Some things I just don't think most of you understand...

[whois]

Which part? What in the modern synthesis is not supported by the evidence, or must be supplanted by new evidence?

read the sources i have provided.

Have you checked out this thread? http://www.christianforums.com/threads/creationist-arguments-against-ervs.7898737/

yeah, just did.
i found no empirical evidence that science transformed one animal into a different kind of animal.

 

[The Cadet]

i found no empirical evidence that science transformed one animal into a different kind of animal.

Define kind.

 

[AV1611VET]

I understand what you are saying, but it is a bit misleading in the way you said it. Rather than saying from a simple organism to a complex organism, might I suggest saying, from a population of simple organisms to a population of complex organisms over time due to any number of environmental and/or biological changes/influences. The key being there that ToE doesn't say individuals evolve, rather populations evolve.

Referring to something in the singular when it should be plural can lead to (or comes from) a misunderstanding, can't (or doesn't) it?

 

[AV1611VET]

Define kind.

Genus.

(plural genera), 1550s as a term of logic, "kind or class of things" (biological sense dates from c. 1600), from Latin genus (genitive generis) "race, stock, kind; family, birth, descent, origin," from PIE root *gene- "to produce, give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to family and tribal groups.

Cognates in this highly productive word group include Sanskrit janati "begets, bears," janah "race," janman- "birth, origin," jatah "born;" Avestan zizanenti "they bear;" Greek gignesthai "to become, happen," genos "race, kind," gonos "birth, offspring, stock;" Latin gignere "to beget," gnasci "to be born," genius "procreative divinity, inborn tutelary spirit, innate quality," ingenium "inborn character," possibly germen "shoot, bud, embryo, germ;" Lithuanian gentis "kinsmen;" Gothic kuni "race;" Old English cennan "beget, create," gecynd "kind, nature, race;" Old High German kind "child;" Old Irish ro-genar "I was born;" Welsh geni "to be born;" Armenian chanim "I bear, I am born").

 

[OldWiseGuy]

I understand what you are saying, but it is a bit misleading in the way you said it. Rather than saying from a simple organism to a complex organism, might I suggest saying, from a population of simple organisms to a population of complex organisms over time due to any number of environmental and/or biological changes/influences. The key being there that ToE doesn't say individuals evolve, rather populations evolve.

A distinction without a difference. Any 'common' individual would represent the whole population, either before or after that population had 'evolved'.

 

[whois]

Define kind.

i really don't feel like getting into a war of semantics with you, but if you must:
a dinosaur and a bird for example.
let's see the empirical evidence of this.
science says it happened, so let's see the hard core evidence of it, namely the lab results that prove it.

see, the thing is, with evolution you are accepting "evidence" that you would NEVER accept if you were a judge at a murder trial.
when you read science papers that state "gene trees and species trees seldom correlate", you get the feeling that something isn't quite right.
the various nonesense surrounding what certain scientists say, being repeated by evolutionists and published in peer reviewed articles.
why is this the cadet?
some people just do not want to let go of their "small accumulating changes" idea of what evolution actually is.

the idea that the "origin of life" was from a pool of organisms is another concept.
this concept can indeed imply that there is some kind of barrier between kinds, with gene duplication and HGT accounting for most of the variation we see at the species level.

also, i firmly believe that science will go to any length to obscure a biblical correlation.
i say this in relation to epigenetics and transposons, i will bet any amount of money that these 2 concepts have biblical parallels which is why they were so hotly contested.

edit:
to be totally fair, i must also say that there is a certain amount of lag time between theory and its acceptance.
hardly ever does someone gets up there and say "this is the way it is" and science accepts it immediately with open arms.
this lag time varies, and can be decades for things like fossils and other hard to acquire evidence.

 

[Subduction Zone]

i really don't feel like getting into a war of semantics with you, but if you must:
a dinosaur and a bird for example.
let's see the empirical evidence of this.
science says it happened, so let's see the hard core evidence of it, namely the lab results that prove it.

Fossil evidence IS empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is not found only in the laboratory. If you keep yourself blind to the evidence it does not matter how much is shown to you.

see, the thing is, with evolution you are accepting "evidence" that you would NEVER accept if you were a judge at a murder trial.

This is clearly not true. In fact one of the main reasons that your side has lost court case after court case is because evolution is supported by evidence and creationism is not.

when you read science papers that state "gene trees and species trees seldom correlate", you get the feeling that something isn't quite right.

And I would like to see that claim in context.

the various nonesense surrounding what certain scientists say, being repeated by evolutionists and published in peer reviewed articles.

You do not seem to realize that peer review is a process that removes errors. Creationists can't publish peer reviewed articles because their weak attempts are filled with nonsense. You are accusing the wrong side here.

why is this the cadet?
some people just do not want to let go of their "small accumulating changes" idea of what evolution actually is.

Perhaps because that is what evolution is.

the idea that the "origin of life" was from a pool of organisms is another concept.
this concept can indeed imply that there is some kind of barrier between kinds, with gene duplication and HGT accounting for most of the variation we see at the species level.

You do not seem to understand HGT. It makes not such implication.

also, i firmly believe that science will go to any length to obscure a biblical correlation.
i say this in relation to epigenetics and transposons, i will bet any amount of money that these 2 concepts have biblical parallels which is why they were so hotly contested.

It looks like you are trying to squeeze the Bible into reality. The Bible is not a science book and should not be treated as such. You will only make it look even worse than it is.

 

[bhsmte]

I'm trying to help Phred understand that some of us just don't buy it no matter how much 'proof' is presented.

I think that is quite clear.

 

[The Cadet]

i really don't feel like getting into a war of semantics with you

It's a significant, meaningful question. When you say "science has failed to transform one animal into another kind", I have no idea what you mean. Do you mean from one species into a different species in the same genus? Do you mean from one genus to another genus in the same clade? Do you mean two highly differentiated clades, like a fruit fly turning into a dragonfly? What do you mean? We've seen the beginnings of speciation events in the lab, we've observed new species appear that previously did not exist, and of course the nested hierarchy of the tree of life is dead-on evidence of evolution.

a dinosaur and a bird for example.
let's see the empirical evidence of this.
science says it happened, so let's see the hard core evidence of it, namely the lab results that prove it.

Fundamentally, the fossil record is very clear that dinosaurs and birds are very closely related. Dinosaurs had most of the features we attribute today with birds, and all of the things you would use to determine that a species is a member of the clade "Therapoda" could equally be used to determine that a species is a member of the clade "Aves". What's more, we see atavisms among birds which mirror a more reptilian ancestry (teeth on chicken, for example). Then there's the protein sequencing of fossil remnants from a T-Rex and a species of Hadrosaur that show quite clearly a relation. I'm sure if you look, you'll find quite a few more lines of evidence. When seen in the light of the theory of evolution, everything here adds up to a very clear picture.

when you read science papers that state "gene trees and species trees seldom correlate", you get the feeling that something isn't quite right.

I googled that statement in quotes and the only place I found it was here, so... I'm kind of at a loss as to what you mean here. Yes, I know about those two papers you cited. One specifically dealt with Drosophilia and a specific problem within a particular branch of Drosophilia, and the other I didn't understand and asked for clarification on (which you didn't provide).

this concept can indeed imply that there is some kind of barrier between kinds, with gene duplication and HGT accounting for most of the variation we see at the species level.

But we have ways to check for HGT, and we already know full well that no, HGT does not account for most of the variation we see at the species level.

also, i firmly believe that science will go to any length to obscure a biblical correlation.
i say this in relation to epigenetics and transposons, i will bet any amount of money that these 2 concepts have biblical parallels which is why they were so hotly contested.

...You can show these biblical parallels, right? Because otherwise, I see no reason to make that claim. Hell, I see no reason to make the claim either way. Transposons are well-established and well-recognized as a source of some mutations in the genome, and epigenetics is also a developing field, albeit one that has very little to do with evolution, as nothing in epigenetics is passed down to the next generation.

 

[whois]

I googled that statement in quotes and the only place I found it was here, so....

i provide the source with most of the things i take from science papers.
i do not have this stuff memorized, i read it from my hard drive then post it, alone with either the name of the paper, or in some cases the entire paper as an upload.
i really do wish that people would bookmark, download, and/or save it instead of continually asking me to provide it again, and again, and again, and again.
i'll repost it when i come across it

edit:
"Even systematics has had to abandon many strictures that were part of the Modern Synthesis. If species are the durable unit of biology, and if natural selection quickly molds genes to current utility, then most genes should diverge at the time of speciation events, given views like Mayr's. Here again, analyses of newly abundant sequence data in the late 20th Century showed that rather than a highly congruent coalescence of genes at the times of speciation events, the coalescence times of alleles among species are highly variable. As such, species trees and gene trees often cannot be equated."
-the new biology, beyond the modern synthesis
www.biologydirect.com/content/2/1/30

 

[SkyWriting]

Well, you're wrong. A creature doesn't mutate. Once a creature is born it's done. It doesn't mutate. Evolution takes place between generations.

We call it cancer. Then there is death. A pretty big change. Disease can make some big changes. And disease can pass to offspring.
Some animals change their sexuality based on living conditions.

 

[SkyWriting]

Evolution includes detrimental mutations, which are selected against.

Are you denying the possibility that beneficial mutations can occur?

Sure. I've always said that. There are some dna variations that slow disease. But nothing random. All programmed and designed to fight mutations in their tracks.

Human DNA Repair Genes

 

[Justatruthseeker]

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO CLAIMED THAT MOST MUTATIONS ARE HARMFUL.

Are you going to back this with evidence or not?

He's just agreeing with the science, unlike you - since you all claim the only place that DNA isn't junk is in the DNA coding for proteins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
"One study on genetic variations between different species of Drosophila suggests that, if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, the result is likely to be harmful, with an estimated 70 percent of amino acid polymorphisms that have damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial. Due to the damaging effects that mutations can have on genes, organisms have mechanisms such as DNA repair to prevent or correct (revert the mutated sequence back to its original state) mutations."

So make up your mind.

 

[whois]

We performed a classic MA experiment in which frequent sampling of MA lines was combined with whole genome resequencing to develop a high-resolution picture of the effect of spontaneous mutations in a hypermutator (ΔmutS) strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. After ∼644 generations of mutation accumulation, MA lines had accumulated an average of 118 mutations, and we found that average fitness across all lines decayed linearly over time. Detailed analyses of the dynamics of fitness change in individual lines revealed that a large fraction of the total decay in fitness (42.3%) was attributable to the fixation of rare, highly deleterious mutations (comprising only 0.5% of fixed mutations). Furthermore, we found that at least 0.64% of mutations were beneficial and probably fixed due to positive selection. The majority of mutations that fixed (82.4%) were base substitutions and we failed to find any signatures of selection on nonsynonymous or intergenic mutations.
-fitness is strongly influenced by rare mutations of large effect in MA experiment.
Genetics. 2014 Jul; 197(3): 981–990.
doi: 10.1534/genetics.114.163147

 

[Justatruthseeker]

...Those are the exact same thing, Justa. And the modern theory of evolution has an awful lot to say about HGT... And how virtually meaningless it is among eukaryotes. The fact that you know nothing about the literature does nothing to reflect on this fact or what it has to do with evolution.



And we've already been over why this claim is completely wrong. The most recent universal common human ancestor (that is, the most recent person to whom every single person alive can trace direct ancestry) almost certainly lived within recorded history. In fact, I addressed this in the very first post of my other thread; you never responded to this point. The most recent human common ancestor may very well have lived after Confucius.

And that's humans. A species which spans the entire globe, contains billions of individuals, and which up until very recently lacked easy mechanisms to spread within their various groups, as well as non-trivial cultural prohibitions in many cases. What would it be among a specific population of british moths, who reproduce much faster, have much shorter lifespans, are considerably more geologically contained, and are much more likely to undergo genetic bottleneck events due to how easily a shift in tree color could cause their main protection from predators to stop working? It's trivial to understand how a beneficial mutation can spread through the entire populace.

First of all lets get one thing straight. I am certainly not arguing mankind's common ancestor did not live in the recent past, since Adam and Eve came about in the recent past. I only argue what those decedents were and how that common ancestor came about.

Secondly this means mutation is useless as we observe populations today - they are too large and no mutation will ever become fixed in the population. As of today - evolution by mutation is completely useless as a viable means of increasing the complexity of a population as their exists no mechanism for the sharing of this mutation to the populations at large since you reject LGT. And as I said earlier - if you accept it for one....

Tell us all how a mutation that beneficially affects Bob - is going to beneficially affect the rest of the population???? Go ahead, explain this to us. Don't run from it. So we can certainly conclude evolution is no longer a viable process with today's population and fixation within the population.

You ask us to believe in some mythical ancestor - just as you are claiming we do, but this seems to be ok for you to do so and call it science, while when others do its religion.


SHOW ME A SINGLE FOSSIL OF THIS COMMON ANCESTOR THAT SPLIT INTO HUMAN AND APE??????????


So you can't, can you. You don't even have a possible one do you. So it's all just wishful thinking and computer simulation right? We would get the same exact results if we started with Adam and Eve in those computer simulations, wouldn't we.

You are quite mistaken if you think anyone believes the population a few thousands of years ago was more than 2. But you have yet to show one single example of mating species where mutation was involved - except in your beliefs. Gene recombination occurs and new dominant and recessive traits become fixed. Not by mutation, but by natural processes built into the genomes.

But you are still avoiding discussing those Finches, even though I have given you opportunity to do so in every single post. Still fail to defend your claims of speciation occurring. Stop running.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Define "kind".

Define "species".

 

[Justatruthseeker]

We call it cancer. Then there is death. A pretty big change. Disease can make some big changes. And disease can pass to offspring.
Some animals change their sexuality based on living conditions.

So your examples of mutations are all harmful?

And that change in sexuality of frogs and fishes has nothing to do with mutation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_reed_frog

"These west African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from female to male. This likely occurs when the population does not have enough males to allow procreation and is accomplished when a chemical trigger activates the sex gene to disintegrate the female organs and develop the male ones."

They can take the pseudoscience of mutation elsewhere.

And I am unsure of your stance. You seem to argue against evolution in one post and for it in another? Or are you arguing that the majority of mutations are harmful with the minority doing nothing, and an occasional one partially benefits an individual??

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Fossil evidence IS empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is not found only in the laboratory. If you keep yourself blind to the evidence it does not matter how much is shown to you.

We agree - if you keep blinding yourself to the fact they have incorrectly classified 90% of the fossil record as separate species, it won't matter how much science is presented to you.

Babies and adults incorrectly classified.

Humans fossils.


So when are you going to accept the science and throw out half of them from the books????

This is clearly not true. In fact one of the main reasons that your side has lost court case after court case is because evolution is supported by evidence and creationism is not.

Because they keep using false evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

"The fossil was introduced as evidence by Clarence Darrow in defense of John Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow died in 1938, fifteen years before Piltdown Man was exposed as a fraud."

You do not seem to understand HGT. It makes not such implication.

Again you are ignoring the science by the people that have actually studied it.

Lateral Gene Transfer.

"But all agree that the exchange of genetic information across species lines — which is how we will define LGT in this primer — is far more pervasive and more radical in its consequences than we could have guessed just a decade ago."

But you are still living in the past.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

It's a significant, meaningful question. When you say "science has failed to transform one animal into another kind", I have no idea what you mean. Do you mean from one species into a different species in the same genus? Do you mean from one genus to another genus in the same clade? Do you mean two highly differentiated clades, like a fruit fly turning into a dragonfly? What do you mean? We've seen the beginnings of speciation events in the lab, we've observed new species appear that previously did not exist, and of course the nested hierarchy of the tree of life is dead-on evidence of evolution.

You can start with Darwin's Finches and show how they became separate species since they have been interbreeding since they first arrived on the islands? I've asked you repeatedly to defend this claim and you have run from it every time.

 

[The Cadet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
"One study on genetic variations between different species of Drosophila suggests that, if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, the result is likely to be harmful, with an estimated 70 percent of amino acid polymorphisms that have damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial.

Yes, and this would make sense given how most organisms are typically at some peak, however small, of their respective fitness landscapes. An organism is, to some extent, well-adapted to its environment, and any changes have decent odds of making it less-well-adapted. Are you aware of the concept of a fitness landscape?

First of all lets get one thing straight. I am certainly not arguing mankind's common ancestor did not live in the recent past, since Adam and Eve came about in the recent past. I only argue what those decedents were and how that common ancestor came about.

Secondly this means mutation is useless as we observe populations today - they are too large and no mutation will ever become fixed in the population. As of today - evolution by mutation is completely useless as a viable means of increasing the complexity of a population as their exists no mechanism for the sharing of this mutation to the populations at large

...But I just gave you a mechanism. Mutations spread through populations rapidly because populations are massively incestuous. Basically if you go back through human history, for any given individual who lived more than 4,000 years ago, they are either the direct ancestor of every human alive today or the direct ancestor of none.

And yes, you've tapped into something that Gould and Eldridge realized some 50-odd years ago - that spreading beneficial mutations through a large, wide-spread population is a slow and arduous process, and that these mutations are far more likely to spread quickly among small, geographically isolated populations. This is a non-trivial element of Punctuated Equilibrium. You're a wee bit behind the times.

since you reject LGT.

I do no such thing. Lateral gene transfer exists and is fairly common among prokaryotic species. It is present but extremely rare among eukaryotes and does not account for the diversity present. We can measure LGT, and the measurements simply do not account for the mutations we see.

Tell us all how a mutation that beneficially affects Bob - is going to beneficially affect the rest of the population???? Go ahead, explain this to us. Don't run from it. So we can certainly conclude evolution is no longer a viable process with today's population and fixation within the population.

Let's say Bob got a gene that makes his foreskin corrode latex. I think we can all quite unambiguously say that this gene is more likely to be passed on (my condolences to Bob and anyone who sleeps with him not knowing about his awful track record with condoms). Genealogy predicts that within several thousand years, Bob is almost certainly going to be either the direct ancestor of all humans alive, or the direct ancestor of none, and his mutation is both one which is likely to be conserved and one which helps ensure his genetic legacy. Or, as SMBC so nicely put it:

What effect does Bob's mutation have on humanity now? Virtually none, save for that he, any any offspring he passes it on to, has a reproductive advantage (sorry Bob!).

You ask us to believe in some mythical ancestor - just as you are claiming we do, but this seems to be ok for you to do so and call it science, while when others do its religion.

Because one of them is science, and one of them is religion! This ancestor is not mythical, they are a mathematical and biological necessity. Whereas the idea that there was ever just one man and one woman some few thousand years ago is laughable.

SHOW ME A SINGLE FOSSIL OF THIS COMMON ANCESTOR THAT SPLIT INTO HUMAN AND APE??????????

Congratulations, you've confused the most recent human common ancestor to the most recent hominini common ancestor. Or most recent homininae common ancestor, depending on what you mean by "ape". Either way, you've gone back a few hundred thousand years further than what I was referring to. Again, I remind you, chances are very good that upwards of 95% of all humans alive today have a direct ancestral lineage to Confucius. Master Kong. The guy who lived around 500 BCE. That's not "hominid living on the savannah". That's not even "the oldest human civilization we know of". That's "about two thousand years after the great Pyramid of Giza was constructed".

So you can't, can you. You don't even have a possible one do you. So it's all just wishful thinking and computer simulation right? We would get the same exact results if we started with Adam and Eve in those computer simulations, wouldn't we.

...Yeah, I'mma just let this one speak for itself.

You are quite mistaken if you think anyone believes the population a few thousands of years ago was more than 2.

"I think you'll find that the vast majority of scientists agree with me; the world is at the center of the universe and everything spins around it."

But you have yet to show one single example of mating species where mutation was involved - except in your beliefs. Gene recombination occurs and new dominant and recessive traits become fixed. Not by mutation, but by natural processes built into the genomes.

My favorite part is that I already did. The peppered moth! And your response was to essentially call the scientist responsible a fraud for no reason whatsoever. So I guess that kind of begs the question - what evidence are you looking for? What can I give you that you won't immediately throw back in my face?

But you are still avoiding discussing those Finches, even though I have given you opportunity to do so in every single post. Still fail to defend your claims of speciation occurring. Stop running.

1. http://www.christianforums.com/threads/evolution-creation-on-trial.7892639/page-17#post-68206323
2. http://www.christianforums.com/thre...tific-consensus.7890889/page-19#post-68078958
3. http://www.christianforums.com/thre...nts-on-evolution.7899400/page-2#post-68375805
4. http://www.christianforums.com/threads/evolution-creation-on-trial.7892639/page-15#post-68196565

Every time you have brought up Darwin's Finches, I have given you a clear and unambiguous answer (in fact, if you look closely, you can see the gradual shift in position that comes from learning more about the issue). Last time, I wondered if it was simply a matter of missing my answer, so I gave you my answer in big red letters, hoping you would notice it. Here it is again:

All caveats aside, I personally do not think that the finches currently or previously qualified as different species.

Maybe it was just missing the bold and underline last time.