Not if you believe some prominent evolutionary biologists it isn’t.
Are you perchance aprominent and published evolutionary biologist Diogenes? OR should we take their word over yours?
Erwin, D.H., 2000 “Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution.”
Evolution and Devpt… 2:2, 2000.
I have no idea what you imagine you’re objecting to but all I said is that there is no mechanical boundary between “micro” and “macro” evolution and there isn’t, and your quote doesn’t say that there is.
Is “Search” broken? We get this question every few months, and since there are few literal Creationists here to respond, what’s the point?
:dubious:
“I am skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” Oh, this doesn’t mean they doubt Evolution at all. No legit scientist doubts Evolution. It happens, it has been shown through experimentation. BUT- there are some scientists that think there are some other mechanisms other than “natural selection”, that is to say they do accept natural selectio and Evolution, but not nessesarily for* every* evolutionary adaptation. There is a small minority that have a varient of Lamarkism as a possible method. (Note that Lamarkism was not disproved by that silly experiment with mice & tails, that’s not at all how Lamarkism was supposed to wrok). Saying that there could possibly be some other method besides “natural selection” is not being a crack-pot. Saying that Evolution with natural selection doesn’t occur- that’s being a crack-pot. The two are not the same at all.
There also have been several refinements on “classic Darwinism”. You could say, by those that Darwin was “wrong”. Well, in certain minor specifics, yes. That’s a quiblle, but…
Next, having doubts that Life originated though random happenstance on Earth is certainly not a crack-pot belief. There are legit believers in Panspermia and other theories. Simply saying “We really don’t know” is just being truthful.
That statement was carefully worded so that a legit scientist who simply isn’t sure we currently know everything about the mechanisms of evolution (and we don’t) can agree with it.
No, what you said was
and the title, never mind the text, says that that is simply not true. That is what I am objecting to. There is a discontinuity between microevolution and speciation that makes such a claim completely wrong.
How is it wrong? I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is the barrier? What is the difference between a macro event and a micro event?
How much simpler can I make this?
You said “Macro is just a whole lot of micro.”
When in fact “discontinuities impose a hierarchical structure to evolution and discredit any smooth extrapolation from allelic substitution to large-scale evolutionary patterns. Recent developments in comparative developmental biology suggest a need to reconsider the possibility that some macroevolutionary discontinuites may be associated with the origination of evolutionary innovation.”
I really can’t make it a lot simpler. What you said is inconsistent with the evidence. It is wrong. The title makes that plain enough. It says that macro is not just a whole lot of micro, the exact opposite of your claim. That’s what wrong means, when what you say is opposed to or inconsistent with what is correct.
Again, it can’t get much more simple.
Recent peer reviewed science journal: “Macroevolution more than lots of microevolution.”
Diogenes: “Macro is just a whole lot of micro.”
That’s what I’m talking about, as I plainly said. Eminent evolutionary biologists in peer reviewed journals disagree explicitly with what you have claimed. That is what I am talking about.
Barrier? What barrier? Whoa aside from yourself mentioned a barrier?
A micro event is one that occurs intraspecifically. A macro event is one that occurs interspecifically.
For someone who boldly declared that both macro and micro are the same I would have thought that you would know that.
A little research shows that Erwin is being quote mined by IDists and is rather pissed off about it.
I’m not exactly sure what “discontinuities” he’s referring to, I can’t find anything other than the abstract to his paper online and so I can’t evaluate his actual findings or even clearly identify what he’s claiming from the abstract. I don’t know what he means by “origination of evloutionary innovation” either. Whatever he’s claiming, he is adamant that he is in no way challenging evolution and has nothing but scorn for ID
In any case you have not identified a mechanical barrier and neither has your cite so I really fail to see what you’re driving at. Also your definition of “macro” and “micro,” while technically true, is completely tautological.
Let me put it this way. Micro and Macro events are results of the exact same mechanisms. Speciation caused by the same mechanisms (mutation, heredity, selection) as microevolution.
Macro is just a whole bunch of micro, and no biologists have not disagreed with me.
I don’t get your objection Blake. The paper you quoted is arguing against “smooth extrapolation” i.e. saying that the gradual progress is one of steadily directional change. We know that this is not generally true: the actual paths followed by evolution tend to resemble something a little more like a random walk, albiet a random walk in thousands and thousands of dimensions. And secondly, scientists have found cases that appear to be relatively “fast” mutations. But even these seem to be just micro again on a compressed scale. It’s the same process: mutations increase variation, selection picks among them, the next generation is then skewed towards having the new mutation. It’s just that in the case of these “discontinous” jumps, we’re not talking about variations in traits everyone has, but rather new mutations that arise and take several generations to swamp into the relevant populations. But again, that’s just a version of micro: it’s just been given a remarkably good new variation on which to select. Same process.
One of the truly amazing things about the bizarre obsession creationists have about proving Darwin “wrong” is that Darwin really WAS wrong about something fairly huge: the nature of heredity. The problem for creationists is that a) Darwin himself realized it and even speculated over the right answer and b) the solution the Darwin’s problem made evolution far far more powerful and compelling than ever before.
So creationists duly avoid noting it, even though it is a glaring error in Darwin’s ideas that they could bring up at any moment to show how “wrong” he was. (Basically, Darwin believed that offspring traits are a analog blend of the parents. If this were true, variation would quickly be swamped out by homogeneity whenever it arose. That theoretical argument, as well as the seeming lack of such swamping in observed mating, pretty solidly sunk blending. Darwin basically conceded the point, and towards the end of his life speculated that heredity might be particulate, which as it turned out, it indeed was. He didn’t live to see this idea developed and confirmed, however.)
Oh, and Blake, I should further add that no one thinks that ALL macroevolution involves sudden mutational leaps. It’s just that there have been some cases where it appears this has happened (for instance, the suddenly developed ability of bacteria to eat nylon appears to be a fairly major change, and if we found a nylon eating bacteria in the wild, we might well have labeled it a new species. Though, of course, defining species with asexual reproducers is never easy anyway). Most major macroevolutionary lineages are perfectly plausible as lots and lots of micro. You certainly don’t need major mutation, for instance, to explain the development of the proboscidean lineage from the Eocene (i.e. different species of elephants through the ages)
There cannot be? It seems to me that if a supreme being did in fact have a major hand in creation, evidence for that fact would be ubiquitous and impossible to ignore.
Concerning the micro- vs. macroevolution debate, I’ve noticed that the people arguing that macroevolution is more than just a bunch of microevolution, therefore implies ID, are admitting that:
but the major changes in species “seem” to great to be explained by our current naturalistic processes, therefore God did it. This is just the old “god of the gaps” argument, where God’s role keeps getting pushed into a tinier and tinier crack as our understanding of nature increases.
Well, certainly some of the ID theorist claims would indeed, if you think through them, resultin some pretty obvious telltale signs. For instance, Behe suggests that IR structures could have all been created in the first cell, ready to be called up when more complex creatures needed them but could not evolve them. As Kenneth Miller points out, that would be one frickin HUGE cell to have all that RNA/DNA sitting there waiting around to be turned on. Modern descendants show no such sign. Not to mention that it wouldn’t work anyway: stuff that doesn’t get “turned on” for a long time can’t easily have errors weeded out of it (because, from the DNA perspective… what’s an error, exactly?), and thus tends to degrade over time anyway.
But in general, you can’t disprove the hand of a creator that could potentially have acted through quantum fluctuations themselves.
True, but there’s a big difference in saying that “there cannot be evidence for God, even if He existed” and “it’s possible to define ‘God’ in such a way that He would not be falsifiable.”
So what is the answer?
Let us start with what you would tell an elementary school student. We can work our way up to high school and college level understanding from there.
Liberty through Knowledge
rwjefferson
I think part of the confusion here is the assumption that macroevolution only involves speciation - it does not. Speciation, the evolution of novel features, and the evolution of higher taxa are examples of macroevolutionary processes whereby natural selection can be extrapolated upwards (although, again, many evolutionary biologists, especially of late, argue that there is more at work than “mere” natural selection, including significant developmental processes). Extinction, however, is an example whereby there is no smooth gradation of microevolutionary processes accounting for a macro effect. While it may sound good in theory that extinction is simply what happens when an entire species fails to adapt to changing environments, when one examines extinction scenarios in detail, it becomes evident that death by natural selection is not a sufficient explanation. David Raup, in his book Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? goes into this in greater detail, and argues strongly against the “bad genes” scenario. In the majority of cases, some sort of catastrophic event is necessary to act as an initial killer, significantly reducing a population to the point where “stasis” no longer predominates. In fact, it is next to impossible to kill off an established species without some sort of “intitial hit” (the demise of the passenger pigeon, for example, had far more to do with habitat loss than overhunting).
As a generalization, then, it really is incorrect to state that macroevolution is “merely” microevolution writ large. Some micro processes do scale nicely, and can account for macro observations. But not all macro events are readily explainable via micro processes.
Note that I did not say, “there cannot be evidence for God”. I said, “But there is not, and cannot be, scientific evidence for God having anything to do with its creation.” In order to identify scientific evidence for God’s Hand in creation, it must be true that a) He exists, b) He directly intervened in creation at some point, and c) He left identifiable “tracks” as a result. A and B are both beyond the realm of scientific inquiry; instead, they are inferred by claims centering around C (thus, natural theology and its intellectual offpsring, ID, are born). However, any such inferrence begins with the assumption that A and B are, in fact, true. Given the facts as we see them, and without a priori assumptions about the presence or absence of God, His existence, much less his intervention, cannot be logically concluded. The scientific evidence demonstrates that (a) God is unnecessary, but can say nothing about His existence or proclivities toward intervention.
But if God his own self parted the clouds tomorrow, and explained to everyone on Earth that he created a universe with the right conditions for life, thought up the whole DNA thing, but noted that at some points, for example the vertebrate’s eyes, that DNA wasn’t quite sufficient, so he intervened to manipulate some DNA changes, and explained exactly which ones in detail, this would be pretty good scientific evidence, wouldn’t it?
I don’t expect this to happen, but if God really exists, it could (and if God really were to exist, this is the kind of stuff I would expect to happen regularly).
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that life evolves primarily through branching (cladogenesis), rather than transformation (anagenEsis). The question of “why, if evolution is true, do “lower” forms exist” proceeds from the false assumption that transformation - one species becoming another - is the norm.
Because the history of life is characterized by branching, pre-existing lineages are not “overwritten” when a new branch is formed - those previous branches continue to exist, as well. It is therefore not surprising at all that we find bacteria and amoebae (?) alongside sparrows and humans.
The resulting knowledge would not, however, be the result of scientific inquiry (i.e., we did not discover the fact, we were simply told outright). It could, perhaps, be later confirmed through such inquiry.
Barring such a momentous event, however, without definite knowledge one way or the other regarding God’s existence or interventionist tendencies, science is not equipped to identify the Hand of God (or the Handiwork of God, if you prefer).
Consider, for example, the venerable watch in the field. If I were a reknowned watchmaker, and one of my pieces were found lying in a field, it could likely be determined that I was, indeed, the crafter of said timpepiece, based on what you (or someone else) knew of my methods, materials and techniques. However, if no one knew who I was, much less that I ever dabbled in watchmaking, it would be unlikely that anyone would ever trace the piece back to me (assuming no CSI evidence were at hand, and all you had to go by was the watch itself).
Similarly, we know nothing about the materials, methods or techniques of God as Creator (or even Dabbler). How, then, upon identifying some peculiar feature of an organism or biological system, can we logcally conclude that this is God’s Own Trademark?
If we had been around to observe the actual events that caused the divisions between genera, families, even phyla, we would have called it speciation - it’s just a fork in the road that happened a lot further back than the others, but the same kind of fork nonetheless; more to the point, the initial difference between chordates and their close relatives that lacked a rigid body member would probably have been dismissed by creationists as ‘just normal variation within a kind’
Of course, it doesn’t seem that way today, because it happened to be a watershed event, after which the various lineages went their separate ways, accumulating their various, but different, sets of peculiarities ever since.