Evidence for macro-evolution

[Astrid]

I read a number and not a single one had a substantiated source about the two of them being on drugs... just plenty of empty assumptions.

The police investigation didn't turn up drugs in their system... do you have ANY references to them actually being on drugs or are you simply claiming it to support your feelings on the matter?

Give me a single link of reference to investigate.

Looking " deeper" seems to mean reading
between the lines or "remembering" until
you " see" what you've set out to see.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Large scale change(evolution) occurring over a long period of time that results in the formation of new species.

So what would you call large scale changes occurring over short periods of time, e.g. Cambrian explosion?

 

[Shemjaza]

So what would you call large scale changes occurring over short periods of time, e.g. Cambrian explosion?

30 million years is a short period of time?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

30 million years is a short period of time?

It's funny, when I used to debate on the Darwinian side, I remember saying that 200 million years is still a long time..
it keeps shrinking apparently:

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation,[1] Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang[2] refers to an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian Period of early Paleozoic when there was a sudden radiation of complex life and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.[3][4][5] It lasted for about 13 – 25 million years

25 million years is short enough, that some posit radiation events from supernova to account for the extreme rate of mutation simply to get the number of mutations required, quite aside from how lucky those would need to be.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

It's funny, when I used to debate on the Darwinian side, I remember saying that 200 million years is still a long time..
it keeps shrinking apparently:

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation,[1] Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang[2] refers to an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian Period of early Paleozoic when there was a sudden radiation of complex life and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.[3][4][5] It lasted for about 13 – 25 million years

25 million years is short enough, that some posit radiation events from supernova to account for the extreme rate of mutation simply to get the number of mutations required, quite aside from how lucky those would need to be.

That's still a massive span of time. Plus, I also think that one thing that gets ignored with these sorts of comments on the Cambrian Explosion is that no-one seems to try and say how long each creature lived for. These would not be things that would live for decades at a time. The creatures that lived in Paleozoic era would not have had anywhere near the same sort of life spans (except for sea sponges). Trilobites are thought to have lived up to 10 years, with an annual mortality rate of 15% to 20%.
20 million years is more than enough time for evolution to work.

 

[Shemjaza]

It's funny, when I used to debate on the Darwinian side, I remember saying that 200 million years is still a long time..
it keeps shrinking apparently:

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation,[1] Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang[2] refers to an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian Period of early Paleozoic when there was a sudden radiation of complex life and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.[3][4][5] It lasted for about 13 – 25 million years

25 million years is short enough, that some posit radiation events from supernova to account for the extreme rate of mutation simply to get the number of mutations required, quite aside from how lucky those would need to be.

Except things like counting mutations are total speculation given we have zero genetics and barely any remains at all from the era.

The Cambrian explosion is absolutely mysterious and exceptional... but I fail to see evidence for it's impossibility.

It has the hallmarks of the kind of events that trigger rapid speciation: significant environmental change and a lot of environmental niches being available.


Just to clarify if any of this conversation can be productive:
Do you believe the Cambrian explosion happened?
Do you believe in radiometric dating?
Do you believe in sedimentary geology?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Except things like counting mutations are total speculation given we have zero genetics and barely any remains at all from the era.

hmm, yet concluding that chance mutations beginning billions of years ago led to a bacteria all the way to becoming a human being.. is not total speculation?

The Cambrian explosion is absolutely mysterious and exceptional... but I fail to see evidence for it's impossibility.

Would you concede the same for an intelligent creator?

Do you believe the Cambrian explosion happened?

I'd say so- though the timescale estimate has shrunk a lot and I suspect will keep getting ever more 'explosive'

Do you believe in radiometric dating?
Do you believe in sedimentary geology?

In general yes, I'm in the old Earth camp.
That said, there are some problems linking those two together reliably

 

[Shemjaza]

hmm, yet concluding that chance mutations beginning billions of years ago led to a bacteria all the way to becoming a human being.. is not total speculation?

No, that's inference from evidence found in genetics and fossils... the exact details would be speculation.

Would you concede the same for an intelligent creator?

In the sense that it can't be disproven? Of course, it is literally impossible to disprove an omnipotent creator.

But to clarify, what I should have said is that there isn't anything consistent with current biology and genetics that demonstrates the Cambrian Explosion is impossible.

I'd say so- though the timescale estimate has shrunk a lot and I suspect will keep getting ever more 'explosive'


In general yes, I'm in the old Earth camp.
That said, there are some problems linking those two together reliably

Can you clarify this?

The animals of the early Cambrian are significantly different to the vast majority of modern life... accepting them as the root of all life is far more macro-evolution than you usually see from a Creationist,

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I touched on it before but it something that I don't think really gets touched on by anyone talking for or against the Cambrian Explosion, or evolution at any other time in history, is that: lifespan makes a huge difference. And finding out about the survivorship curve made me think on it:

Now there are three types of survivors: Type I, Type II and Type III.
Type I is the group that has few offspring, but they care for them greatly so as to limit infant mortality, and have a good survival range into the mid to late years of life before drastically dropping. In the example above, humans.
Type II is the group that has a kind of constant mortality/survival range across the whole board. Animals that normally only have a few offspring per brood and vary between looking after them or letting them fend for themselves after a certain age. In the example above, songbids.
Type III is the group that has the highest mortality rate but also the longest survival rate, especially among offspring since they produce so much offspring at one time, but those that do survive to adulthood tend to live very long lives. Frogs are the example given.

Now, birth rate and survival rate is a selection pressure in evolution, since the animals that live to the oldest age are the ones that are physically strongest in the face of the environment and thus would stand a better chance at achieving when looking for a mate. Thus, they will reproduce and carry on their genetic legacy. But, such creatures from Type III will not always be long-lived creatures either, which means their generations will be invariably shorter than those in Type I. It's estimated in regards to trilobites that their age range was up to 10 years, and if, for the sake of ease, that we assume that trilobites reach sexual maturity within their first year of life (based on other animals that only live up to a decade), that means that a trilobite would be producing offspring very quickly. However, since we've not found any fossilized examples of trilobite offspring or eggs (since if we follow the same line as other hard-shelled arthropods, then both will be extremely soft), we can't actually tell if they fall into Type II or Type III on the survivorship curve.

I've kind of partially lost my train of thought here, but I will summarize that, 20 million years is more than enough time with regards to evolution when you have creatures that are able to produce offspring in their first year of a life that only spans a decade, and I don't imagine that other Cambrian lifeforms would be too dissimilar.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No, that's inference from evidence found in genetics and fossils... the exact details would be speculation.

No genetics from this time period as you noted, and fossils that are conspicuously missing from this time period... but fair enough

In the sense that it can't be disproven? Of course, it is literally impossible to disprove an omnipotent creator.

But to clarify, what I should have said is that there isn't anything consistent with current biology and genetics that demonstrates the Cambrian Explosion is impossible.

I guess we can agree on that, it's not technically impossible- but that's certainly a long way from the 'undeniable mountains of empirical evidence' I often hear claimed.

And I do think it's fundamentally inconsistent with the inherent Darwinian prediction of a slow gradual process. i.e. I agree with Darwin on this: He was aware of the Cambrian explosion, but predicted it was an only artifact from yet unfound fossils that would be, must be smoothed out to be consistent with his own theory.

Can you clarify this?

The animals of the early Cambrian are significantly different to the vast majority of modern life... accepting them as the root of all life is far more macro-evolution than you usually see from a Creationist,

Maybe so, I can't speak for creationists though Genesis does explicitly say that life began in the oceans, appeared later on land, and culminated with mankind- We could call that macro-evolution, just not by Darwinian processes?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Maybe so, I can't speak for creationists though Genesis does explicitly say that life began in the oceans, appeared later on land, and culminated with mankind- We could call that macro-evolution, just not by Darwinian processes?

Except that Genesis has birds appearing at the same time as water creatures, and there is no evidence in the fossil record of such a thing occurring. Creatures that lived in the water did appear first, but flying animals, reptiles and birds, came much, much, MUCH later than water animals. So that's not right at all.

 

[Astrid]

Except that Genesis has birds appearing at the same time as water creatures, and there is no evidence in the fossil record of such a thing occurring. Creatures that lived in the water did appear first, but flying animals, reptiles and birds, came much, much, MUCH later than water animals. So that's not right at all.

That's about the least of the mismatch

 

[Shemjaza]

No genetics from this time period as you noted, and fossils that are conspicuously missing from this time period... but fair enough

No genetics from this period of course, but we have the genetic patterns of modern animals to support the patterns found in fossils, which in tern gives us the context to infer to the Cambrian.

I guess we can agree on that, it's not technically impossible- but that's certainly a long way from the 'undeniable mountains of empirical evidence' I often hear claimed.

The mountains of evidence is the support of evolution in general and common ancestry in particular... it's the exact mechanisms and events that create the Cammbrian Explosion that are mysterious, yet not impossible.

And I do think it's fundamentally inconsistent with the inherent Darwinian prediction of a slow gradual process. i.e. I agree with Darwin on this: He was aware of the Cambrian explosion, but predicted it was an only artifact from yet unfound fossils that would be, must be smoothed out to be consistent with his own theory.

Darwin's hypothesis has been superseded by over a century of evidence demonstrating that the evolutionary process is not and shouldn't predicted to be slow and consistent in rate.

Maybe so, I can't speak for creationists though Genesis does explicitly say that life began in the oceans, appeared later on land, and culminated with mankind- We could call that macro-evolution, just not by Darwinian processes?

Treating the transition of Cambrian life to modern life as micro-evoliution isn't just monkeys to man... it's swimming tube to all life with a backbone.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

the patterns found in fossils, which in tern gives us the context to infer to the Cambrian.

So in lieu of genetic information, what do the patterns say? If we dig through the past and see common features, new features, some dead ends, vestigial features, but a general trend towards increased sophistication, what does that tell us about the mechanism of change?

The mountains of evidence is the support of evolution in general and common ancestry in particular... it's the exact mechanisms and events that create the Cammbrian Explosion that are mysterious, yet not impossible.

Evolution if defined as merely change over time, yes, you, I and Genesis all agree with that definition. I'd say that ancestry is a little less definitive, many erroneous missing links have been based on superficial morphology, form follows function certainly, not always lineage. The exact mechanism of change is mysterious beyond the Cambrian, being just one of many radiation events- they defy what we can empirically observe in current mutation rates and population genetics.

Darwin's hypothesis has been superseded by over a century of evidence demonstrating that the evolutionary process is not and shouldn't predicted to be slow and consistent in rate.

For those in the punctuated equilibrium camp at least- I'd say it at least acknowledges the jerky nature of the fossil record, but it doesn't help a theory which fundamentally relies on vast expanses of time to overcome incredible odds.

 

[AV1611VET]

... but it doesn't help a theory which fundamentally relies on vast expanses of time to overcome incredible odds.

Yes, indeed.

Macroevolution requires more time to have transpired than the Bible allows for.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Yes, indeed.

Macroevolution requires more time to have transpired than the Bible allows for.

Hence Darwin adopting the old Earth views proposed by his close friend, Charles Lyell?

 

[AV1611VET]

Hence Darwin adopting the old Earth views proposed by his close friend, Charles Lyell?

More than likely so.

I think Darwin had some serious issues with God and family though.

 

[Shemjaza]

So in lieu of genetic information, what do the patterns say? If we dig through the past and see common features, new features, some dead ends, vestigial features, but a general trend towards increased sophistication, what does that tell us about the mechanism of change?

The issues is that we have very limited fossil evidence for soft bodied life in the time before the Cambrian Explosion... which in tern demonstrates that the explosion while certainly represents new diversity it is not some kind of beginning of life but is a period of much more fossilisable life.

I also think that it isn't reasonable to abandon the evidence from genetic information in modern life because it demonstrates how life can be interconnected and allows informed inference about more ancients fossils without genetics.

Evolution if defined as merely change over time, yes, you, I and Genesis all agree with that definition. I'd say that ancestry is a little less definitive, many erroneous missing links have been based on superficial morphology, form follows function certainly, not always lineage. The exact mechanism of change is mysterious beyond the Cambrian, being just one of many radiation events- they defy what we can empirically observe in current mutation rates and population genetics.

Do you have any specific examples of radiation events that defy empirical observations?

Inference of linage is always working from incomplete data, but I think much more than simply function can be inferred from fossils. The common example is the shark, dolphin and the Ichthyosaur who while having a very similar gross shape and environment they are clearly fish, mammal and reptile from their internal bone structures.

For those in the punctuated equilibrium camp at least- I'd say it at least acknowledges the jerky nature of the fossil record, but it doesn't help a theory which fundamentally relies on vast expanses of time to overcome incredible odds.

Why not?

Punctuated equilibrium is an explanation consistent with the varied speeds of evolution and the required vast times was already being demonstrated before the theory of evolution was even published.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

For those in the punctuated equilibrium camp at least- I'd say it at least acknowledges the jerky nature of the fossil record, but it doesn't help a theory which fundamentally relies on vast expanses of time to overcome incredible odds.

But it really doesn't since Darwinian evolution is no longer THE singular model for the theory of evolution. So, no, it's not an issue for evolution at all.

 

[sfs]

For those in the punctuated equilibrium camp at least- I'd say it at least acknowledges the jerky nature of the fossil record, but it doesn't help a theory which fundamentally relies on vast expanses of time to overcome incredible odds.

What odds? Where's the calculation?