In any serious scientific discussion, the hypothesis positing millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees is a preposterous notion.
Perhaps it is a religious reflex that causes you to retreat from joining a science discussion when it is pointed out that you're beginning to approach one.
It may be your propensity for posturing and bloviation that impels you to make these distracting absurd accusations, beamish. Any intention to want to conduct a scientific discussion can only be thereby disrupted.
In truth, someone who rejects outright, as you do, basic well-established findings of science, makes a sensible scientific discussion impossible.
I never contended that a phylogenetic tree would be unbranched. Just that there are several phylogenetic trees tracing back to their own unique root "last ancestors" emerging from separate abiogenetic events.
Let me explain: A phylogenetic tree shows the relationship between ancestor species and descendent species. If, as you have claimed, no species evolves into another species, i.e., no species has an ancestor species, then the phylogenetic tree has no branches, i.e., it is unbranched. Which means, according to your unscientific theory, each of the millions of species is its own unbranched phylogenetic tree.
My theory stops at what molecular phylogenetics proves.
In other words, your unscientific theory rejects without justification a large and significant portion of modern biology.
Whereas molecular phylogenetics demonstrates convincingly that all living organisms are interconnected, you proclaim that no species is related to any other species, which is consistent with the nonfactual pre-scientific religious theory according which, within a brief span of time, God created each species separately----is that what you believe, beamish?
Your theology wants to uproot my phylogenetic "forest" and attempt to glue the root ends of them to the trunks or branches of each other with question marks and proclaim a single universal phylogenetic tree.
I don’t have a theology about this; it seems you do. The scientific fact is that abundant evidence shows the relationships between different species, and these can be quantified by different methods that corroborate each other objectively. For each organism carries a record of its ancestry in its DNA.
My theory can be illustrated with a "forest" of unconnected, individually branched phylogenetic trees which matches what molecular phylogenetics can demonstrate.
Your factually unsupported forest of a huge number of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees does not match what molecular phylogenetics clearly demonstrates. It replaces a single multibranched tree with millions of unbranched trees. It replaces a unifying, fertile, scientific theory with a chaotic, sterile, faith-based one. It supposes millions of isolated causes where science supposes just one. It champions an obsolete, pre-scientific conception of the natural world.
Your theology creates a diagram of ignorance, wondering how an influenza virus "evolved" into a horse.
It is a sign of ignorance to think a flu virus evolved into a horse. Viruses are parasites that can reproduce only inside a host cell. You want to put the cart before the horse, but the host came first.
Wikipedia: “The origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are unclear: some may have evolved from plasmids----pieces of DNA that can move between cells—while others may have evolved from bacteria. In evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity.”
PsiBond,
Let me explain: A phylogenetic tree shows the relationship between ancestor species and descendent species. If, as you have claimed, no species evolves into another species, i.e., no species has an ancestor species, then the phylogenetic tree has no branches, i.e., it is unbranched. Which means, according to your unscientific theory, each of the millions of species is its own unbranched phylogenetic tree.
It's bad enough you've avoided joining the science discussion for well over 300 posts in this thread without you shielding yourself behind a lack of reading comprehension skills.
I never stated that phylogenetic trees are unbranched. I'm not talking about phylogenetic telephone poles (though you may be, with your recent wiki-discovery into horizontal genetic transfer theory...) Of course my phylogenetic trees are branched. I'm only arguing that they are seperate trees (with branches), and not themselves branches on a universal tree.
The branches on my phylogenetic trees represent populational distinctions (haplogroupings) you'd expect from reductions in genetic variability within a species, not seperate species themselves. Horses and donkeys can mate, although their offspring are almost always infertile. That they can mate and produce offspring at all demonstrates they're related. They're branches on the same phylogenetic tree. Molecular phylogenetics has confirmed that yes, donkeys are a different kind of horse. (Golf clap.)
Molecular phylogenetics is turning Linnaean taxonomy on its head. As the science advances, it's becoming more apparent that the Linnaean taxonomic classification system is becoming both increasingly obsolete, and in the case of classifying the species of extinct organisms known only by fossilized remnants, increasingly speculative.
I stick to what is supportable with evidence. All life on earth is on a phylogenetic tree.
Not all life is on the same phylogenetic tree.
There are many phylogenetic trees.
There is no universal phylogenetic tree.
I actually think the idea of viral "horizontal genetic transfer" makes my multiple abiogenetic / exogenetic events theory even more plausible.
I don't see how it wouldn't.
No, Faith, I do not say there is “an INCREASE in genetic variability after a great loss of population.” I say that the capability of genetic variation is retained.
Oh, that's too bad because the only thing that could save you from such flatout rejection of reality IS some source of increase.
The fact is that speciation ALWAYS reduces genetic variability, but now you've resorted to closing your eyes and digging in your heels and outright denying simple fact.
As for your attempt to suggest a source of increase in spite of all, I'm sure there's so MUCH horizontal gene transfer we never again have to worry about extinctions or depletion from speciation, right? Do let the conservationists know so they can stop worrying.
Denial plus grasping at straws now.
Faith, let me explain once again: Speciation reduces genetic variability to some degree, but it does not eradicate the potential for genetic variation. The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is one indication that this potential is not subject to the lockdown that is postulated by your draconian theory of speciation, which (speciation) creationists deny has ever occurred.
A tiny spark suffices. Some groups have remained stable for millions of years and then exhibited a burst of speciation.
The conservationists whom you champion think in terms not of deep time, but of human time.
Faith, when you start in again talking about straws, it indicates you have no coherent response to make and are grasping for epithets as a straw substitution. You have to deny a great deal of well-documented scientific evidence to support your theory of the Fall----like deep time, transitional species, the differences in the ages of fossils, and the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species. And your denial now includes horizontal gene transfer’s effect on genetic diversity.
It's bad enough you've avoided joining the science discussion for well over 300 posts in this thread without you shielding yourself behind a lack of reading comprehension skills.
A dispassionate “scientific” discussion without disruptive ad hominem personal attacks seems to be something you’re incapable of. The problem does not have anything to do with my reading skills; it concerns your rejection of the definition of a phylogenetic tree that is in standard use among evolutionary biologists.
I never stated that phylogenetic trees are unbranched. I'm not talking about phylogenetic telephone poles (though you may be, with your recent wiki-discovery into horizontal genetic transfer theory...)
Actually, the observed phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is something I brought up and discussed about two years ago in a very similar marathon discussion with another creationist.
Of course my phylogenetic trees are branched. I'm only arguing that they are seperate trees (with branches), and not themselves branches on a universal tree.
A lineage with no species that split off from it is a barren unbranched phylogenetic tree. You are arguing that branches exist on your Orwellian redefinition of an evolutionary tree, but these branches do not represent species, but, rather, combinations of alleles.
The branches on my phylogenetic trees represent populational distinctions (haplogroupings) you'd expect from reductions in genetic variability within a species, not seperate species themselves. Horses and donkeys can mate, although their offspring are almost always infertile. That they can mate and produce offspring at all demonstrates they're related. They're branches on the same phylogenetic tree. Molecular phylogenetics has confirmed that yes, donkeys are a different kind of horse. (Golf clap.)
Molecular phylogenetics and the fact that donkeys and horses produce infertile offspring (which I mentioned previously) confirm that they are different species that have a common ancestor. The horse family Equidae includes horses, donkeys, zebras, and extinct species.
Switching definitions, you want to redefine a phylogenetic tree as representing a relationship between haplotypes, i.e., combinations of alleles, but that is not the definition evolutionary biologists use when they illustrate species relationships. (Badabing!)
Molecular phylogenetics is turning Linnaean taxonomy on its head. As the science advances, it's becoming more apparent that the Linnaean taxonomic classification system is becoming both increasingly obsolete, and in the case of classifying the species of extinct organisms known only by fossilized remnants, increasingly speculative.
Unsurprisingly, biology has made progress since the 18th century when Western science was in its infancy and Carolus Linnaeus invented his binomial nomenclatural system. Linnaeus was not an evolutionist, and his classifications were based on morphology. DNA sequencing, a tool of considerable utility in identifying species relationships, was, of course, unknown to Linnaeus. There are now more precise means of recognizing species than those that morphological studies provide. These include molecular phylogenetics, whose findings you reject at the same time that you recognize its success in advancing scientific knowledge.
All of this demonstrates that evolutionary science is not dogmatic. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the unscientific dogmatism of creationists, who will always assert, albeit not always in public, that each species was the result of a separate act of creation by God. Is that what you believe, beamish?
Concluded
I stick to what is supportable with evidence. All life on earth is on a phylogenetic tree.
Do you think this is in dispute? It is not. All life on earth is related in terms of ancestry and descent. Only the number of trees is in dispute. Scientists, sticking to what is supportable by evidence, state there is but one. Creationists, taking literally what they believe to be God’s word as the basis for scientific conclusions, maintain that there are millions of unbranched trees, one for each supposedly nonevolving species.
Not all life is on the same phylogenetic tree.
All organisms, living and extinct, have a common phylogenetic origin.
There are many phylogenetic trees.
The varying degrees of similarity between different organisms are expressions of phylogenetic kinship.
There is no universal phylogenetic tree.
The universal phylogenetic tree not only spans all extant life, but its root and earliest branchings represent stages in the evolutionary process before modern cell types had come into being.
-- Carl R. Woese, microbiologist, physicist, and pioneering phylogenetic taxonomist
PsiBond,
Unsurprisingly, biology has made progress since the 18th century when Western science was in its infancy and Carolus Linnaeus invented his binomial nomenclatural system. Linnaeus was not an evolutionist, and his classifications were based on morphology. DNA sequencing, a tool of considerable utility in identifying species relationships, was, of course, unknown to Linnaeus. There are now more precise means of recognizing species than those that morphological studies provide. These include molecular phylogenetics, whose findings you reject at the same time that you recognize its success in advancing scientific knowledge.
All of this demonstrates that evolutionary science is not dogmatic. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the unscientific dogmatism of creationists, who will always assert, albeit not always in public, that each species was the result of a separate act of creation by God. Is that what you believe, beamish?
If anyone is looking for religiously held dogma, one need only read back a few posts and see your rejection of my proposed alternate method of tracking phylogenetic relationships via haplogroupings because it is a "rejection of the definition of a phylogenetic tree that is in standard use among evolutionary biologists." Anaximander's Fish be praised.
Well, yes, I've blasphemed the standard used by those that subscribe to the theology of evolution. Perhaps this is the source of your reluctance to join the science discussion.
All I can say about the way my alternative model defines a phylogenetic tree and the way your saints and prophets define their holy universal phylogenetic tree is that my definition links branches as naturally selected breeds and hybrids of a common ancestor and the descendants thereof (micro-evolution), and that linking the common ancestors of two different phylogenetic groups (German Shepherds and black eyed peas, for example) to a prior common ancestor is gibberish (macro-evolution).
So yes, guilty as charged. I am presenting an alternate view.
As far as believing the origin of species lies in multiple abiogenetic and exogenetic events, yes, that is precisely what I believe. The inherent nature of this giant abiogenetic stockpile we call the Universe that non-living chemical elements under some as yet unknown process and conditions can and have arrange themselves into self-replicating organisms is not in question. It follows that the complexity of an abiogenetically spawned organism need not restricted to a single celled organism if the conditions to transform the non-living chemicals into a more complex self-replicating lifeform are met.
Whether the condition that sparked the separate abiogenetic events within non-living chemicals to produce those lifeforms was something akin to God saying "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind" is really beyond the scope of my argument.
I'm content to believe the concept of multiple abiogenetic and exogenetic events is plausible.
Faith, let me explain once again: Speciation reduces genetic variability to some degree, but it does not eradicate the potential for genetic variation.
Obviously you haven't read a word I've written. It only "eliminates" the potential after drastic reductions or over many lesser reductions, the point is the TREND IN THAT DIRECTION. As long as the trend is to reduction of genetic diversity, and inevitably so, evolution is impossible. Salmon example. Ring species. Cheetah. Seal. Have all been discussed in answer to this claim of yours. Your claim is stupid. I've answered it many times over, well before it occurred to you to try to make a problem out of it.
The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is one indication that this potential is not subject to the lockdown that is postulated by your draconian theory of speciation, which (speciation) creationists deny has ever occurred.
The "lockdown" is a figment of your imagination. I'm talking about a TREND that doesn't become a LOCKDOWN until the end play, but as long as it is always trending in that direction it is proof that evolution cannot occur. Horizontal gene transfer couldn't possibly interfere with the trend, just as mutation can't, because the trend is the inevitable consequence of REDUCTIONS which are what make speciation possible, no matter what new material might be available to be so reduced.
Creationists don't like the term but the phenomenon they certainly acknowledge. I use the term to make the point that speciation defeats speciation, evolution defeats evolution. It's not a theory, it's an observed fact which you obviously have not yet thought through.
A tiny spark suffices. Some groups have remained stable for millions of years and then exhibited a burst of speciation.
Which I have accounted for a number of times, which you have ignored. Lack of speciation can indeed allow stability for long periods which I myself said long before it occurred to you to say it. REMAINING diversity can bring about speciation. Can't you read Psi Bond? Obviously not. You missed the whole point of the discussion about the founder effect at the Flood. Good grief what a travesty of science thinking you practice.
The conservationists whom you champion think in terms not of deep time, but of human time.
That is correct, and all that is needed to be understood about how speciation defeats speciation is witnessed in human time. Deep time adds nothing but obfuscation. If selection reduces genetic variability, deep time is only going to reduce it further, and in fact it will be reduced to extinction well before anything remotely like deep time occurs.
Faith, when you start in again talking about straws, it indicates you have no coherent response to make and are grasping for epithets as a straw substitution.
No, I'm just tired of repeating myself to someone who can't or won't think through what I'm saying. But since you are underhanded enough to insinuate such a thing, believe me, I can go on repeating myself into deep time if necessary. If you won't get it somebody else will.
You have to deny a great deal of well-documented scientific evidence to support your theory of the Fall----like deep time, transitional species, the differences in the ages of fossils, and the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species. And your denial now includes horizontal gene transfer’s effect on genetic diversity.
Deep time, transitional species, different ages of fossils and divergence etc etc etc are ALL imaginative constructs imposed upon rocks for which there is NOT anything remotely like "scientific evidence."
It's just that you can't think outside the box, psi bond, you can't follow an argument that doesn't lead to your own purely fantasized conclusions. If you could read and were an honest person, either or both, this could actually be a discussion.
Stability is possible as long as evolution/speciation is not occurring. This can persist for very long periods of time, even for all intents and purposes indefinitely.
It's not evolution, psi bond. We're talking about whether evolution is possible. Stability is no help for evolution.
When evolution does occur, meaning the development of new varieties, or "speciation," it is ALWAYS the result of a REDUCTION in genetic variability, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS -- there is no other way to get speciation -- which means that evolution can only occur within the limits of the existing genome of a species.
THINK THINK THINK
I feel like repeating and elaborating what I said earlier:
"Deep time, transitional species, different ages of fossils and divergence etc etc etc are ALL imaginative constructs imposed upon rocks for which there is NOT anything remotely like 'scientific evidence.'"
You do realize that the way they arrived at "deep time" was by ASSUMING that the layered rocks found throughout the earth reflect PERIODS OF TIME -- however ridiculous the idea that a slab of a particular sort of sediment could represent a time period. They had no evidence for this. It was purely an interpretation of what they saw, and there has never yet been evidence for it.
The assumption itself that the rocks represent a progression of time, plus what SEEMS like a progression in complexity of the fossils found within them (this is an illusion, really, denying staggering complexities in the tinier organisms) is not EVIDENCE, it's just another imaginative construct, imposed on the insensate rocks and fossils. There is no evidence for this either, only the fantasy that it is so.
Transitional species are also another exercise in imagination. Actually if evolution were true what should be expected of translational species simply does not exist at all, but what is CALLED transitional species are again nothing but an assumption. There is no way to show relatedness among these things, it is all merely assumed and flatly declared to be fact, against every tenet of scientific procedure known. None of it can be tested, it is merely imagined, but they treat it as fact and they chide others for ignoring what they call "scientific evidence" when it is as far from that as it could be.
As for the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species, the lack of actual evidence for this flatly declared fact is astonishing. They arrange things in a sequence based on crude morphological similarities and declare them genetically related. Abracadabra ally kazam, what was just a stack of similarly constructed items (this includes the similarly constructed DNA or blueprint) is now a family. Poof. The Emperor is naked but only the creationists know it.
As for horizontal gene transfer, I did not deny it despite your assertion that I did, because that kind of knowledge DOES COME out of true scientific work, unlike all the imaginative vaporings about deep time and time progression of living things up a stack of insensate rocks formed from separate sediments and so on. Horizontal gene transfer may be a great discovery or not, who knows at this point, but it can't do a thing for the Theory of Evolution. What I said is that, like mutation, it can't counter the inexorable effect of the genetic reduction that is necessary to bring about speciation. It wouldn't matter if you had all sorts of new genes (which you don't), in order to get a new species out of them they have to be selected one way or the other, randomly or concertedly it doesn't matter -- and most will be weeded out rather than selected -- but they have to be selected to form the new phenotype, and here again we have reduction of genetic diversity because that is the only way you get new phenotypes.
THINK THINK THINK THINK
Faith, let me explain once again: Speciation reduces genetic variability to some degree, but it does not eradicate the potential for genetic variation.
Obviously you haven't read a word I've written. It only "eliminates" the potential after drastic reductions or over many lesser reductions, the point is the TREND IN THAT DIRECTION. As long as the trend is to reduction of genetic diversity, and inevitably so, evolution is impossible. Salmon example. Ring species. Cheetah. Seal. Have all been discussed in answer to this claim of yours. Your claim is stupid. I've answered it many times over, well before it occurred to you to try to make a problem out of it.
Obviously, you regard your word as Law. It is not an established fact that a trend in one direction “eliminates” or even eradicates the capability for genetic variation. TRENDS are transitory. Trends die out and a pendulum swings both ways.
A ring species, as described by evolutionary biologists, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. The great biologist Ernst Mayr called ring species “the perfect demonstration of speciation” because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. In a ring species:
1) A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
2) At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
3) Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.
4) A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet.
Ring species provide strong evidence for evolution causing the appearance of new species, demonstrating that many small changes can eventually accumulate into large differences between distinct species. Creationists greet this information with adamant denial that anything but microevolution occurs.
The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is one indication that this potential is not subject to the lockdown that is postulated by your draconian theory of speciation, which (speciation) creationists deny has ever occurred.
The "lockdown" is a figment of your imagination. I'm talking about a TREND that doesn't become a LOCKDOWN until the end play, but as long as it is always trending in that direction it is proof that evolution cannot occur. Horizontal gene transfer couldn't possibly interfere with the trend, just as mutation can't, because the trend is the inevitable consequence of REDUCTIONS which are what make speciation possible, no matter what new material might be available to be so reduced.
You’re assuming that what you are claiming is inevitable is also indomitable and irreversible. But deep time defeats such assumptions. The broad patterns in the distribution and relationships of many species make your assumptions questionable and doubtful.
Creationists don't like the term but the phenomenon they certainly acknowledge. I use the term to make the point that speciation defeats speciation, evolution defeats evolution. It's not a theory, it's an observed fact which you obviously have not yet thought through.
Perhaps you are confused by a language problem. Speciation cannot “defeat” speciation if speciation does not occur in nature. According to the theoretical model you have built to represent evolution, evolution may appear to defeat evolution, but nature does not conform to your model, no matter how many examples of limited importance you adduce to that effect.
Continued
A tiny spark suffices. Some groups have remained stable for millions of years and then exhibited a burst of speciation.
Which I have accounted for a number of times, which you have ignored. Lack of speciation can indeed allow stability for long periods which I myself said long before it occurred to you to say it. REMAINING diversity can bring about speciation.
In other words, the capability for genetic variation has not been eradicated, even after eons of phenotypic stasis.
Can't you read Psi Bond? Obviously not. You missed the whole point of the discussion about the founder effect at the Flood. Good grief what a travesty of science thinking you practice.
It’s not all Noah-produced founder effect scenarios, not in deep time. Assuming you once had it, it is evident that you have lost the ability to discuss science in a dispassionate manner, i.e., without being grief-stricken or striking the pose. In your view, it seems, it is all a matter of Faith. What you say is the Law, and if I do not so recognize it, I am deficient somehow: One needs only to read what you solemnly proclaim to be saved from grievous error----that style may go over well in evangelical churches, but it doesn’t work in academic seminars and scientific conferences.
The conservationists whom you champion think in terms not of deep time, but of human time.
That is correct, and all that is needed to be understood about how speciation defeats speciation is witnessed in human time. Deep time adds nothing but obfuscation.
Because it is correct, they do not think of speciation in terms of phylogeny and common ancestry. To an evolutionist, deep time grants the enlightenment that creationists assiduously deny.
If selection reduces genetic variability, deep time is only going to reduce it further, and in fact it will be reduced to extinction well before anything remotely like deep time occurs
That assumes that natural selection is a linear, indomitable process, in which only organisms with advantageous traits will be selected to populate the next generation. But, in the natural world, selection achieves suboptimal, not optimal results. As has been famously and poetically said, time and chance happeneth to them all. And horizontal gene transfer and mutation happeneth to some. Other random processes, too, act mostly to produce harmful or neutral changes, though, occasionally, maybe once in several thousand years, they are advantageous and are passed on.
Faith, when you start in again talking about straws, it indicates you have no coherent response to make and are grasping for epithets as a straw substitution.
No, I'm just tired of repeating myself to someone who can't or won't think through what I'm saying. But since you are underhanded enough to insinuate such a thing, believe me, I can go on repeating myself into deep time if necessary. If you won't get it somebody else will.
If you go on repeating your mantra faithfully and ad hominem remarks about me, you may in deep time mutate into an exemplary pillar of salt. Just kidding. No one with a scientific worldview or his wife has Lots of faith in that miraculous story. No, you will mutate into a solid pillar of the religious community. Mazel tov.
You have to deny a great deal of well-documented scientific evidence to support your theory of the Fall----like deep time, transitional species, the differences in the ages of fossils, and the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species. And your denial now includes horizontal gene transfer’s effect on genetic diversity.
Concluded
Deep time, transitional species, different ages of fossils and divergence etc etc etc are ALL imaginative constructs imposed upon rocks for which there is NOT anything remotely like "scientific evidence."
I know beamish does not agree with your contention that there is not a shred of scientific evidence for deep time. Probably, he has doubts about some of the other things you have no doubt about. Your pronouncements regarding what you believe is scientific evidence and what is not isn’t, thank God, the Last Word on the subject.
It has to take a huge feat of imagination to sweepingly dismiss the abundant corroborating scientific evidence from many independent professionally-accredited sources as being “ALL imaginative constructs”. Blame everything on mendacious rocks. It’s somewhat like, when you observe a train at two different points in its itinerary, you readily assume it has been at all the points in between----reasonable people will say such an assumption is a logical inference, while implacable critics will say it’s ALL imaginative constructs----or, if they’re more plainspoken but nonetheless polite: it’s all hogwash, or it’s all humbug. For God’s word is scientific evidence. Ancient mud, layering of rocks, even new techniques like gene sequencing and observation of the components of living cells in realtime are as snakes in his Garden.
It's just that you can't think outside the box, psi bond, you can't follow an argument that doesn't lead to your own purely fantasized conclusions. If you could read and were an honest person, either or both, this could actually be a discussion.
I can think outside of the Bible and without the Bible as a reference point. You make it clear you believe that anyone who does not agree to follow you wherever your argument will lead is dreadfully defective or plain stupid. But everyone can readily see that that authoritarian assumption on your part cannot lead to an honest, serious discussion of objective matters.
I remind you: The topic is creationism vs. evolution, not me. You keep forgetting that.
There once was a time when everyone believed that God’s word as given in the Bible was the final word on all things scientific. That time was called the Dark Ages.
If anyone is looking for religiously held dogma, one need only read back a few posts and see your rejection of my proposed alternate method of tracking phylogenetic relationships via haplogroupings because it is a "rejection of the definition of a phylogenetic tree that is in standard use among evolutionary biologists." Anaximander's Fish be praised.
Standard scientific practice is not religious dogma, as you want to pretend. Standard practice promotes clarity and good communication. A common definition of a phylogenetic tree enables comparisons to be made. Surreptitiously employing a definition based on halogroupings in place ot it is counterproductive to good practice. Moreover, a tree based on odd combinations of alleles, such as you propose, cannot yield a coherent tree that is of use in illustrating phylogenetic relationships. Speculate as you please, but don’t switch terms without specifying what you are doing. No disrespect intended to Anaxagoras.
Well, yes, I've blasphemed the standard used by those that subscribe to the theology of evolution. Perhaps this is the source of your reluctance to join the science discussion.
Notwithstanding your melodramatic proclivities, you have merely ignored the standard without telling us. You can speak truly about a rose by any other name, but you need to let the rest of us know what you’re referring to. Science requires a nu,mber of accepted conventions to facilitate communication, which is not to say it requires a theology, or a belief in any god. When you understand that, beamish, you will be almost ready to join the science discussion.
All I can say about the way my alternative model defines a phylogenetic tree and the way your saints and prophets define their holy universal phylogenetic tree is that my definition links branches as naturally selected breeds and hybrids of a common ancestor and the descendants thereof (micro-evolution), and that linking the common ancestors of two different phylogenetic groups (German Shepherds and black eyed peas, for example) to a prior common ancestor is gibberish (macro-evolution).
In your evidently religion-oriented mind, it is gibberish. In the mind of almost, if not all, scientists, it makes sense of a huge amount of empirical data. You make gibberish of it all by insisting on your personal definitions for microevolution, macroevolution, species, phylogenetic tree, etc.
The creationist idea of separate designs for each species makes increasingly less sense on examination. In a vast range of instances, when you look at the “design” of plants and animals and assume that the designer started from scratch, it is not all intelligent. If you were designing a porpoise paddle, a horse leg, a human hand, a mole forelimb, and a bat’s wing, without any prior constraint, you could do a lot better by deviating from the common plan.
So yes, guilty as charged. I am presenting an alternate view.
Having an alternate view is not a crime. However, yours has no scientific evidence to support it. The harshest critics of science are scientists. Plausibility is not a necessary or sufficient criterion for acceptance of a scientific hypothesis. Some of the most implausible or counterintuitive things that scientists accept occur in quantum physics and in the foundations of mathematics.
Concluded
Apparently, you cherish the role of martyr. Well, let me join the club. I hereby posit that the origin of life is unprovably due in part to failed science experiments by sapient beings in high school on the other side of the galaxy. Their repeated attempts to seed the earth with the rudiments of life failed because the space capsule carrying the spores kept burning up in earth’s atmosphere. But the metallic residue from one of them acted as a catalyst in forming organic compounds from which life could arise. From this beginning, one-celled organisms developed, and from them multicellular organisms evolved, and the process continued straight through to modern time until humans appeared, thus linking all organisms in a single multi-branched phylogenetic tree. Yes, I am guilty of science fiction, but no one can say for sure that, in my satisfying musings of exogenesis, I am wrong. Hence I claim I’m right.
Whether the condition that sparked the separate abiogenetic events within non-living chemicals to produce those lifeforms was something akin to God saying "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind" is really beyond the scope of my argument.
Scientists agree that what God had to say about it is irrelevant to considerations of the natural causes of the origin of life. But creationist crusaders believe that writing God out of the script is immoral, and a dangerous idea to teach to young minds.
I'm content to believe the concept of multiple abiogenetic and exogenetic events is plausible.
Given the empirical evidence, it’s implausible to imagine that all species are phylogenetically unrelated. Hence, the hypothesis that millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees are necessary to illustrate the ancestral relationships between living species on earth is not one that would leave any scientist content.
I'm content to believe the concept of multiple abiogenetic and exogenetic events is plausible.
Given the empirical evidence, it’s implausible to imagine that all species are phylogenetically unrelated. Hence, the hypothesis that millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees are necessary to illustrate the ancestral relationships between living species on earth is not one that would leave any scientist content.
Empirical evidence? Surely you jest. You have yet to provide evidence, empirical or otherwise, that any species has ever given birth to a seperate, different, new species. Only scientists locked into the circularly reasoned speculation of one universal phylogenetic tree "evolving" from one single abiogenetic event into every lifeform on Earth is discontented.
The evidence for one universal phylogenetic tree is equivalent to the evidence for one species giving birth to a another, different, new species - there is no evidence.
The evidence for many phylogenetic trees that branch into haplogroupings from unique, independent ancestor organisms at their root is all around you at the molecular level of DNA. The evidence that these "root" ancestors are in turn branches of prior root ancestors on a universal tree back to a solitary abiogenetic event does not exist.
Speculation is fine, even fun, but if it isn't based on reality, it is mythology. Imagining that a rock fossil from a very limited sample of paleo-ecology that you can't perform DNA analysis upon is an ancestor (on your mother's side?) based on dubious reliance on physical morphology alone is mythology without extending its farce to claiming it eventually links ocelets to pinto beans.
If molecular phylogenetics even now is throwing speculative Linnaean taxonomy into obsolescence on classifications of living species we can now test DNA samples from, imagine what it's doing to the genetically baseless speculations made about mud impressions from millions of years ago.
On my disagreement with Faith on deep time and the age of the Earth, I agree with her on the general uselessness of the fossil record in the respect that it is no where near a comprehensive catalog of the paleo-ecology at the time the organism fell into the rare conditions required for fossil formation. The so-called "Cambrian Explosion" is merely a more comprehensive portrait of the paleo-ecology at the time the rare conditions required for fossil formation struck a much larger, possibly global sample of that paleo-ecology. The reason you don't find certain lifeforms in pre-Cambrian geological records is that those organisms did not fall into conditions conducive to fossil formation, not that they didn't exist.
Not that fossilized rock impressions are all that useful to DNA tests, regardless.
As far as the age of the Earth, the speed of light as a standard of distance and spectal analysis of starlight tells us the universe is billions of years older that the Earth, and the half-life cycles of natural radioactive elements shows us that Earth has been here around 4.5 Billion years.
It is not an established fact that a trend in one direction “eliminates” or even eradicates the capability for genetic variation. TRENDS are transitory. Trends die out and a pendulum swings both ways.
Oh brother, he's going to impose his own definition on me too, writing his own dictionary now, anything to distract from the point I guess:
Dictionary dot com: –noun 1. the general course or prevailing tendency; drift:
3. the general direction followed by a road, river, coastline, or the like. or speciation.
–verb (used without object) 4. to have a general tendency, as events, conditions, etc.
5. to tend to take a particular direction; extend in some direction indicated.
6. to veer or turn off in a specified direction, as a river, mountain range, etc.: The river trends toward the southeast.
And after ignoring my point for days he finally dredges up some evolutionist song and dance to answer me about ring species:
A ring species, as described by evolutionary biologists, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. The great biologist Ernst Mayr called ring species “the perfect demonstration of speciation” because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. In a ring species:
1) A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
2) At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
3) Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.
4) A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet.
Ring species provide strong evidence for evolution causing the appearance of new species, demonstrating that many small changes can eventually accumulate into large differences between distinct species. Creationists greet this information with adamant denial that anything but microevolution occurs.
Yes, evolutionists are as usual simply ignoring the actual mechanisms that bring about this situation. They actually believe that the processes that reduce genetic variability are proof of evolution, because they aren't thinking about just what this reduction means. In ring species, you get a series of phenotypic changes in each new population because of migration which isolates the groups from each other, and with EVERY such migration genetic variability is necessarily lost, but this is the part that the evolutionists don't take into account. Just like psi bond they don't THINK about the implications of their own theory.
The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is one indication that this potential is not subject to the lockdown that is postulated by your draconian theory of speciation, which (speciation) creationists deny has ever occurred.
"The "lockdown" is a figment of your imagination. I'm talking about a TREND that doesn't become a LOCKDOWN until the end play, but as long as it is always trending in that direction it is proof that evolution cannot occur. Horizontal gene transfer couldn't possibly interfere with the trend, just as mutation can't, because the trend is the inevitable consequence of REDUCTIONS which are what make speciation possible, no matter what new material might be available to be so reduced."
You’re assuming that what you are claiming is inevitable is also indomitable and irreversible.
I'm not assuming it, I'm describing something which is a known reality and I haven't seen anything to counter it. You certainly haven't produced anything to counter it. This genetic reduction is observable and inexorable but you have to have your sights on it and THINK about it instead of simply marveling at the phenotypic changes produced by this reduction, which are an illusion that evolutionists will not face, as Mayr above doesn't with respect to ring species.
But deep time defeats such assumptions.
That is absurd, typical evolutionist absurdity, but I know that evolutionists delude themselves this way. If phenotypic variation and speciation require genetic reduction, as they do, all deep time could possibly do is perpetuate the trend in that direction, as I've said many times over, and the insistence that it wouldn't is empty blind faith.
The broad patterns in the distribution and relationships of many species make your assumptions questionable and doubtful.
Huh? This is word salad, psi bond. Where some sort of scientific answer is needed you come up with gobbledygook instead.
"Creationists don't like the term but the phenomenon they certainly acknowledge. I use the term to make the point that speciation defeats speciation, evolution defeats evolution. It's not a theory, it's an observed fact which you obviously have not yet thought through."
Perhaps you are confused by a language problem. Speciation cannot “defeat” speciation if speciation does not occur in nature.
Oh I'm using the typical evolutionist definition, psi bond, so if it doesn't exist in nature, look to your buddies, not to me.
According to the theoretical model you have built to represent evolution, evolution may appear to defeat evolution, but nature does not conform to your model, no matter how many examples of limited importance you adduce to that effect.
You're excellent at coming up with windbag assertions without substance. More abracadabra and poof from you. Some time please produce something to prove your assertion that nature does not conform to my model, since clearly it is described to perfection by my model, as witnessed regularly by conservationists. All you've done is throw vague abstractions at me and pronounce yourself the winner. Surely you can do better than that.
A tiny spark suffices. Some groups have remained stable for millions of years and then exhibited a burst of speciation.
"Which I have accounted for a number of times, which you have ignored. Lack of speciation can indeed allow stability for long periods which I myself said long before it occurred to you to say it. REMAINING diversity can bring about speciation."
In other words, the capability for genetic variation has not been eradicated, even after eons of phenotypic stasis.
That is correct, psi bond, it takes VARIATION AND SPECIATION TO REDUCE GENETIC VARIABILITY. That's been my argument all along. Stasis is not evolution, it has nothing to contribute to evolution, and as long as evolution is not happening we don't have to worry about genetic reduction. It takes SELECTION to bring about a reduction in genetic variability, selection including the random selection of migration and bottleneck etc. and even genetic drift (and drift is probably going on in the static populations as well, so that it's not true that there's absolutely NO genetic reduction, it's merely very slow).
"Can't you read Psi Bond? Obviously not. You missed the whole point of the discussion about the founder effect at the Flood. Good grief what a travesty of science thinking you practice."
It’s not all Noah-produced founder effect scenarios, not in deep time.
I was addressing your SPECIFIC contention that I had not accounted for REMAINING genetic variability AFTER a drastic reduction, whereas in fact I had discussed it before you even noticed the phenomenon exists. Please follow the argument and stop changing the subject.
The conservationists whom you champion think in terms not of deep time, but of human time.
"That is correct, and all that is needed to be understood about how speciation defeats speciation is witnessed in human time. Deep time adds nothing but obfuscation."
Because it is correct, they do not think of speciation in terms of phylogeny and common ancestry. To an evolutionist, deep time grants the enlightenment that creationists assiduously deny.
That's because you are content to live with an illusion, since you haven't the slightest EVIDENCE for any effects of this fantasy of deep time, and the main absurdity is the idea that time could change the direction of things. If genetic reduction is the direction of all phenotypic variations including speciation, it's groundless blind faith to claim the addition of time could change that.
"If selection reduces genetic variability, deep time is only going to reduce it further, and in fact it will be reduced to extinction well before anything remotely like deep time occurs"
That assumes that natural selection is a linear, indomitable process, in which only organisms with advantageous traits will be selected to populate the next generation.
Pay attention for a change. I most certainly am NOT assuming any such thing. I have discussed all kinds of processes besides this narrow idea of natural selection. ALL events that reduce population and bring some traits to the fore, whether "advantageous" or not, lead to the same ultimate end, because phenotypic change, whether advantageous or not, cannot come about without a reduction in genetic variability. When a few salmon get isolated in a tributary they CHANGE, and they LOSE genetic variability. In a ring species, with EACH CHANGE in the phenotype there is a corresponding reduction in genetic variability until finally where the first and the last population meet you have "speciation" where the differences are severe enough to preclude interbreeding.
But, in the natural world, selection achieves suboptimal, not optimal results.
I am not mesmerized by natural selection as you are. I don't consider it to be any more "optimal" in its effects than the various mechanisms that ALSO isolate genes in order to bring about phenotypic change. Natural selection in accommodation to severe environmental pressures can in fact reduce a population so severely that it approaches extinction.
And besides, what does "optimum" anything have to do with what I'm saying? Absolutely nothing.
As has been famously and poetically said, time and chance happeneth to them all.
More meaningless distraction from you.
And horizontal gene transfer and mutation happeneth to some.
To what effect, pray tell? You haven't shown that this process does anything at all with respect to my claims. . You've already clearly affirmed that mutation couldn't affect it. Neither could hgt.
Other random processes, too, act mostly to produce harmful or neutral changes, though, occasionally, maybe once in several thousand years, they are advantageous and are passed on.
What on earth are you talking about? I've never said one thing about "advantageous" change being the necessary condition, I've been talking about change, period, ALL phenotypic change caused by ALL mechanisms that isolate populations, including all random causes. I've been very clear about this. Most random changes do not compromise the survivability of a species. All the variations in the populations of a ring species are simply interesting variations, they are neither advantageous or disadvantageous, they are brought about by a random collection of genes with a random migration of a portion of a population. They are brought about by the LOSS of genes, leaving them behind in the former populations. The ring is created by a series of phenotypic changes brought about by a reduction in genetic variability at each population split. RANDOM, not selected for advantage.
You have to deny a great deal of well-documented scientific evidence to support your theory of the Fall----like deep time, transitional species, the differences in the ages of fossils, and the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species. And your denial now includes horizontal gene transfer’s effect on genetic diversity.
"Deep time, transitional species, different ages of fossils and divergence etc etc etc are ALL imaginative constructs imposed upon rocks for which there is NOT anything remotely like "scientific evidence."
I know beamish does not agree with your contention that there is not a shred of scientific evidence for deep time.
Well, I disagree with Beamish quite strenuously on that point and I don't see him having produced any evidence for that either. He refers to astronomical measures at one point and if that's the only evidence I leave you two to sort it out. From my point of view the fact that the processes that bring about evolution require a reduction in genetic variability imposes an end point on evolution that occurs well before anything like "deep time" could even begin. LIFE cannot evolve/vary/speciate for more than a few thousand years before facing extinction. That's a SCIENTIFIC fact.
Probably, he has doubts about some of the other things you have no doubt about.
Some things he's said indicate he doesn't understand what I'm getting at any better than you do. He's arguing his own agenda and not thinking about mine. That's fine, we can have separate arguments with you. I have plenty of doubts about what he's saying too.
Your pronouncements regarding what you believe is scientific evidence and what is not isn’t, thank God, the Last Word on the subject.
You keep trying to reduce my argument to a mere flat statement of my belief, but it's based on observed facts, it's truly scientific in a way that absolutely nothing you have said is. YOU are the one making the flat out empty assertions while I've pointed to observable effects in actual reality. Your "natural world" is a fantasy, and you will not address actual facts in the real one.
It has to take a huge feat of imagination to sweepingly dismiss the abundant corroborating scientific evidence from many independent professionally-accredited sources as being “ALL imaginative constructs”.
No, it takes a dogged determination to stick to reality and true scientific evidence even when all the establishment sources are against you. They are IGNORING the true scientific evidence and you are following them like the proverbial lemming to the sea. Please just THINK. What you and they are getting out of a mere stack of rocks, this whole edifice of deep time and progression of age of fossils up the stack of rocks, and transitional forms that are merely fossils with features in common with more than one other type, and so on and so forth, HAS NOT ONE SHRED OF ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE GOING FOR IT. IT IS NOTHING BUT AN IMAGINATIVE CONSTRUCT. OBVIOUSLY, psi bond, there is nothing more to it than that. It's all an elaborate fiction, a "just so" story made up to "explain" a mere guess about the meaning of rocks and fossils.
YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE. YOU HAVE NOT PRODUCED ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE HERE. You appeal to the authority of other deceived ones.
And when the biologist Mayr thinks ring species confirm evolution that's only because he is not thinking about the genetic realities that conservationists MUST think about, he's only thinking about the superficial phenotypic changes. By the time the ring of populations has reached the point of inability to interbreed, the last population in the ring is severely genetically depleted, and has no capacity to "evolve" any further, which spells DOOM to the ToE. Thus do evolutionists deceive themselves.
(Correction: I should have said "alleles" not "genes" are left behind in the previous population, in the discussion of the ring species a post or two back. If I don't correct it you'll make a ridiculous issue of it one way or another instead of understanding what I meant).
Blame everything on mendacious rocks. It’s somewhat like, when you observe a train at two different points in its itinerary, you readily assume it has been at all the points in between----reasonable people will say such an assumption is a logical inference, while implacable critics will say it’s ALL imaginative constructs----or, if they’re more plainspoken but nonetheless polite: it’s all hogwash, or it’s all humbug.
Good grief you just don't know the difference between a mere imaginative construct and scientific fact. What can one possibly say under such circumstances. How about, it's an hypothesis rather than imaginative construct? It IS an hypothesis I suppose. But by now it ought to have been dropped because you have to be able to prove with evidence the validity of such an hypothesis and there is no such proof, there is only more hypothetical imaginative reasoning. If you'd just THINK, psi bond, just THINK.
For God’s word is scientific evidence. Ancient mud, layering of rocks, even new techniques like gene sequencing and observation of the components of living cells in realtime are as snakes in his Garden.
Oh balderdash. God's word tells us that God made living things "after their own kind" and that there was a worldwide Flood. Certain deducations naturally follow. That's all that's relevant to this discussion.
Again, the interpretation evolution imposes on the rocks and fossils is nothing but imaginative fantasy and/or raw hypothesis. Gene sequencing and the study of cells are SCIENCE. You don't seem to know the difference.
"It's just that you can't think outside the box, psi bond, you can't follow an argument that doesn't lead to your own purely fantasized conclusions. If you could read and were an honest person, either or both, this could actually be a discussion."
I can think outside of the Bible and without the Bible as a reference point. You make it clear you believe that anyone who does not agree to follow you wherever your argument will lead is dreadfully defective or plain stupid. But everyone can readily see that that authoritarian assumption on your part cannot lead to an honest, serious discussion of objective matters.
I remind you: The topic is creationism vs. evolution, not me. You keep forgetting that.
Oh that's FUNNY considering the absolute nonsense you've been imputing to me instead of thinking about what I've actually said.
There once was a time when everyone believed that God’s word as given in the Bible was the final word on all things scientific. That time was called the Dark Ages.
Actually, in the Dark Ages the Bible was not taught at all by the Roman Church. They taught all manner of nonbiblical and basically pagan superstitions and they followed Aristotle the pagan instead of the Bible, who told them that the earth is the center of the universe.
Oh and one more correction before you make a confused mess of it.
The last population in a ring species MAY STILL HAVE SOME VARIABILITY LEFT, so I shouldn't have insisted that it was totally depleted, but it is most certainly far more depleted than all the previous populations that led up to it. Its inability to interbreed with the original or #1 population it has met up with in closing the ring reflects that depletion. Yet, sure, there may still be some further variability left. But the point again is that each change in the phenotype reflects a corresponding reduction in genetic diversity. If the absolute end of this process is not yet reached, that's irrelevant, the trend in that direction makes it very clear that there IS an end point beyond which further evolution is impossible and that spells doom for the ToE.
Psi bond, the reason I want you to THINK about all this is that the authorities are wrong and if you blindly follow them you will learn nothing. I don't expect you to follow ME either, but following my reasoning is something else. It ought to lead you to see that the authorities are wrong. That Ernst Mayr is wrong about ring species. That Wikipedia is wrong about ring species:
Ring species provide important evidence of evolution in that they illustrate what happens over time as populations genetically diverge, and are special because they represent in living populations what normally happens over time between long deceased ancestor populations and living populations.
Monumental delusion, this. Just astonishing that they can believe this, that they ignore what is happening genetically to bring this about, that they don't even KNOW that it takes genetic reduction to bring about a new phenotype, although it's the most rudimentary kind of knowledge, and conservationists know it all too well. Ring species are created in human time, not deep time, so your objection to using conservationists as the relevant experts is null. Breeders create series similar to ring species by starting with a mongrel and breeding for new traits in each subsequent generation. The principle involved is obvious, and so is the consequence -- breeders KNOW that you get genetic reduction to depletion in order to create a new type. The practical scientists HAVE to know this. Breeders HAVE to avoid overdoing it and breeding for unwanted diseases; conservationists HAVE to think about how to prevent the same condition from happening in the wild. Why don't the evolutionists know it?
Ring species also present an interesting problem for those who seek to divide the living world into discrete species, as well as for those who believe that evolution does not create new species.
It creates no problems for me, but then I don't hide from the idea of "new species" because I know it describes something real which at the same time is not what the evolutionists think it is. It IS the very microevolution they deny, because of their artificial definition of evolution as reached when inability to interbreed is reached. SO many ways they fool themselves. Highly inbred domestic breeds are ALSO unable to interbreed with those they were originally bred from.
Wikipedia continued:
After all, all that distinguishes a ring species from two separate species is the existence of the connecting populations - if enough of the connecting populations within the ring perish to sever the breeding connection, the ring species becomes two distinct species.
Yes, but the two species are IN ACTUAL NATURAL REAL TRUE BONA FIDE REALITY simply varieties of the same species that cannot interbreed, and ONE OF THEM, the one at the end of the breeding series, WILL BE FOUND TO BE GENETICALLY HIGHLY COMPROMISED so that it has reduced ability to vary/speciate further. But they never mention the genetic condition, do they? You have to go ask a conservationist about that.
See, they are discussing the most superficial known fact that nobody denies -- that CHANGE in the phenotype occurs with migration (just as it occurs with anything that isolates populations from natural selection to bottleneck to genetic drift). They CALL this evolution, merely because of the phenotypic changes, and they ASSUME that it is open ended although it ought to be patent that the shedding of alleles necessary to bring it about also portends a clearcut end to the processes of change, spelling DEAD END to evolution.
They also delude themselves about inability to interbreed. That multiple population splits lead to the inability for the extremes to interbreed ought to be one of the first things they'd think of considering how similar the processes are to domestic breeding.
I understand that you WANT to believe the authorities are right, and you don't want to give credence to a mere upstart nobody creationist over the great names in science. I understand that you WANT to believe that evolution is a reality. But just a LITTLE genuine thinking ought to show you that they are believing in the emperor's new clothes and the upstart knows what she's talking about.
Given the empirical evidence, it’s implausible to imagine that all species are phylogenetically unrelated. Hence, the hypothesis that millions of unrelated unbranched phylogenetic trees are necessary to illustrate the ancestral relationships between living species on earth is not one that would leave any scientist content.
Empirical evidence? Surely you jest. You have yet to provide evidence, empirical or otherwise, that any species has ever given birth to a seperate, different, new species. Only scientists locked into the circularly reasoned speculation of one universal phylogenetic tree "evolving" from one single abiogenetic event into every lifeform on Earth is discontented.
The uniqueness of the genetic code implies both the interrelatedness and improbability of life. Two or more forms of the genetic code do not exist on earth. There is not an alternate way of transmitting information from one generation to the next.
As Sir Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the Double Helix, observed, “It is a little surprising that organisms with somewhat different codes do not co-exist. The universality of the code follows naturally from an ‘infective’ theory of the origin of life. Life on Earth would represent a clone derived from a single set of organisms.”
Crick meant by the “infective” theory a theory of panspermia (exogenesis). But given the evidence, he considered more than one incident of exogenesis unlikely. (His co-author, Leslie Orgel, on a scientific paper about panspermia was only half-serious, according to a biography of Crick.)
The evidence for one universal phylogenetic tree is equivalent to the evidence for one species giving birth to a another, different, new species - there is no evidence.
There is abundant evidence but you deny it outright for no rational reason----evidence from molecular genetics for a universal phylogenetic tree and for species evolving from other species. Evolutionary theory integrates evidence from genetics, population ecology, systematics, and paleontology, as well as from the older source materials of classical organ and organismic morphology.
The evidence for many phylogenetic trees that branch into haplogroupings from unique, independent ancestor organisms at their root is all around you at the molecular level of DNA. The evidence that these "root" ancestors are in turn branches of prior root ancestors on a universal tree back to a solitary abiogenetic event does not exist.
The genetic code mechanism is the same for all life forms on earth. In fact, this common basis of life makes it possible to make hybrids between any two species at the cellular level in genetic engineering labs. Comparing multitudes of trees based on haplogroupings with a phylogenetic tree showing the similarities and differences between species is a lot like comparing apples with oranges.
Speculation is fine, even fun, but if it isn't based on reality, it is mythology. Imagining that a rock fossil from a very limited sample of paleo-ecology that you can't perform DNA analysis upon is an ancestor (on your mother's side?) based on dubious reliance on physical morphology alone is mythology without extending its farce to claiming it eventually links ocelets to pinto beans.
This may upset you, beamish, but you, your mother, your father too, other humans, ocelets, pinto beans, oak trees, mosquitoes, cockroaches, snails, frogs, bacteria----indeed the whole mispucha are interrelated by a common genetic code for ordering nucleic acids.
If molecular phylogenetics even now is throwing speculative Linnaean taxonomy into obsolescence on classifications of living species we can now test DNA samples from, imagine what it's doing to the genetically baseless speculations made about mud impressions from millions of years ago.
Concluded
There is a similarity between apes and man that cannot be denied by rational observers. It is not explained by separate origins. Dinosaurs that roamed the earth millions of years ago have a clear relationship with feathered dinosaurs that look like birds. Revisions in taxonomy are not major upheavals, as you’d like to suppose.
On my disagreement with Faith on deep time and the age of the Earth, I agree with her on the general uselessness of the fossil record in the respect that it is no where near a comprehensive catalog of the paleo-ecology at the time the organism fell into the rare conditions required for fossil formation. The so-called "Cambrian Explosion" is merely a more comprehensive portrait of the paleo-ecology at the time the rare conditions required for fossil formation struck a much larger, possibly global sample of that paleo-ecology. The reason you don't find certain lifeforms in pre-Cambrian geological records is that those organisms did not fall into conditions conducive to fossil formation, not that they didn't exist.
Here you indicate that you disagree with her on more than the age of the earth and deep time: You disagree with her fundamental assertion that all known fossils are the same age. And thereby you disagree with her flood geology.
Every plant or animal that has ever lived has not turned into a fossil. Indeed, if that were the case, the earth would be covered in avalanches of fossils everywhere. However, museums in many parts of the world contain a voluminous amount of preserved materials representing virtually every known group of biological organism, from eukaryotes to humans. These specimens number in the billions. If there are no pre-Cambrian rabbits, it’s not because, as some may speculate defensively, they were too quick to be fossilized.
Paleontologists have a sampling of almost everything that has existed. It can afford them a window on the past, just as public opinion polls, which sample the opinions of a large population (too large to be individually polled), provide politicians and polemicists with some insight into what the public is thinking.
Not that fossilized rock impressions are all that useful to DNA tests, regardless.
“Fossilized rock impressions”? Either they are fossilized or they are rock impressions.
It is a sign of ignorance of the fossil record to imagine that all fossils are rock impressions or the products of petrifaction. Their importance as evidence cannot be hand waved away so easily. In some cases, soft parts, including flesh, hair, eyes, and even stomach contents have been preserved without mineral substitutions. In fact, DNA has been recovered from fossils and analyzed. Even hominid fossils. Recently, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Anthropology in Germany extracted DNA from Neanderthal fossils.
As far as the age of the Earth, the speed of light as a standard of distance and spectal analysis of starlight tells us the universe is billions of years older that the Earth, and the half-life cycles of natural radioactive elements shows us that Earth has been here around 4.5 Billion years.
You said that already, beamish. That is indeed the evidence that scientists accept. But thanks for the reiteration. An earth as old as 4.5 billion years makes possible the evolution that the evidence indicates. The biblical 6000 years or so that Faith puts her faith in, does not.
Due consideration of the evidence of large-scale changes that have brought the universe to its present far-ranging state makes it very likely that life on earth has not been exempt from large-scale changes in the course of development from simple unicellular origins to the rich diversity in evidence today.
Other random processes, too, act mostly to produce harmful or neutral changes, though, occasionally, maybe once in several thousand years, they are advantageous and are passed on.
For a change to be passed on, alleles have to be lost, and the result is as in all cases genetic reduction. Even if once in several thousand years you got a new gene, whether advantageous or not, whether randomly selected or selected for advantage, the very process of its being selected or passed on involves the loss of other alleles for that trait and the inevitable reduction in genetic variability I've been talking about.
It is not an established fact that a trend in one direction “eliminates” or even eradicates the capability for genetic variation. TRENDS are transitory. Trends die out and a pendulum swings both ways.
Faith: Oh brother, he's going to impose his own definition on me too, writing his own dictionary now, anything to distract from the point I guess:
Dictionary dot com: –noun 1. the general course or prevailing tendency; drift:
3. the general direction followed by a road, river, coastline, or the like. or speciation.
–verb (used without object) 4. to have a general tendency, as events, conditions, etc.
5. to tend to take a particular direction; extend in some direction indicated.
6. to veer or turn off in a specified direction, as a river, mountain range, etc.: The river trends toward the southeast.
Leave your brother out of it. The usage I refer to is the one that defines trend as “a general tendency”. The wind may trend from one direction, and then another. That is, trends are not fossilized. A trend toward stasis, as previously noted, can be followed by a trend toward intense phenotypic variability.
And after ignoring my point for days he finally dredges up some evolutionist song and dance to answer me about ring species:
Dredging up your song and dance about your argument being neglected is verging on farcical. Not that these observations have anything to do with science.
A ring species, as described by evolutionary biologists, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. The great biologist Ernst Mayr called ring species “the perfect demonstration of speciation” because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. In a ring species:
1) A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
2) At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
3) Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.
4) A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet.
Ring species provide strong evidence for evolution causing the appearance of new species, demonstrating that many small changes can eventually accumulate into large differences between distinct species. Creationists greet this information with adamant denial that anything but microevolution occurs.
Yes, evolutionists are as usual simply ignoring the actual mechanisms that bring about this situation. They actually believe that the processes that reduce genetic variability are proof of evolution, because they aren't thinking about just what this reduction means. In ring species, you get a series of phenotypic changes in each new population because of migration which isolates the groups from each other, and with EVERY such migration genetic variability is necessarily lost, but this is the part that the evolutionists don't take into account. Just like psi bond they don't THINK about the implications of their own theory.
Yet, in each migration, the ability to adapt to new ecological niches is displayed. She does not THINK about what that means.
The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer is one indication that this potential is not subject to the lockdown that is postulated by your draconian theory of speciation, which (speciation) creationists deny has ever occurred.
"The "lockdown" is a figment of your imagination. I'm talking about a TREND that doesn't become a LOCKDOWN until the end play, but as long as it is always trending in that direction it is proof that evolution cannot occur. Horizontal gene transfer couldn't possibly interfere with the trend, just as mutation can't, because the trend is the inevitable consequence of REDUCTIONS which are what make speciation possible, no matter what new material might be available to be so reduced."
You’re assuming that what you are claiming is inevitable is also indomitable and irreversible.
I'm not assuming it, I'm describing something which is a known reality and I haven't seen anything to counter it. You certainly haven't produced anything to counter it. This genetic reduction is observable and inexorable but you have to have your sights on it and THINK about it instead of simply marveling at the phenotypic changes produced by this reduction, which are an illusion that evolutionists will not face, as Mayr above doesn't with respect to ring species.
In other words, the speciation that evolutionists observe is an illusion according to her, because speciation, as she has previously determined, is not possible. A train cannot go between two different points on its route because, if you THINK about it, before it gets to the second point it must cross half the difference between them, and before that one quarter the distance from the start point to the half-way point. And so on to infinity. Of course, an infinity of points cannot be traversed by the train. So, it’s clear the train can never get out of the station. Yet somehow it does. Nature surprises. Speciation occurs, heedless of her theoretical constructs.
But deep time defeats such assumptions.
That is absurd, typical evolutionist absurdity, but I know that evolutionists delude themselves this way. If phenotypic variation and speciation require genetic reduction, as they do, all deep time could possibly do is perpetuate the trend in that direction, as I've said many times over, and the insistence that it wouldn't is empty blind faith.
She’s said it many times over, so it must be true. However, there is no evidence that reduction in genetic variability is the same as loss of the capability for variation in the transcription of genetic instructions.
The broad patterns in the distribution and relationships of many species make your assumptions questionable and doubtful.
Huh? This is word salad, psi bond. Where some sort of scientific answer is needed you come up with gobbledygook instead.
It is straightforward English. Whatever you have no answer for is dismissed as gobbledygook.
"Creationists don't like the term but the phenomenon they certainly acknowledge. I use the term to make the point that speciation defeats speciation, evolution defeats evolution. It's not a theory, it's an observed fact which you obviously have not yet thought through.".
Perhaps you are confused by a language problem. Speciation cannot “defeat” speciation if speciation does not occur in nature.
Oh I'm using the typical evolutionist definition, psi bond, so if it doesn't exist in nature, look to your buddies, not to me..
When you deny something by acknowledging it, your thinking will get confused.
According to the theoretical model you have built to represent evolution, evolution may appear to defeat evolution, but nature does not conform to your model, no matter how many examples of limited importance you adduce to that effect.
You're excellent at coming up with windbag assertions without substance. More abracadabra and poof from you. Some time please produce something to prove your assertion that nature does not conform to my model, since clearly it is described to perfection by my model, as witnessed regularly by conservationists. All you've done is throw vague abstractions at me and pronounce yourself the winner. Surely you can do better than that
For the sake of clarity, I can do better: There are no winners. There can be no winners here.
The creationist/evolutionist debate will not end here. As long as science is perceived as a challenge to religion, it will go on. There will always be creationists who believe they can see what scientists do not see. Whatever I have mentioned, you have dismissed it with handwaving, with downplaying of its sensibility, and with windbag reiterations of your mantra, a theoretical abstraction equating decrease in genetic variability with loss of the potential for genetic variation, as illustrated in human time.
A tiny spark suffices. Some groups have remained stable for millions of years and then exhibited a burst of speciation.
"Which I have accounted for a number of times, which you have ignored. Lack of speciation can indeed allow stability for long periods which I myself said long before it occurred to you to say it. REMAINING diversity can bring about speciation."
In other words, the capability for genetic variation has not been eradicated, even after eons of phenotypic stasis.
That is correct, psi bond, it takes VARIATION AND SPECIATION TO REDUCE GENETIC VARIABILITY. That's been my argument all along. Stasis is not evolution, it has nothing to contribute to evolution, and as long as evolution is not happening we don't have to worry about genetic reduction. It takes SELECTION to bring about a reduction in genetic variability, selection including the random selection of migration and bottleneck etc. and even genetic drift (and drift is probably going on in the static populations as well, so that it's not true that there's absolutely NO genetic reduction, it's merely very slow).
As I’ve said before, the capability for genetic variation is not lost when genetic variability is reduced.
"Can't you read Psi Bond? Obviously not. You missed the whole point of the discussion about the founder effect at the Flood. Good grief what a travesty of science thinking you practice."
It’s not all Noah-produced founder effect scenarios, not in deep time.
I was addressing your SPECIFIC contention that I had not accounted for REMAINING genetic variability AFTER a drastic reduction, whereas in fact I had discussed it before you even noticed the phenomenon exists. Please follow the argument and stop changing the subject.
I was referring to your reliance on Noah’s flood for your explanation, not your accounting of remaining genetic variability. What is the point of claiming to have discussed it before I noticed the phenomenon exists? I was the first to reintroduce the phenomenon. I can claim credit for that.
The conservationists whom you champion think in terms not of deep time, but of human time.
"That is correct, and all that is needed to be understood about how speciation defeats speciation is witnessed in human time. Deep time adds nothing but obfuscation."
Because it is correct, they do not think of speciation in terms of phylogeny and common ancestry. To an evolutionist, deep time grants the enlightenment that creationists assiduously deny.
That's because you are content to live with an illusion, since you haven't the slightest EVIDENCE for any effects of this fantasy of deep time, and the main absurdity is the idea that time could change the direction of things. If genetic reduction is the direction of all phenotypic variations including speciation, it's groundless blind faith to claim the addition of time could change that.
You contradict yourself here. Previously, you agreed that if genetic reduction is indomitable, all species would now be extinct in deep time. Moreover, accumulations of small differences in deep time can produce speciation that is unobservable under similar conditions in human time.
"If selection reduces genetic variability, deep time is only going to reduce it further, and in fact it will be reduced to extinction well before anything remotely like deep time occurs"
That assumes that natural selection is a linear, indomitable process, in which only organisms with advantageous traits will be selected to populate the next generation.
Concluded
Pay attention for a change. I most certainly am NOT assuming any such thing. I have discussed all kinds of processes besides this narrow idea of natural selection. ALL events that reduce population and bring some traits to the fore, whether "advantageous" or not, lead to the same ultimate end, because phenotypic change, whether advantageous or not, cannot come about without a reduction in genetic variability. When a few salmon get isolated in a tributary they CHANGE, and they LOSE genetic variability. In a ring species, with EACH CHANGE in the phenotype there is a corresponding reduction in genetic variability until finally where the first and the last population meet you have "speciation" where the differences are severe enough to preclude interbreeding.
You have not been paying attention on two points. First, in Darwinian evolution, the only selection process is natural selection. It acts on multiple sources of variation. Natural selection is the only natural process that is selective in its effect. Selection is not optimal but suboptimal in nature. All members of the next generation do not have a given advantageous trait. Various accidents of chance enable individuals lacking the advantageous trait to survive. One can extend this to a third point: It is not known that infertility is selected for to isolate a population. Isolation is not ordinarily an evolutionary advantage. Infertility, as noted earlier, is thought to be a by-product of evolution. As a result, macroevolution is a by-product of microevolution.
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