appear:
Etymology: Middle English apperen, from Old French aparoir, from Latin apparEre, from ad- + parEre to show oneself
If we don’t know every form that word has taken on its path from adparEre to appear, does that mean the two words aren’t related? If we do know many of the forms of that word (plus many other words), isn’t that strong evidence that the language of today is related to (but not identical to) the languages of the past, especially since we understand (and accept) how words change over time?
Why can you not accept evolution without seeing every step, but you can accept creation without seeing any evidence of creation other than the current state?
I don’t think you really understood Ilsa’s point. What he’s saying is that the fossil record confirms what models based on DNA would predict. He’s not saying family tree is “missing.” in the fossil evidence. There are gaps, yes, but It seems to keep going right past you that the proof for evolution does not rely on fossil evidence. We can prove evolution without a single fossil. Pointing out gaps in the fossil record is about as weak an attack on evolution as you could possibly make.
If you agree to all of of Jon the Geek’s points then you believe in evolution. If you don’t agree with any of his points, please tell us which one and why. The fossil record is a red herring in this evidence. Fossils are used to reconstruct pathways, they are not used to prove evolution (although they can be used to confirm certain predictions).
With all due respect, trying to find gaps in the fossil record does not help you. As a matter of fact, it would be extremely fishy if there weren’t any gaps. Only a very small percentage of dead organisms ever become fossilized.
Actually, if you do want to use fossils to falsify evolution, the most stunning and decisive way to do it would simply be to find an anomaly in the sorting predicted by evolution. In other words, find an ostensible descendant species which is older than an antecedent one. If you can find a single elephant which is contemporary with or older than a stegosauraus then you will have blown a huge hole in evolution. Find a human with a trilobite. Find anything at all which violates the order predicted by evolution.
Good luck, in all of the hundreds of thousands of samples and geological layers which have been surveyed, not one such anomaly has ever been found, even by people who are deliberately and determinably searching for them.
Is it jus a coincidence that fossil sorting always, without fail, in untold thousands of trials supports the predictions made by evolution? Wouldn’t you expect at eat one failure?
If it’s a just a coinidence, then it’s the most remarkable and unlikely coincidence in all of the physcal sciences. It would be too much of a coincidence too be natural, if you want to know the truth.
If evolution isn’t true, then someone or something is deliberately manipulating every bit of physical evidence to make it look that way.
Most of the tree is not missing! Pick up any Vertebrate Natural History textbook and look at the trees that they present for the evolution of modern animals. How can you say that things like Icthyostega or Eusthenopteron aren’t fish-amphibian and fish-reptile intermediates? How can you say that Eohippus (Hyracotherium) isn’t an intermediate between early mammals and today’s horses? What do you make of the Pelycosaurs, the mammal-like reptiles? What do you make of Cynognathus, a quadrupedal, mammal-like animal complete with fur, but without a completely enlarged dentary and still possesing a quadrate-articular jaw joint rather than the diagnostic dentary-squamosal jaw joint of mammals?
Read this website. What do you think?
Does the above confuse you? Do you have trouble comprehending it all? That is the root of the problem. You are rejecting evidence (and volumes of it) largely because you don’t understand it. That is not a failing on your part. A great deal of the evidence is highly specialized and requires advanced knowledge of the subject. I have a degree in biology and am pursuing a PhD, and I have problems with it sometimes. But the evidence is there, whether you can understand it or not.
Is it not possible for a species to show some changes over time without this necessarily meaning that species evolve into other species via intermediate forms?
Why is it remarkable? Some end has to be reached in that some creatures have to survive. Even creationists can agree on that I would think. So why should it be remarkable that the surviver is the one better adapted to the environment?
O course, but so what? That famous moth in Britain that turned from light to dark after the onset of the industrial revolution was still the same species. And if I remember correctly has turned light again now that the smoke has been pretty well cleared up.
Species changing and still being the same species doesn’t prevent the origination of new species. Why should it?
So… what you’re proposing is that populations evolve, but stop evolving if it would lead to them being unable to mate with different populations of their species? What mechanism stops their evolution? Does God step in and stop them, and then create a new species that’s similar, and kill out some of the older ones?
It is possible, but any pressure on an organism to change is eventually going to produce a population of organisms so genetically distinct as to be a separate species. In a species with a large range, no pressure is going to act on the entire population as a whole all of the time, creating areas where pressures are different. Over time, this will lead to those areas becoming different species.
I think the problem is that you are looking at evolution linearly. For the most part, a single species does not evolve into a new species, leaving no one behind. A pond of goldfish doesn’t slowly turn into a pond of platinumfish. One part of the goldfish pond might have predator fish that doesn’t swim in the rest of the pond, so goldfish in that section have to swim faster. Over time, those goldfish get more streamlined, with bigger fins so they can swim faster. Also, the predator fish can’t see platinum as well as gold, so a mutation that makes them more silvery helps them survive.
After a while, you have two species: big sluggish goldfish, and streamlined platinumfish.
This is how evolution causes new species to occur. You seem to have an idea of all the goldfish getting shinier and shinier until they are all platinum. It doesn’t really work like that.
No, merely hopelessly obtuse. There’s no such thing as an “intermediate form” of the type you envision, ie apes one day, an unusual ape-man hybrid the next day, and men the day after. There’s no halfway point between species, there’s only new species, which appear gradually. Species evolve into other species, full stop.
This is dealt with in great detail and with far more eloquence than I can manage on talk.origins.
First, I have to correct your impression that species evolve into other species “via an intermediate” species. There really is no “via.” Strictly speaking, all species are intermediate in the sense that evolution is never static. No species is ever “finished.”
To go back to my languages analogy, would you say that there are “intermediate” languages ina ny true sense?
As species go, “intermediate” is just a relative term, not a definitive one. There is no difference between a species and an “intermediate” species.
To answer you question, it sounds like you’re asking if species can make small adaptations (called “microevolution” by some) without full speciation (“macroevolution.”)
the answer is yes, in the short term, but in the long term as long as there is a sorting mechanism (i.e. natural selection) then changes must keep happening until speciation occurs.
That’s not to say that some species can’t remain virtually unchanged for very long periods of time if they find the right niche, they have no predators (or not many) and there is nothing to stop them en masse from living long enough to reproduce.
Over the very long haul, though, conditions will have to change and they will speciate.
To simplify, species will continue to speciate unless something stops them.
Thanks to one and all. Diogenes, I will resist being drawn on the possibility of intermediate languages because I’m not entirely comfortable with the analogy. I’m not sure that they are commensurate. But that’s not to say the analogy isn’t helpful to others.
So, though I have a sneaking feeling that this will be attacked as an untenable position, it would appear that I believe in microevolution but not (yet ) in macroevolution.
And, to those doubters, it really has more to do with conviction/inner voice/intuition - call it what you will - than with religious upbringing. I know you will probably say that they are two sides of the same coin anyway (both being strictly speaking irrational), but to me they are quite different. The difference between dogma/doctrine/orthodoxy on the one hand and - well - conviction - can’t think of a better word - on the other.
That’s OK. Everybody in your position arrives there out of conviction. It’s unrealistic to expect an overnight shift of position, whatever the rational merits of the arguments.
Um…cite? I’m pretty sure you’re wrong, dude. Are you sure we’re talking about the same kind of critter. Trilobites went extinct like 250 million years ago.
Your suspicion is right. What stops populations from evolving into new species? There has to be something stopping them. Also, how do you explain the observed instances of speciation?
I don’t care what you call it. I’m not going to sidetrack into that debate, though.
Everything is an intermediate, except for extinct forms. Populations and species are in constant flux. The genetic composition of a population 20 or 30 generations ago is different from the composition now, and the current composition will differ from that of 20 or 30 generations in the future. Any lineage that did not die off, then, will be both an evolutionary intermediate and an end point, depending on one’s frame of reference. The same is true for indiviudal characteristics of species.
It has been addressed many times in this thread that intermediates exist, both for individual traits (e.g., eyes and other organs), as well as entire lineages. And disproving that a given structure or fossil is truly intermediate between two others does nothing to disprove the mechanism whereby a structure or lineage may have arisen. As for most of the tree being missing…so? We have a great deal of material available, and can piece together much of the history of life despite those “gaps”. There are certainly some instances where the detail is not fine enough to be able to sort multiple closely-related lineages, but those are not the norm. Nor are they sufficient to discount the entire process of evolution. After all, if evolution doesn’t work, then wouldn’t one expect that we shouldn’t find any suitable intermediates?
Take a look here. That’s the Tree of Life Web Project, and shows the current understanding of what the Tree looks like. Were common descent, and by extension, evolution as whole, but a figment, how would such a project be even remotely possible? Again, this brings up the point I have mentioned a couple times in this thread: how does one account for the similarity of form in various extant - and extinct - forms, if they were all specially created “as is”? Why can a Tree of Life detailing the inter-relatedness of all living things be created if no species is truly related to any other?
You may find the lack of sufficient intermediates to be a problem for evolution, but I say that the mere presence of intermediates at all presents a much larger problem for creationism.
You are correct - the position is untenable. Macro and microevolution are simply different ways of looking at the same processes. Selection at an individual and populational level? That’s microevoltuion. Selection at the species level? That’s macroevolution. Evolution of novel structures? That’s microevolution over a period of tens of thousands or millions of years as opposed to generations. Evolution of new groups? That’s an arbitrary concept based on outmoded methods of classifying organisms. Evolution of new species? That’s where micro- and macro-evolution meet. And the “break” between species - the point where one species begets another - can be as simple as a mutation in a single gene which results in non-viable hybrids between two populations. There’s nothing mystical or mysterious about making the jump from micro to macro, I’m afraid.
I understand the distinction. And if you won’t be offended by a bit of advice, you’ll probably save yourself some heartburn from people like us if you simply frame your objection as an intutive conviction- a matter of innate faith (which is not the same as learned religious dogma) and let it go at that. For the most part, I think you’ll find that our type may be pitbulls in a systematic debate with empirical data but we have no particular interest in attempting to subvert someone’s personal faith. It’s only when they try to make fallacious, pseudoscientific arguments that our hackles get up. Say you believe in God, say that you believe God created the universe, even say that you believe in special creation ala Genesis. just don’t try to get into a scientific debate about it, and take our word that the “creation scientists” out there- even the somewhat sophisticated ones like Behe- are not going to give you reliable info on what the evidence is.
Okay, I’m reading the speciation stuff from talkorigins as my homework, and will report back with my comments and questions anon.
Regarding definitions, are any of you familiar with Popper’s words in the Open Society and its Enemies (Vol. II) re nominalist and essentialist definitions. I guess few scientists would demur or even get excited, but I found his distaste for arguing about meanings (and his passion for arguing about problems and theories) most invigorating. As I’m fond of saying, “When ideas fail, words come in handy”. Goethe beat me to it, actually.
Diogenes, to be fair to Behe, he seems to accept commond descent, natural selection, genetic drift, etc. (p. 229). As he puts it:
“The fact that some biochemical systems may have been designed by an intelligent agent does not mean that any of the other factors are not operative, common or important.”
Rest assured, I have understood since the debate began what pissed you guys off. I knew it wasn’t my beliefs, which I imagine are a matter of supreme indifference!
