Creationists: Explain your understanding of microevolution and macroevolution

[stevil]

That's the theory- and I agree that it works very intuitively in a thought experiment- But we have the benefit of anticipation, we can 'preserve' small advantages in anticipation of that future payoff- we spend our lives doing this! But 'nature' cannot- natural selection cannot distinguish between slight benefits and slight disadvantages - and the latter would utterly dominate if left to random mutation.

Yes each improvement must provide a stepwise improvement, and it does. There is no overall plan, no design. The complex eye came in small stepwise improvements over many many generations. Not fully formed as we have it today.

You are right not just random mutation. Selective pressures are not random at all.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Of course farmers could not find these supposed "limits". No one has as of yet. Farmers work on a very small time scale. The sort of changes that you seem to think that are needed would actually refute the theory of evolution. In other words you are relying on a strawman.

The point was they they did find limits- they didn't need a billion years to find them, push natural variation beyond it's normal range and you create a dysfunctional animal. This concurs with what we see in the fossil record, sudden appearances followed by long periods of stasis or extinction, very little evidence of any incremental changes spanning significant morphological change.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Yes each improvement must provide a stepwise improvement, and it does. There is no overall plan, no design. The complex eye came in small stepwise improvements over many many generations. Not fully formed as we have it today.

You are right not just random mutation. Selective pressures are not random at all.

What incremental accidental mutations created eyes that would be selectable at every stage?

 

[Hans Blaster]

What incremental accidental mutations created eyes that would be selectable at every stage?

Evolution of the eye - Wikipedia

Read up.

 

[stevil]

What incremental accidental mutations created eyes that would be selectable at every stage?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Evolution of the eye - Wikipedia

Read up.

very interesting

so the earliest predecessor and simplest eye according to your link, are found in 'eyespots'

The eyespot apparatus (or stigma) is a photoreceptive organelle found in the flagellate or (motile) cells:

The eyespot apparatus of Euglena comprises the paraflagellar body connecting the eyespot to the flagellum. In electron microscopy, the eyespot apparatus appears as a highly ordered lamellar structure formed by membranous rods in a helical arrangement.[3]

In Chlamydomonas, the eyespot is part of the chloroplast and takes on the appearance of a membranous sandwich structure. It is assembled from chloroplast membranes (outer, inner, and thylakoid membranes) and carotenoid-filled granules overlaid by plasma membrane. The stacks of granules act as a quarter-wave plate, reflecting incoming photons back to the overlying photoreceptors, while shielding the photoreceptors from light coming from other directions. It disassembles during cell division and reforms in the daughter cells in an asymmetric fashion in relation to the cytoskeleton. This asymmetric positioning of the eyespot in the cell is essential for proper phototaxis.[4]

Besides photoreceptor proteins, eyespots contain a large number of structural, metabolic and signaling proteins. The eyespot proteome of Chlamydomonas cells consists of roughly 200 different proteins.[6]

as above they require these:

without which- no advantageous response to allow selection.

So you just need something like the above to spontaneously appear in an individual through random mutation and you're well on your way!

 

[stevil]

So you just need something like the above to spontaneously appear in an individual through random mutation and you're well on your way!

I am glad you have a well developed sense of critical thinking.
What alternative do you have to the ToE and what critical thinking have you applied to that alternative?

 

[Hans Blaster]

So you just need something like the above to spontaneously appear in an individual through random mutation and you're well on your way!

Oh great, the "irreducible complexity" argument.

Note: The single-celled organisms you cite above are the products of 3 billion years of evolutionary refinement, they do not necessarily represent the state of such features in the ancestors of living creatures.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I am glad you have a well developed sense of critical thinking.
What alternative do you have to the ToE and what critical thinking have you applied to that alternative?

That's the closest thing to a complement I've had on this forum so I should probably quit

But I'd say it doesn't need replaced entirely:

Post classical physics- apples still fall from trees, but the once 'immutable laws' no longer represent explanations for physical reality.

Similarly genetic apples will always fall not far from their trees, but what we observe, may similarly be a design feature, not a comprehensive design mechanism.

Physics relies on a lot more information to be provided- determining how development of the early universe, great fusion reactors manufacturing heavier elements- that in turn provided the chemical elements necessary to build life.

Darwin reasoned quite logically, that as a continuation of a process- life might progress by the same general mechanisms as did the physical world
I agree with that logic, only in his day that meant by a handful of simple laws + lots of time and space for random interaction. Today that means by a lot of very specific information, determining quite precisely how development occurs.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Again you use some sort of physics analogy for evolution:

[snip]

Post classical physics- apples still fall from trees, but the once 'immutable laws' no longer represent explanations for physical reality.

[snip]

Physics relies on a lot more information to be provided- determining how development of the early universe, great fusion reactors manufacturing heavier elements- that in turn provided the chemical elements necessary to build life.

[snip]

What are you claiming about physics? (I don't care about the analogy part.) None of this makes sense.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Oh great, the "irreducible complexity" argument.

sorry, I know it's a bit of a tough nut to crack

Note: The single-celled organisms you cite above are the products of 3 billion years of evolutionary refinement, they do not necessarily represent the state of such features in the ancestors of living creatures.

Yet they are cited as the simplest examples we know of- so I'll ask the question again- even if it requires the imagination more than observed reality:
What might be the steps by which an eye can be created through random mutation, with selectable advantages at every stage?

 

[Hans Blaster]

sorry, I know it's a bit of a tough nut to crack



Yet they are cited as the simplest examples we know of- so I'll ask the question again- even if it requires the imagination more than observed reality:
What might be the steps by which an eye can be created through random mutation, with selectable advantages at every stage?

"Irreducible complexity" has been cracked many times (including the "motor"). I just don't have the desire to dig out all of the info.

[Did you actually read anything on the evolution of the eye, or just find a link that you liked as a "counter example"?]

 

[Phred]

I just had 'Phred' tell me I didn't care about facts- and then assure me that the Cambrian explosion lasted for 541 millions years!

Yeah, I was wrong about that. I have things to do too. It lasted for 25 million years and took place about 541 million years ago.

My point was that this "explosion" you folks are always on about lasted for millions of years. You talk as it it was a sudden appearance of life. It was 25 MILLION years.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Again you use some sort of physics analogy for evolution:



What are you claiming about physics? (I don't care about the analogy part.) None of this makes sense.

it's not an analogy- life is a literal continuation of chemistry which is a continuation of physics, and they all interact. But scales matter, things (we know now) do operate differently at different scales, the physical reality we still perceive to work in a classical sense, is sandwiched between subatomic physics and physics at a cosmological scale, and all 3 are distinct.

I'm simply saying that the continuing mechanism does not suddenly revert to a Victorian age reductionist model at the point of the first replicator. But it continues to develop according to large amounts of underlying information, instructions v random chance, that's a pretty clear distinction

 

[Phred]

sorry, I know it's a bit of a tough nut to crack

In Kitzmiller v. Dover the judge didn't find it so very tough at all. Behe tried to present his IC argument and was reduced to admitting his argument was no better than astrology. After he testified suddenly all the other "great names" in creationism found they suddenly had other, more pressing, things to do. He was crucified. The judge in the case, a Republican, stated that, "The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom." and "The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial."

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Yeah, I was wrong about that. I have things to do too. It lasted for 25 million years and took place about 541 million years ago.

My point was that this "explosion" you folks are always on about lasted for millions of years. You talk as it it was a sudden appearance of life. It was 25 MILLION years.

Well I would have let that slide if you hadn't accused me of not being interested in facts

But I do take your point- it's interesting because it seems like yesterday that the argument was '150 million years is not sudden' then '70 million years is not sudden'

I was actually surprised to see 13-25, it was 40 last I checked!

i.e. the trend is that the explosions are getting more explosive, not smoothed out as Darwin's theory predicted- and even if this new maximum (25 my) holds, that's enough to cause secular scientists to propose radiation bombardments to help explain all the 'speed limit' violations of mutation rates necessary - you could argue with them how sudden this was in geological/evolutionary time scales

 

[Phred]

In the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial the Irreducible Complexity argument was thrashed. By a mousetrap. This crap was tried, this exact picture. They wailed, "How can something evolve if it has no purpose?"

One of the evolutionary scientists wore a mousetrap without the trigger as a tieclip. It is perfectly functional. Just not as a mousetrap. But it holds his tie in place just fine. Minus one of its parts. He sat there wearing it all day long. The flagella that they had been wailing and gnashing their teeth about seems to have started life not as a flagella at all. But rather as a venom injector.

As someone around here is fond of saying... case closed.

 

[Phred]

Well I would have let that slide if you hadn't accused me of not being interested in facts

But I do take your point- it's interesting because it seems like yesterday that the argument was '150 million years is not sudden' then '70 million years is not sudden'

I was actually surprised to see 13-25, it was 40 last I checked!

i.e. the trend is that the explosions are getting more explosive, not smoothed out as Darwin's theory predicted- and even if this new maximum (25 my) holds, that's enough to cause secular scientists to propose radiation bombardments to help explain all the 'speed limit' violations of mutation rates necessary - you could argue with them how sudden this was in geological/evolutionary time scales

It was an explosion of many different types of life. Which creationists latched onto as, "LOOK, CREATION!" No, LOOK EVOLUTION!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

In Kitzmiller v. Dover the judge didn't find it so very tough at all. Behe tried to present his IC argument and was reduced to admitting his argument was no better than astrology. After he testified suddenly all the other "great names" in creationism found they suddenly had other, more pressing, things to do. He was crucified. The judge in the case, a Republican, stated that, "The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom." and "The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial."

That was Hoyle's complaint against the Big Bang also- it was 'religious pseudoscience' and dismissed as such by academic authorities for decades- not on scientific grounds by his own admission.

So the argument was ideological v scientific- or did the judge or anyone else ever explain how you get that flagellum through random mutation?

 

[Hans Blaster]

it's not an analogy- life is a literal continuation of chemistry which is a continuation of physics, and they all interact. But scales matter, things (we know now) do operate differently at different scales, the physical reality we still perceive to work in a classical sense, is sandwiched between subatomic physics and physics at a cosmological scale, and all 3 are distinct.

I'm glad you understand this. But it isn't necessary for understanding evolution (and arguing for or against it).

I'm simply saying that the continuing mechanism does not suddenly revert to a Victorian age reductionist model at the point of the first replicator. But it continues to develop according to large amounts of underlying information, instructions v random chance, that's a pretty clear distinction

I'm not sure what some old British bat has to do with things...

A first replicator is fine whatever the orgin, or even if it was just "one" first replicator.

Since this is evolution, what matters is how things changed after life began.