Challenging Evolution

strange then, how every biological statement that MrV has made about evolution is flat out wrong. It's a good thing you didn't take biology - you would have failed.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

I think this comes to the core of the problem. How do we find scientific truth? How do we discover the nature of light? How do we learn about chemicals? How do we learn about biological diversity?

You seem to know little about the scientific method. Scientific progress is based on experiments--many experiments. Are we all required to do every experiment? No! We could never do that. So scientists have developed a remarkable system. They do an experiment and they write about what they observed, and what it's probable implications are. Then other scientists review their writings, a process known as peer review. If, after a thorough attempt to pick out the flaws in the process, the article still appears to be valid, the article is then allowed to be published in a scientific journal. Other scientists are invited to do follow-up experiments, to see if they can further substantiate and build on the claims, or to see if they can find alternate explanations or even disconfiming evidence. That is the process.

This is what all of our advancement in scientific knowledges is based on. And it works. Based on this system, we have learned many facts based on the conclusive evidence found.

It seems to me that your basic tact here is to try to discredit the ability of science to find such facts in at least one field of study, the TOE. And so you repeat like a mantra, "There is no conclusive evidence." And you seem to insist that science cannot tell either way.

But I do not think that, when you are with your church friends, that you tell them you cannot tell whether the TOE is true.

For it seems to me that you base your decisions on another source--the Bible as you interpret it. So your tact seems to be to discredit the validity of scientific findings in this field, and to then turn to a different source of knowledge.

You have been shown evidence over and over again. But it is never enough. Why not? It seems to me that no amount of evidence would be enough for you. For you do not trust the source, that is, the accumulated reults of scientific investigation as reported in the peer review journals.

If you had only gotten a grasp of what the scientific method is all about, I think this thread would have been much shorter.

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"If God did not intend I should think, why did he give me a thinker?"--Robert G. Ingersoll

I think you are changing your definitions here. initially you were looking for overwhelming evidence, and repeatedly denied that the vast amounts of correlated evidence were overwhelming - many of the prior assumptions you made were wrong (you assumed that the DNA was obtained from the fossil record iirc), and many of the links you made between different bits of the evidence were wrong (you assumed that the phylogenies generated by ERVs were somehow constructed from phylogenies based on fossils, also wrong, the phylogenies are constructed completely independently). the problem was that you never defined what overwhelming evidence is. now you are swithcing to reasonable doubt, but the problem is that all your points of reasonable doubt are strawmen versions of evolution, or misunderstandings, such as the speciation issue. I am pretty sure that you aren't stupid, but there seems to be somewhat of a mental roadblock there to your understanding of the evidence presented to you. It could well be the rapid pace of the thread, or it could be your preconcieved notions of what evolution is that you cannot let go of, I don't know.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

As noted earlier, this is an incorrect assumption about TOE.

I thought it would be useful to go over several of the incorrect assumptions about TOE that have led to misunderstanding, and compare them to what TOE actually says.

Incorrect assumptions:

1.Species begin as one or two individuals.
1a. The common ancestor of all living things was a single cell.

2. Evolution relies heavily on the inter-breeding of two different species.
2a. Since inter-breeding of two different species often leads to reproductive problems in the resulting "new species" evolution must soon come to a halt when breeding in the "new species" is no longer possible.

3. Evolution only begins with speciation. Overwhelming evidence for evolution must demonstrate evolution occurring beyond the species level i.e. a daughter species of a different genus or family than the parent species.

Corrections:

1. Species begin as populations.
1a. The common ancestor of all living things was a population of single-celled organisms. This population probably numbered in the billions, even trillions, right from the outset.

2 & 2a. Evolution does not rely heavily on inter-breeding of two different species. A much more common form of evolution is the breaking up of a population into two or more groups which each keep breeding separately. Or simply species change in one species until it becomes a new species. Neither of these brings about breeding problems.

And, in the instance where inter-breeding of two species does lead to evolution, the hybridization is accompanied by polyploidy which also gets around breeding problems.

Result: all new species are viable breeders.

3. All new species are closely related to the parent species, such that they are in the same genus. There are no jumps in a single speciation from one genus or family to another genus or family. Only species to species. We get higher orders through the repetition of many speciations over time.


Now this is a lot of new learning about the TOE. And I expect it will take time to absorb it all, and to absorb the implications.

But it does show that many of the unanswered questions that puzzled you were not real problems with TOE, but the real problem was that your understanding of TOE was faulty.

Because even though much of this is new to you, most of it is not new to the TOE. Darwin did not know about polyploidy, but he did know that crossing two different breeds or two different species was not the way evolution works. He says so right in the very first chapter of Origin of Species. And he was also insistent, right from the first, that evolutionary change is always small scale, within species, and at most a speciation---never a jump. Large-scale change is a result of the accumulation of many small changes.

I am sure you still have many questions. But if you learn this much, and drop the faulty assumptions about TOE you began with, then at least the questions can be based on the real TOE instead of a straw man TOE.

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The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World

I think that is a good approach. we should probably start again and go over any misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. there is no point trying to discuss things like ERVs if the underlying understanding ef the theory is flawed.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

TOA and EVR what do it stand for?

ERVs are Endogenous RetroViral Sequences. here is a little snippet of a post I am preparing.


Retroviruses are a class of viruses that have their genetic material in the form of RNA and consist of groups such as the oncoviruses (e.g. HTLV-1) and lentiviruses (e.g. HIV). Normally DNA is transcribed into RNA before being read in order to produce proteins, however retroviruses use Reverse Transcriptase in order to take their own RNA and integrate it into the organisms own DNA. Like all genetic processes however, there is a risk of inaccuracy, and sometimes a retrovirus may become crippled by a mutation during reverse transcription, and hence may not be able to reproduce itself as a normal virus would.

Endogenous retroviruses may embed themselves into any cell in the body, and this includes the gametes as well as the somatic cells. If an ERV occurs in a gamete that goes on to fertilise an egg (or be fertilised by a sperm) then the ERV will be present in every single cell of the new organism.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

And if TOA is a typo for TOE, then it means Theory Of Evolution.

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The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World

Razzel, there are only species! "beyond the species level" is simply groups of species made by humans. Species is the only biological reality.

I see what you are doing is moving the goalposts. First you wanted evidence of speciation. Apparently you have gotten that to where you can't deny it. So, rather than accept evolution as the way God created the diversity of life, you now change the requirements to evolution beyond the species level.

OK, two comments.
1. We can meet that one, too.
Muntzig, A, Triticale Results and Problems, Parey, Berlin, 1979. Describes whole new *genus* of plants, Triticosecale, of several species. That's among living species. In terms of the fossil record having individuals connecting species thru higher taxa (like the pictures of the snail species I showed you), there are transitional series connecting genera, families, orders, and even classes! Mammals and reptiles are examples of a class. So, here are the references:
Transitional individuals from one class to another
1. Principles of Paleontology by DM Raup and SM Stanley, 1971, there are transitional series between classes. (mammals and reptiles are examples of a class)
2. HK Erben, Uber den Ursprung der Ammonoidea. Biol. Rev. 41: 641-658, 1966.
Transitional individuals from one order to another
1. C Teichert "Nautiloidea-Discorsorida" and "Actinoceratoidea" in Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology ed RC Moore, 1964
2. PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites. Nature 330: 561-563, 1987. Rigourous biometric study of the pygidial ribs of 3458 specimens of 8 generic lineages in 7 stratgraphic layers covering about 3 million years. Gradual evolution where at any given time the population was intermediate between the samples before it and after it.
Transitionals across genera:
1. Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981. Excellent study of "gradual" evolution is an extremely fine fossil record.

But the other, more serious, issue for me is: why are you so insistent on turning your back on God? Remember, God created! Thus, everything we see in Creation had to be put there by God. Why are you so insistent on denying what God is so clearly telling you?

1. The DNA, etc are not experiments that predict, they are consequences of the process. That is, if evolution produced the extended groups, then this is what we should see! The DNA, etc. are indeed observations. We see them. But those observations are also consequences. Since we see the consequences, we know the event happened. Let's try a different example. If a meteor hits the earth, consequences of that are 1) a crator and 2) fragments of the meteor. So we look at Meteor Crator in Arizona. We see 1) a crator and 2) find fragments of the meteor. Therefore, we conclude a meteor hit the earth even tho we didn't see it. Same with crators on the moon.

Razzel, this is the same as all of science. I'm just completed experiments where I put adult stem cells (ASCs) into a bone defect in rats. So, I started with a bone defect with a spongy polymer filled with ASCs. Eight weeks later I have bone in the gap. I didn't observe the process, did I? The bone was inside the rat, so I couldn't observe it. I also had a marker in the ASCs so that I can tell the ASCs from the rat's own cells. When I look at the bone in the gap, I see this marker in the bone cells in the new bone in what was the defect. So ... I conclude that the ASCs turned into bone cells and made the bone in the defect.

You do the same in your everyday life: look at consequences and figure out what happened even if you weren't there to see it. You are sitting at home and there is a storm. Suddenly your power goes off. You conclude that the storm has caused your power to be interrupted: either knocking down a power line or knocking out a transformer. You didn't see the power line go down, but you know that the consequence of that action is that your power goes off.

I want overwhelming evidence if you are going to claim it.

1. They already were the same species, remember? Remember when I said that a new variation appears in one member of the population. If that variation confers an advantage to that individual in the Struggle for Existence, then the individual survives and has more kids than any other individual in the population. Since the variation/advantage is inherited by the kids, you gradually increase the number of individuals and the proportion of the individuals in the population that have the variation/advantage. After several generations all the individuals have the variation. Now, if you don't understand how this happens, ASK ME! So, you still have the "same species" but it isn't identical to the original population. Because it is different and separated in time, we call it a new "species", but it is connected by a smooth transition of individuals back to the original population.

2. Why would it be advantageous to have male and female? This is reverse engineering. We are looking at male and female and figuring out the advantage over the volvox. Remember the Volvox? About 20 or so cells, some body cells and the rest sex cells. The Volvox just puts the sex cells into the water and some of them make it to another Volvox and fertilize its sex cells to make new Volvox. But this is very inefficient, isn't it? Most of those cells get lost. Now, it took energy and materials to make the sex cells, but that is wasted in the ones that get lost. So, having dedicated male and female cuts down the inefficiency. Especially if one of the (female) makes a sex cell that has most of the material and makes sure that it is placed where the male sex cells can find it. So you get fish where the female lays the eggs in an open nest and the male sprays his sperm over them. But this too is inefficient. A lot of the sperm gets lost. What's more, from the male's standpoint, if another male comes along and sprays, some of the eggs will get fertilized by that other male. Much more efficient if there is a penis and vagina such that all the sperm are deposited right next to the eggs. And voila'! So any individuals lucky enough to have that variation will make more offspring and those kids will have the same variation. You have the essentials of sexual reproduction as humans do it.

BTW, Whoohoo! I have over 1,000 rep points!

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"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890

..believe me, Razz, you are nobody's fool: you are highly intelligent, perceptive & articulate

& whenever you, or I, or any other believer, come across anything that we don't know, we know the One Who knows all things

God bless!

Ian