“Rest assured, I have understood since the debate began what pissed you guys off.”
Before I get eaten alive by a nanoswarm, I should clarify the ambiguity int eh above. What I meant was that I knew the type of thing that was likely to piss you off, but ploughed on regardless because I really am an inquiring kind of fellow.
NOT that I deliberately set out to press your buttons.
Though, I must say, the tempt…
bodswood: As you have consistently and repeatedly ignored my requests to explain your own beliefs in terms of the scientific method I have to assume that you cannot do so and are deliberately avoiding that difficult problem. You attack evolution by saying there are gaps and intutive problems, and yet you have no issue with saying that someone waved a magic wand and made it all happen. Good luck in your effort to understand evolution, but I think you need to spend some time analyzing your own beliefs and looking for flaws in them rather than constently trying to undermine the scientific theory of evolution. I’m done with this thread.
I don’t know if you’ll be reading this, John. I guess not. But, anyway, I’ve tried to explain my position, in terms of micro- and macro-evolution and convictions that I’m willing to put to the test. I don’t think my current beliefs are based on a scientific method. I thought that was understood. I have a hard time conceiving of a situation where I am ultimately descended from a primitive life form, but I think I’m willing to admit of the possibility.
I don’t believe in aeronautics.
I understand some people do, and have made their livings teaching aeronautics to others, but I think they’ve just accepted a bunch of arbitrary notions about Bernoulli’s Principle without any real thought; therefore it’s just dogma to them. I don’t suppose they like me saying that, since they’ve built up a huge industry around NASA and whatnot, but it seems clear to me that airplanes are really held up by the will of God. No other explanation makes sense.
I’ve tried to debate aeronautics-believers in the past. They try to bury me in jargon, claiming they can “prove” the truth of their views, but I don’t buy it.
I, too, wonder about this pattern. You ask questions. We provide multiple sites that provide answers to said questions. You say something that boils down to,“Well, thats an interesting site. Here’s yet another question.” Rinse. Repeat.
Actually, from talk.origins debates, most creationists believe exactly as you do. “Microevolution” is too well proven for even them to deny, but speciation cannot be as quickly observed in a lab, and so can be denied.
If you deny speciation, then you must deny that any series of small changes to a subpopulation of a species can prevent interbreeding. Consider the example of a species that mates only when the temperature reaches a certain level, which it does in March. A subpopulation starts moving north, where the warm temperature is delayed. Small genetic variations cause some members to adjust their clocks to mate a bit later, when it is warmer, and their reproduction has a greater chance of success than the ones who mate earlier. As the population moves north, this causes mating to get later and later. - a month later at a certain point.
Now, if someone mixes these populations, one set will mate in March and another in April - and thus will never interbreed. They have speciated. If you think this is unlikely, there is a species of insect that mated only when a certain fruit blossomed. When apple trees were introduced to Ohio, this species split into those who mated when the original fruit blossomed, and ones that mated later when the apple trees blossomed. This all happened since Johnny Appleseed introduced apple trees, only a few hundred years ago. This is from a reworking of Origin of Species with new data, which I got from the library. I can find the reference if you wish, but perhaps one of our biologists knows it.
If you don’t like the language analogy, try this one. If I’m driving from New York to Boston, New Haven is an intermediate stop. But I don’t teleport from New York to New Haven to Boston. Each inch, each foot I travel is intermediate. I can meander off the same road, and that is intermediate also. Genetic diversity is just like the rotation of my tires. There is one thing wrong with this analogy - it implies a goal. If you didn’t know where I was going, you’d say I was headed for Boston only in retrospect. I might have stopped in New Haven, or veered off for Albany.
Is that better?
Might the reproduction behaviour you describe in insects not occur due to environmental factors without genetic variations?
But even in such cases, and also the finches of the Galapagos, would it need to be an evolutionary change at all? Wouldn’t such speciation be possible via natural selection without any new genetic information being introduced if the genetic pool is sufficiently large?
I’m pretty sure that in the case of the apple/hawthorn moth, the difference is due to a mutation that changes the chemical structure of their scent receptors so that the apple-specific bugs can only smell the apples, as opposed to the original strain, which can only smell the Hawthorn (or vice versa)
First of all, I don’t think insects are smart enough to do anything not genetically driven. But your second point is a good one. Evolution talks about the distribution of genetic factors as well as new ones. If the environmental pressures cause the distribution of genes to be sorted so that one population is predominantly early, and the other late, they have still speciated even without any mutations. Because of this they won’t mate even if brought back together, (even if they theoretically can) and thus won’t merge genomes again. Now, once this has happened, what is preventing them from growing even further apart, so that they cannot mate at all.
A more familiar example is that horses and donkeys have diverged enough so that they can bear offspring, but this offspring is almost always sterile.
Oh, and I understand that your intuition is against evolution being true. Could you consider for a moment that your intuition might be wrong, and that the facts might give you a more accurate view of the world?
Thanks, I’m sure that is it. I’m not biologist, I’m just married to one, and she did her research in reproductive physiology.
What is an ape? What is a human? Don’t you realize that “ape” is merely a classification? It’s semantics. Chimpanzees are more closely related to us than they are to gibbons, and yet we call both chimps and gibbons apes and ourselves humans. Classification is not entirely arbitrary since it rests on genetic evidence, but it’s not set in stone either. There’s no label in the chimpanzee DNA that says “ape”.
Here are facts: A species existed once upon a time. They were like us in many respects, but they were a different species. They used clothes. They used tools. They buried their dead in a ceremonial manner. In other words, they had intelligence. They don’t exist any more. Do you disagree with any of these facts? If so, which one? If not, how can you state that you don’t believe in extinct hominids?
As for the micro/macro-evolution dichotomy, here’s SDStaff David’s take on it. To sum up: the dichotomy is a falsehood dreamed up by creationists to avoid accepting evolution in spite of mountains of evidence. It simply doesn’t exist.
Finally, I, and many with me, would really like to see which of Jon the Geek’s facts you don’t agree with.
What on earth are you talking about? All changes are evolutionary. If the Galapagos finches change, at all, for any reason, to better exploit their environment, they have evolved.
If they speciate, they have evolved. I mean, be reasonable! If natural selection causes speciation, regardless of the mechanism, they have evolved. It isn’t necessary for new genetic information to be added.
By popular request, my answers to Jon’s questions:
In any given generation of an organism, more than one individual is born. YES
Those individuals are not identical. Even if they have the same parent or parents, there are differences in chromosomal segregation, crossover, mutation, the movement of transposons, etc. Even “identical” twins are not truly identical. YES
There usually aren’t enough resources available for all of them to reproduce before they die. Some will starve to death while young. Some will be eaten. Some simply won’t be able to attract a mate (in the case of sexual reproduction, a partner is a “resource” in this sense). YES
Those individuals with genes that give them an advantage are more likely to reproduce. This advantage can be a slightly better ability to find food, a slightly better way to avoid being eaten, a slightly better way to attract a mate–pretty much anything. YES
But note the caveat re speciation, concerning the gene pool, given in my 3:11pm
The individuals who survive will have a chance of passing on their genes to their offspring. The individuals who do not survive will not. YES
Over a long enough time period, the “better chance of surviving” will add up, meaning there will be more of the individuals with the advantage than individuals without the advantage. YES
The Earth is billions of years old. YES
Fossil evidence indicates that life has existed on Earth for billions of years. YES
Voyager wrote: “I understand that your intuition is against evolution being true. Could you consider for a moment that your intuition might be wrong, and that the facts might give you a more accurate view of the world?” YES
Your caveat is meaningless. Any change that results in “speciation” is evolutionary, regardless of origin. Evolution is not the addition of new genetic material, it is any change in the existing material. Evolution is defined as a change in the allelic frequencies in a population across generations. An allele is a form of a gene, i.e. brown eyes and blue eyes. If some finches had a long-beak allele, and they were selected for, then the population evolved such that long beak finches were the dominant form.
Finally! Thank you, bodswood.
Now, one more question which, if you answer yes, will show that you believe the FACT of evolution:
I think part of what bodswood is getting at with his micro v macro evolution is this. Bacteria reproduce much faster than anything else we have, so they would be the best model. They evolve drug resistance, new lipopolysaccharide coats, etc. However, after millions of generations, [I/]E coli* is still [I/]E coli*, not [I/]E smith*, or [I/]E tuesday* or whatever (those names are made up). We mutate the crap out of fruit flies, even putting legs on their heads where their antennae go, but they’re still fruit flies. There is no tactile direct evidence (for some) outside of the fossil record. So for many it is a stretch
I’m not one of those many though
But there are strains of E. coli, which is about the best you can do for species of asexual organisms. Considering it’s possible for E. coli to pick up free DNA from the surrounding medium, it’s hard to define where the species border lies.
If you mean we haven’t turned fruit flies into something distinctly non-fruit fly, sure, that’s true. However, we have produced new species of fruit flies. Given time, we could produce something that no longer resembles a fruit fly. We’ve been doing genetic experiments for about 100 years. Nature has been doing them for 4 billion years. Even if we use techniques that will speed up the process, I think it’s asking a lot to expect us to breed distinctly non-fruit flies starting with fruit flies.
Of course, you need not look at fruit flies. Humans have produced numerous species of plants (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage) from a species of wild mustard.
Good to hear (or, well, read) 
Even if we did manage to artificially speed up the mutation/selection process to forcefully ‘evolve’ (wrong use of word, I know) a population of fruit flies into something radically different, it won’t convince the creationist camp; the argument will just switch from ‘it isn’t possible at all’ to ‘see? It requires intelligent design’.
Even the computer programs that use evolutionary processes come (unjustly) under this criticism.
And this is the point; creationism isn’t a science, it is a sermon; a series of arguments designed not to enlighten, reveal truth or provoke inquiry, but merely to convince.
I assume this was the caveat that’s 3:11pm to him (it’s 2:11am for me):
So, by extension, this is what I see as your theory of evolution + creation. Let me know what if I’m incorrect:
So… what about mutation? Does it only happen if it won’t prevent a population from diverging too much from its core population? What stops mutations from accumulating which would result in speciation?
The only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time. In fact, the terms aren’t used in biology textbooks the way they’re being used here. I just pulled out Campbell’s Biology (1987 edition), and it defines the terms like this:
microevolution: a change in the gene pool of a population over a succession of generations
macroevolution: evolutionary change on a grand scale, encompassing the origin of novel designs, evolutionary trends, adaptive radiation, and mass extinction.
Macroevolution is described in the chapter after speciation; microevolution leads to speciation; macroevolution is just the large-scale study of evolution. There is no dividing line between microevolution and speciation; believing in microevolution but not speciation requires faith in spite of evidence.
So, to continue with the list of points:
9) Humans have NOT existed for billions of years. (SentientMeat’s addition)
[quote]
There are live Trilobites in NW Australia./quote]Are you not thinking of other still-living relics from the Cambrian, such as horseshoe crabs or coelacanths? I thought trilobites became extinct in the Permian?