Animal Breeding and evolution

[sfs]

I agree the evidence supports the view that changes can happen very fast in the natural world as in the human.

So do you also agree that natural selection operates fast enough to explain the history of life?

That the fossil record does not therefore ever truly articulate so called evolutionary jumps might be one way of reading that.

I don't know what you mean here.

I am not sure that this speed of natural change when faced with different stimuli necessarily supports your concluding endorsement of natural selection though. That life has survived, thrived and died with such rapid rises and falls may be explained in a shorter timespan than natural slection requires if a guiding intelligence is assumed rather than its absence.

My point was that the fossil record shows life changing much more slowly than the timespans required by natural selection.

 

[BananaSlug]

This of course logical within your theoretical framework but then why not take one step further and assume that the rapid changes experienced under human direction may have occurred even more rapidly under that of an even greater intelligence. It is the assumption of a dumb process that renders the theory of natural selection so dumb ;-)

So what was the intelligent force behind a the 4 year drought on Daphne Major? It caused the finches beak size to increase in order to eat the larger, tougher tribulis seeds. The theory of evolution works with or without a deity/designer.
In species with high rates of generational turnover, long periods of climatic change or geographic change can produce noticeable differences within a relatively short time span (geologically speaking). We have witnessed the process of natural selection in many species in the wild. You may think it is a "dumb process" but the fact we can observe it in the wild is more than enough to show its veracity.

 

[Steezie]

Over a couple of centuries dog breeders have effectively turned dogs who were more like wolves into poodles. This has been a result of guided selective breeding programmes.

Dawkins in his book "The Greatest Show on Earth" clearly thinks this is a proof that evolution by natural selection could also produce remarkable changes in a period of millions years without intelligent guidance.

But it strikes me that this example only proves that Intelligent design can produce guided changes over time in a more effective and timely way than the mechanism of natural selection, survival of the fittest et al could ever hope to achieve.

Dog breeding is an example of how external forces can shape the growth and development of a species to such an extent that entirely new species can be split off.

These external forces can be either intelligent (humans breeding dogs for specific roles) or natural (a change in climate or food source that favors a particular genetic mutation).

In the context of the example, it doesnt matter what the external forces are, it simply states that external forces can produce changes in a species and, over time, speciation.

 

[sfs]

This discussion leads me to the conclusion that intelligent interventions in the natural world can generate changes in species configuration and diverse expressions of each species in a very short time period.

True.

That if human beings with such limited intelligence are able to make such changes so rapidly a higher intelligence would be able to do so even more rapidly.

Probably also true. What evidence suggests that such rapid changes have occurred?

Natural selection is only necessary as an explanatory mechanism if one assumes a lack of intelligent intervention from the beginning of ones research.

Natural selection is not necessary as an explanatory mechanism. The point of my previous post was that it is, based on current evidence, adequate as an explanatory mechanism. You don't seem to have challenged that claim. Given a mechanism that is adequate to explain the data, and that we know occurs spontaneously in nature, the parsimonious and scientific route is to choose that option as more likely than an alternative that is not known to occur.

In this case, the alternative you've offered is manipulation of genes by an unidentified, unobserved hyper-intelligent being using unknown mechanisms. Thus, you're asking us to choose a purely speculative process that explains no feature of the data better than a process we repeatedly observe. Why would we do that?

The time spans required and relative inefficiency of this method vis a vis intelligent intervention lead me to think it a matter of dogmatic faith to hold to this doctrine.

Since the time spans required are much shorter than the time spans that have actually occurred, why do they suggest the need for intelligence? And what about the history of life suggests that efficiency has been driving the process?

So called false starts/ extinctions would be explicable to a YEC by a consciously orchestrated global flood which wiped out a diversity of species expressions unprecedented in the modern context.

That would be an excellent explanation for some other planet, on which the fossil evidence looked even remotely like it was caused by a single global flood. On our planet, it's simply preposterous.

Survival is not the most powerful force in my experience. It is not survival that compels a man to look after his children or to stay faithful to his indifferent wife when younger more attractive females are available. Love is both more powerful and adequate as an explanatory force in creation as in human experience and it is only in its absence that the hollow falsities of survival of the fittest start to appeal.

You need to learn more about evolution if you think that either care for offspring or monogamy are incompatible with natural selection.

 

[Split Rock]

Natural selection does not have to result in survival it can mean extinction also. The circumstances in which one species dies may be ones in which a long extinct species would have thrived. If this is not randomness then what is. Selection of hairless skinnny beauties can be on the basis of todays warm weather only to find that the fat hairy girl was the only one that would survive the sudden iceage. Randomness and rapid catastrophic change render the model ridiculous or make its defences appear contrived.

As I have already said, the fossil record is riddled with extinct species! Just as you have inferred, adaption by Natural Selection can wind up dooming a species to extinction at a later time, when changes occur too rapidly a species' environment. This is exactly what we see in the fossil record! How is that "ridculous" or "contrived?"

 

[mindlight]

Design similarities, sure, but not in the nested pattern that we find them. Why would gills be the design for all the fish, and lungs for all the whales, with no crossover? If being mammalian can work in the ocean, and having gills can work in the ocean, why does no mammal have gills? Why does no fish produce milk for its young?

Why use very different designs for identical environments or very similar designs for very disparate environments? Instead of common design, which could have any animal show any trait, the pattern we find shows decent with modification, precisely as suggested, predicted, and required by evolution.

The gist of the answer has to do with the difference between a godless natural process and a designers choice of which we can observe some symptomic evidence. Where you see transitional states I see variations on the theme of individual species. We see the same facts but you read a historical movement into them and I see simply differentiations on a common theme. A creationist view is at heart a relational one rather than an exhaustive scientific exposee. Science only goes so far in a relationship and cannot even replicate the things it purports to describe most of the time. Natural selection fails for me as an explanatory theory because it is purely material and provides me with no link to the spiritual world. You think the facts support this way of looking at material reality but only if one reduces the range of thought to a pure scientific methodolgy which is simply inappropriate at the this distance of deep geological time.

 

[mindlight]

So do you also agree that natural selection operates fast enough to explain the history of life?

Natural selection is a plausible model for explaining the evidence available to us - yes and I just do not think it is the most plausible model.

The fossil record does not provide the missing links of evolutionary jumps because apparently they happen so suddenly in the geological time scale. We see before and after snap shots.

My point was that the fossil record shows life changing much more slowly than the timespans required by natural selection.

I apologise if I missed your point here. I think this view is a matter of interpretation and the ways in which many scientists have chosen to interpret geological layers and the ways in which different fossils have been dated in different layers may be part of this conclusion. I see fossils in different layers but believe that these were formed quite rapidly by a global flood and that in these catastrophic conditions a mix of date markers have arisen for reasons that are now in practice inaccessible but are direct consequence of a catastrophe without parallel in earth history.

 

[mindlight]

So what was the intelligent force behind a the 4 year drought on Daphne Major? It caused the finches beak size to increase in order to eat the larger, tougher tribulis seeds. The theory of evolution works with or without a deity/designer.
In species with high rates of generational turnover, long periods of climatic change or geographic change can produce noticeable differences within a relatively short time span (geologically speaking). We have witnessed the process of natural selection in many species in the wild. You may think it is a "dumb process" but the fact we can observe it in the wild is more than enough to show its veracity.

I accept the evidence for micro-evolutionary changes as being overwhelming. I just do not accept that we can then generalise from them to macro-evolutionary level conclusions. What you are talking about is adaption to circumstances leading to differentiations on the them of identifiable species.

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

The gist of the answer has to do with the difference between a godless natural process and a designers choice of which we can observe some symptomic evidence. Where you see transitional states I see variations on the theme of individual species. We see the same facts but you read a historical movement into them and I see simply differentiations on a common theme. A creationist view is at heart a relational one rather than an exhaustive scientific exposee. Science only goes so far in a relationship and cannot even replicate the things it purports to describe most of the time. Natural selection fails for me as an explanatory theory because it is purely material and provides me with no link to the spiritual world. You think the facts support this way of looking at material reality but only if one reduces the range of thought to a pure scientific methodolgy which is simply inappropriate at the this distance of deep geological time.

You are correct. The ToE does not provide a "link to the spiritual world." You are incorrect to expect that it should. ToE is the best explanation for the biodiversity and distributution of species that we see in the world. Nothing more. Virtually every field of science supports ToE nicely. Although the details might be debated (as they should be, for it is by debate that we come to the best conclusion), the ToE has never been stronger. Darwin's (along with Wallace) idea of descent with modification by means of natural/sexual selection has been proven to be right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Anyone who truly seeks to understand ToE will be compelled to accept it. Reasons for refection would be only for faith issues. Nothing more.

 

[sfs]

Natural selection is a plausible model for explaining the evidence available to us - yes and I just do not think it is the most plausible model.

The fossil record does not provide the missing links of evolutionary jumps because apparently they happen so suddenly in the geological time scale. We see before and after snap shots.

Which evolutionary jumps are you talking about? It's hard to discuss the evidence until you become more specific.

I apologise if I missed your point here. I think this view is a matter of interpretation and the ways in which many scientists have chosen to interpret geological layers and the ways in which different fossils have been dated in different layers may be part of this conclusion. I see fossils in different layers but believe that these were formed quite rapidly by a global flood and that in these catastrophic conditions a mix of date markers have arisen for reasons that are now in practice inaccessible but are direct consequence of a catastrophe without parallel in earth history.

The problem with this approach, as I suggested in my previous post, is that a single global flood simply cannot explain the actual geological and fossil evidence, or at least no one has been able to come up with a model that does so. There was a reason that 18th and 19th century geologists, most of them Christian and most of them assuming exactly the model that you suggest, were forced to abandon that view.

The age of the earth and the antiquity of fossils are supported by a vast array of evidence, relying on very different kinds of scientific approaches. The only reason anyone reject this evidence is because they place greater weight on their religious beliefs than on empirical evidence.

 

[mindlight]

What evidence suggests that such rapid changes have occurred?

Fossils only form in certain kinds of conditions e.g. the sedimentary rock related to river beds for instance. BUt we have fossils all over the surface of the earth and often very far from rivers. The number and distribution of fossils speaks to me of a global flood and I would explain the geological layers as evidence of this catastrophe having been laid down very rapidly by it. In that sense all geologists handle the evidence every day.

Natural selection is not necessary as an explanatory mechanism. The point of my previous post was that it is, based on current evidence, adequate as an explanatory mechanism. You don't seem to have challenged that claim. Given a mechanism that is adequate to explain the data, and that we know occurs spontaneously in nature, the parsimonious and scientific route is to choose that option as more likely than an alternative that is not known to occur.

In this case, the alternative you've offered is manipulation of genes by an unidentified, unobserved hyper-intelligent being using unknown mechanisms. Thus, you're asking us to choose a purely speculative process that explains no feature of the data better than a process we repeatedly observe. Why would we do that?

It is an adequate hypothesis only if we restrict the comprehension of the evidences we can observe to the merely material. I think in doing so we miss the ways in which a Creator can overturn the observed science in very rapid and effective order. Jesus walked on water , turned water into wine , cured a man with a withered arm, apparently feed 5000 families out of thin air. There is no scientific explanation. We can only count the baskets left over when the food the people did not eat is collected. To provide a scientific account of such miracles is reductionist and silly because they miss the crucial ways in which the relationship to the divine was the crucial matter. Anyone who believes in the Incarnation of Jesus does not think we are speculating about this one.

Since the time spans required are much shorter than the time spans that have actually occurred, why do they suggest the need for intelligence? And what about the history of life suggests that efficiency has been driving the process?

That would be an excellent explanation for some other planet, on which the fossil evidence looked even remotely like it was caused by a single global flood. On our planet, it's simply preposterous.

You need to learn more about evolution if you think that either care for offspring or monogamy are incompatible with natural selection.

I am beginning to think this discussion has nothing to do with the science at all. We count the same number of rock layers and see the same fossil distribution across them. It is what we read into the rocks and fossils that is so radically different. I think Natural selection marks the failure of a relationship with the Divine because in an almost blasphemous way it says that God should be excluded from his own creation and as an explanation for what we see there.

 

[mindlight]

As I have already said, the fossil record is riddled with extinct species! Just as you have inferred, adaption by Natural Selection can wind up dooming a species to extinction at a later time, when changes occur too rapidly a species' environment. This is exactly what we see in the fossil record! How is that "ridculous" or "contrived?"

It is the apparent randomness of the process which renders it ridiculous as an explanatory paradigm of why one species survives and another fails to thrive. The circumstances seem more important than the process itself since they control its outcomes and therefore make explanations in terms of it appear contrived.

 

[mindlight]

You are correct. The ToE does not provide a "link to the spiritual world." You are incorrect to expect that it should. ToE is the best explanation for the biodiversity and distributution of species that we see in the world. Nothing more. Virtually every field of science supports ToE nicely. Although the details might be debated (as they should be, for it is by debate that we come to the best conclusion), the ToE has never been stronger. Darwin's (along with Wallace) idea of descent with modification by means of natural/sexual selection has been proven to be right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Anyone who truly seeks to understand ToE will be compelled to accept it. Reasons for refection would be only for faith issues. Nothing more.

Nestorian

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Fossils only form in certain kinds of conditions e.g. the sedimentary rock related to river beds for instance. BUt we have fossils all over the surface of the earth and often very far from rivers. The number and distribution of fossils speaks to me of a global flood and I would explain the geological layers as evidence of this catastrophe having been laid down very rapidly by it. In that sense all geologists handle the evidence every day.

Except that such a hypothesis can be tested. And it has been, for over two centuries. The result? A resounding 'no'.

It is an adequate hypothesis only if we restrict the comprehension of the evidences we can observe to the merely material. I think in doing so we miss the ways in which a Creator can overturn the observed science in very rapid and effective order. Jesus walked on water , turned water into wine , cured a man with a withered arm, apparently feed 5000 families out of thin air. There is no scientific explanation. We can only count the baskets left over when the food the people did not eat is collected. To provide a scientific account of such miracles is reductionist and silly because they miss the crucial ways in which the relationship to the divine was the crucial matter. Anyone who believes in the Incarnation of Jesus does not think we are speculating about this one.

Of course you're speculating. You yourself admit that there is no way to scientifically probe the truth of the alleged events, so you quite literally have to take them on faith. The real question is why we should believe such events happened at all.

I am beginning to think this discussion has nothing to do with the science at all. We count the same number of rock layers and see the same fossil distribution across them. It is what we read into the rocks and fossils that is so radically different. I think Natural selection marks the failure of a relationship with the Divine because in an almost blasphemous way it says that God should be excluded from his own creation and as an explanation for what we see there.

It doesn't say God should be excluded; it's only Creationists who see evolution as inherently atheistic. Rather, it simply doesn't invoke a deity in any part of the process. Gravity isn't inherently atheistic, it's just that it works without God doing anything.

 

[mindlight]

Except that such a hypothesis can be tested. And it has been, for over two centuries. The result? A resounding 'no'.


Of course you're speculating. You yourself admit that there is no way to scientifically probe the truth of the alleged events, so you quite literally have to take them on faith. The real question is why we should believe such events happened at all.


It doesn't say God should be excluded; it's only Creationists who see evolution as inherently atheistic. Rather, it simply doesn't invoke a deity in any part of the process. Gravity isn't inherently atheistic, it's just that it works without God doing anything.

As an atheist I would not expect you to believe in the incarnation or the miracles of Jesus. The ways in which you argue that the observable facts alone must be allowed to 'tell us the story' is consistent with this worldview. From you Natural selection sounds consistent and plausible therefore as a merely materialistic and godless position. By faith I however accept the eyewitness accounts of Jesus ascending - defying gravity and of creation miracles like the feeding of the 5000. It is difficult to argue with you so long as you are honest with how you handle the evidence. Because the way you handle the scientific argument is consistent with a worldview that i could never with any integrity accept without denying my entire lifestory. Your position is merely a logical consequence of excluding God from the story and to argue with you I would need to directly challenge your atheism which is not the purpose of this board on the forum. So maybe in another place at another time.

 

[laconicstudent]

As an atheist I would not expect you to believe in the incarnation or the miracles of Jesus.

Which isn't really relevant to the mechanism through which God created.

The ways in which you argue that the observable facts alone must be allowed to 'tell us the story' is consistent with this worldview. From you Natural selection sounds consistent and plausible therefore as a merely materialistic and godless position.

What is your point. If it includes the supernatural, it by definition is not science.

By faith I however accept the eyewitness accounts of Jesus ascending - defying gravity and of creation miracles like the feeding of the 5000. It is difficult to argue with you so long as you are honest with how you handle the evidence.

Are you complaining about the other person being honest? What does that tell you about the strength of your own position, if an honest presentation of facts makes it difficult?

Because the way you handle the scientific argument is consistent with a worldview that i could never with any integrity accept without denying my entire lifestory.

Arguments from personal incredulity are not valid.

Your position is merely a logical consequence of excluding God from the story and to argue with you I would need to directly challenge your atheism which is not the purpose of this board on the forum. So maybe in another place at another time.

I believe in God, AND Evolution, so belief in Evolution does not logically follow from Atheism. Please try again.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

As an atheist I would not expect you to believe in the incarnation or the miracles of Jesus. The ways in which you argue that the observable facts alone must be allowed to 'tell us the story' is consistent with this worldview. From you Natural selection sounds consistent and plausible therefore as a merely materialistic and godless position.

Agreed.

By faith I however accept the eyewitness accounts of Jesus ascending - defying gravity and of creation miracles like the feeding of the 5000. It is difficult to argue with you so long as you are honest with how you handle the evidence. Because the way you handle the scientific argument is consistent with a worldview that i could never with any integrity accept without denying my entire lifestory. Your position is merely a logical consequence of excluding God from the story and to argue with you I would need to directly challenge your atheism which is not the purpose of this board on the forum. So maybe in another place at another time.

I would be more than happy discussing atheism. PM me, or make a thread. I'm always open .

 

[Split Rock]

It is the apparent randomness of the process which renders it ridiculous as an explanatory paradigm of why one species survives and another fails to thrive. The circumstances seem more important than the process itself since they control its outcomes and therefore make explanations in terms of it appear contrived.

It is not random. Natural selection is a selective process. Have you ever played draw poker? The hand that you are dealt is random. You then choose which cards to keep and which to discard. You then get random cards to replace your discards. Now, repeat this process and continue making selections and discarding what does not work. You will wind up with a winning hand. That is how natural selection works, except there is no intelligence behind the descision making. Instead, reproductive success determines the outcome.

What specific aspects do see as ridiculous or contrived? Is it:
A. Random mutation
B. Assortive mating
C. Inheritance
D. Differential reproduction
E. Limited resources
F. Adaptation

 

[Hespera]

Fossils only form in certain kinds of conditions e.g. the sedimentary rock related to river beds for instance. BUt we have fossils all over the surface of the earth and often very far from rivers. The number and distribution of fossils speaks to me of a global flood and I would explain the geological layers as evidence of this catastrophe having been laid down very rapidly by it. In that sense all geologists handle the evidence every day.

.

Id like to butt in here and ask you to clarify.

yes, fossils are found far from rivers, lakes, or the oceans where they are today.

You can bring up marine fossils from thousands of feet below the wheatfields of Kansas. ive seen them come up in the cuttings from an oil well.

Dry lake beds and the beds of ancient rivers in what is now desert... fossils are found there too.

Do you think that finding fossils in the desert or anywhere far from modern rivers lakes or ocean somehow proves there was a flood?

Please cite at least one fossil bed that would be an example.