Evidence for macro-evolution

Guy Threepwood said:

I have nothing against flamers, I think we're all very open here.

hierarchical digital information system,

Am I talking about your computer or DNA?

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But you can't show in any way shape or form that DNA was madee by a creator. Correlation does not equal causation.
Just saying it was created is not SHOWING it was created.

Guy Threepwood said:

Yes, cheating and chance are both improbable

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By themselves, neither is improbable. You're really not making any sense. If you cheat, you assure yourself of getting what you want. With chance, you get a result. The probability of getting some combination is 1.

The probability of getting a desired outcome is less than 1. We use probability to calculate the odds of desired outcomes. With natural biologic evolution, there is no desired outcome. After rambling along for vast periods of time, we will come up with some result.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

The how has been answered: evolution through natural selection.

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natural selection merely filters and distributes what has already evolved, you cannot select into existence that which does not already exist.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

But you can't show in any way shape or form that DNA was madee by a creator. Correlation does not equal causation.
Just saying it was created is not SHOWING it was created.

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Likewise for chance.

It's a matter of which method is least improbable.

Guy Threepwood said:

natural selection merely filters and distributes what has already evolved, you cannot select into existence that which does not already exist.

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And yet, it's a better thing to go with than your bloody empty rhetoric.

Guy Threepwood said:

Likewise for chance.

It's a matter of which method is least improbable.

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Again: there's more to show with the theory of evolution than there is for your empty claims.

Throughout this whole thing, you have not shown SQUAT to support anything you've said. All you've done is made empty claim after empty claim. Nothing more.

Yttrium said:

By themselves, neither is improbable. You're really not making any sense. If you cheat, you assure yourself of getting what you want. With chance, you get a result. The probability of getting some combination is 1.

The probability of getting a desired outcome is less than 1. We use probability to calculate the odds of desired outcomes. With natural biologic evolution, there is no desired outcome. After rambling along for vast periods of time, we will come up with some result.

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The probability is not equal. One is more probable than the other.
Even the most remote possibility of desire, anticipation, intent, being involved, is what allows us to conclude that the gambler cheated.

And ultimately that's the objective difference between creative intelligence and 'nature'

The former has the power to act according to an anticipated result.

The latter is bound to simply react to past events.

That power of anticipation is what can overcome the staggering odds faced by nature in achieving the same outcome.

Guy Threepwood said:

The probability is not equal. One is more probable than the other.
Even the most remote possibility of desire, anticipation, intent, being involved, is what allows us to conclude that the gambler cheated.

And ultimately that's the objective difference between creative intelligence and 'nature'

The former has the power to act according to an anticipated result.

The latter is bound to simply react to past events.

That power of anticipation is what can overcome the staggering odds faced by nature in achieving the same outcome.

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That almost sounds philosophical, but it comes across as a bunch of gobbledygook.

I'll just assert that probability doesn't work the way you seem to think it does and leave it at that.

Guy Threepwood said:

Creative intelligence leaves fingerprints quite distinct from natural forces, which are objectively and scientifically verifiable:

Just ask a forensic scientist, or an archeologist, or an insurance fraud investigator.

If you find the Rosetta stone, and conclude it wasn't created by natural forces, is that a supernatural argument?

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Is a rainbow produced by the refraction of sunlight by raindrops quite distinct from a spectrum produced by shining a light through a prism or a diffraction grating shaped by a human engineer?

Guy Threepwood said:

There are many mutations that are entirely probable through random replication errors, whereby functionality of a protein is destroyed, providing a benefit.

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Can you show us this probability calculation? I would also like you to show us the calculation of the probability of a mutation enhancing the functionality of a protein.

Guy Threepwood said:

And this is generally what we see in micro-evolution.

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Can you show us what "generally" means here?

Guy Threepwood said:

Sure, but for one; saying the dog ate your homework doesn't earn an A. Even a good excuse for the lack of evidence doesn't fill in as the 'overwhelming undeniable evidence' that is often cited for macroevolution.

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The overwhelming evidence for macro evolution is still there... that doesn't disappear because a particularly ancient period is a little mysterious.

Guy Threepwood said:

Other than that, it may be limited, but not non existent. We do have lots of soft bodied fossils, they just don't provide gap fillers as once hoped, rather the fossil record increasingly highlights the abrupt arrival of most modern phyla.

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There're gaps and a perfectly logical explanation as to why there're gaps.

We have a situation a where we know soft bodied life existed and we know how difficult and rare soft bodied fossils are... so I fail to see how this helps your cause.

In addition, I think the term "modern phyla" is so disingenuous as to be dishonest when used by a Creationist about the Cambrian explosion. We're talking about before vertebrate was even a distinct group from other Chordates.

Guy Threepwood said:

Neither do I, and I agree 100% that it provides informed inference on the nature of the record before genetics are available:

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Guy Threepwood said:

The genetic evidence is embraced by skeptics of Darwinism. It shows common design certainly, as you might expect from a common designer, and at the same time demonstrates just how difficult it is to create the vast amount of new genetic information required, through random error.

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Without an objective measure for the ID version of information it's a useless concept. The emotional reaction as to how "specified" something is doesn't function as scientific inquiry.

Guy Threepwood said:

Cambrian

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How so?

What about it is impossible with the standard explanation of mutation and selection.

Guy Threepwood said:

They all have a design which facilitates life in the ocean, be that by creative intelligence or natural processes- form follows function either way. That's a wash is it not

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Not in the least.

The form of the outer shape follows function... the fact that the internal structure absolutely demonstrates the differing and methods of getting to that structure.

Guy Threepwood said:

OK, but the extremity of the variation compared with what the theory originally predicted, was enough to split a punctuated equilibrium camp from a gradualist camp.

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Yes, that's the advantage of science: you can find new data and find that a situation is both more complicated and have multiple explanations and specific variations.

Guy Threepwood said:

Because the gradualists still have the same logical argument Darwin did, that the ToE is a lot less difficult if you don't have to account for significant abrupt changes versus incremental evolution. Having vast amounts of time has always been the 'answer' to the seemingly impossible.

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Because it's still true. The evidence for the gradual changes and the evidence for the extreme time are both still there.

Greater pressures can lead to rapid changes, but that doesn't make gradual change untrue as an explanation... and this was always part of the explanation from Gould.

If you are skeptical of geologic time, then why are bringing up geological timescale evidence like the Cambrian or Punctured Evolution?

Shemjaza said:

Not in the least.

The form of the outer shape follows function... the fact that the internal structure absolutely demonstrates the differing and methods of getting to that structure.

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If form followed function, humans and other mammals would not be able to choke to death on food because our food intake pipes would be separate to our oxygen intake pipes.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

If form followed function, humans and other mammals would not be able to choke to death on food because our food intake pipes would be separate to our oxygen intake pipes.

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Doesn't kill us enough to lose out on talking with our mouths.

I think noses are sub par as the only breathing hole.

I wonder how many air breathing vertebrates have separate breathing and eating systems... and I wonder if they are all aquatic?

Guy Threepwood said:

just to be clear, it was his quote- also writing "The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal."

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Right. Just to be clear, I'm saying that Dawkins himself is wrong on this point.

Guy Threepwood said:

absolutely, the machinery, or medium that carries the digital information, is distinct from the information itself, and of course can corrupt the digital information

just as an old mechanical hard drive can wear out and begin to make mistakes

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Except in the case of living things, it's not actually a mistake -- it's a critical way that the system functions. There are other ways that the digital analogy falls short of adequately describing the real behavior of DNA, e.g. the interactions between different segments of DNA can depend critically on the way that the chromosome physically folds when packed into a nucleus, something that again cannot be learned by simply reading the string of digital information in the DNA sequence itself.

Guy Threepwood said:

I take your point that on one hand, this would seem to allow more room for error, though in the larger context this is negligible (redundancy in Unicode doesn't really help a chimp to write war and peace accidentally)

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Right -- I was pointing out a mistake in what you wrote, not claiming that this was the fundamental problem with your argument.

Guy Threepwood said:

But it does presents a very prominent problem regarding the addition of new volumes of genetic information as we talked about earlier in this thread.

Because yes, if you merely mutate a nucleotide, a point mutation, you have some chance that the codon will still read as it did.

But if you ADD a new nucleotide, aka an insertion mutation, this now throws off the frame reference for each proceeding codon,
which is why such insertion mutations are called nonsense mutations. They essentially scramble everything that follows. It's actually one of they key hurdles in macroevolution v microevolution-
adding something new rather than merely degrading what you have

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No, that's not a prominent problem for the addition of new genetic information. Adding new DNA into existing protein-coding genes certainly does occur -- we can see it easily. It can occur by frameshift mutations that affect only the end of the protein, by in-frame insertions or deletions (i.e. those involving insertion or deletion of a multiple of three bases), and by loss of an existing stop codon, lengthening the produced protein. (Terminology note: frameshift mutations are generally treated as distinct from nonsense mutations, which are single-base substitutions that change a codon into a stop codon and thus terminate the protein.)

However, most genuinely new genetic information (rather than modification of existing proteins and changes to how those are expressed) comes from the creation of new genes, which also occurs quite frequently and by a variety of mechanisms -- gene duplication followed by mutational divergence, coopting of transposable element genes, de novo creation from noncoding sequence.

Guy Threepwood said:

Well no, that's a fundamental and very common misunderstanding about evolution, which we covered earlier in the thread, don't want to make this post too long, but in short:

There are many mutations that are entirely probable through random replication errors, whereby functionality of a protein is destroyed, providing a benefit. And this is generally what we see in micro-evolution.

e.g. A bear losing it's ability to produce pigment in it's fur, may certainly provide a benefit, in a niche environment at least.

But you see the problem; you cannot 'macro-evolve' a bacteria to a human being by merely breaking things in the bacteria..

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Your response seems to have nothing to do with what I wrote. Your argument about the probability of evolution producing genuine novelty -- the thing you said was easy to calculate but which you have so far made no attempt to calculate -- was based on the premise that evolution had to achieve some specific sequence. That premise is utterly wrong as a description of the process of evolution as studied by biologists. Until you address that error, everything else you write is pointless because you're attacking your own fantasy rather than the actual science.

BobMiller said:

Hello


I think we should have a thread that is dedicated to show evidence for macro-evolution.

I do know we have "the quiet thread," but I think we should have a thread which is lighter, and easier for the average Joe to understand.


The purpose of this thread:
To provide evidence for macro-evolution


Rules:
1) no belittling, insults, or derogatory comments.
2) No debating whatsoever/ If a creationist wants to debate the material on this thread, please copy and paste the material and start a new thread.
3) cite your sources

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Micro evolution over millions of years = macro evolution.

ruthiesea said:

Micro evolution over millions of years = macro evolution.

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Yet for some reason, that's impossible to some people...

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

Yet for some reason, that's impossible to some people...

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I think an actual definition of macro evolution, along with an explanation of what would be accepted as an example, would be helpful.

NxNW said:

I think an actual definition of macro evolution, along with an explanation of what would be accepted as an example, would be helpful.

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It really doesn't since macro-evolution is a dishonest attempt to nitpick at evolution so it won't help.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

It really doesn't since macro-evolution is a dishonest attempt to nitpick at evolution so it won't help.

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I guess "Variation beyond the species level" leads to imprecise "kind" hand waving.

Shemjaza said:

I guess "Variation beyond the species level" leads to imprecise "kind" hand waving.

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It usually translates to "dog giving birth to a cat . . . checkmate, atheists!"