Creationists: Explain your understanding of microevolution and macroevolution

[Ophiolite]

Well for some reason I just suddenly feel the need to say; that evolution is the devil's work!

I don't mind who you give the credit to. I'm just pleased to see you recognising its reality. Well done!

 

[Phred]

sticks and stones... 'insults are the most graceless form of conceding defeat'

Any attempt at a substantive argument for Darwinian evolution... not as common, but always much appreciated.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php
TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy
https://www.christianforums.com/threads/evolution-is-both-a-fact-and-a-theory.847256/
https://www.christianforums.com/threads/what-exactly-is-the-theory-of-evolution.1828367/

Not like it matters. Facts don't much matter to creationists. You refuse to even attempt the most basic understanding of the topic then post continuous attacks on strawmen. You're not even wrong.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php
TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy
https://www.christianforums.com/threads/evolution-is-both-a-fact-and-a-theory.847256/
https://www.christianforums.com/threads/what-exactly-is-the-theory-of-evolution.1828367/

Not like it matters. Facts don't much matter to creationists. You refuse to even attempt the most basic understanding of the topic then post continuous attacks on strawmen. You're not even wrong.

Then let me tell you what I think of you!

I think you are probably a perfectly rational, intelligent person, capable of critical thought. I like to think I was also when I was an atheist and believer in Darwinian evolution over about 30 years- at least that assumption makes for a more interesting discussion than trading insults

I can't speak for creationists, but facts are notoriously subjective things..

The Big Bang was branded 'religious pseudoscience' while Newton's laws were still declared 'immutable'
Piltdown man formed the basis for the understanding of human evolution for decades.

Your first link acknowledges a distinction between micro and macroevolution

'small' and 'large' scale

I think we can also make a distinction between what we can observe, test, repeat
and what remains inherently beyond empirical scientific investigation.

i.e. there is plenty of room for good, intelligent people to disagree.

 

[stevil]

To have enough mutations to produce enough useful variations for coming to any new forms distinct from what was possible in the original gene pool, there would be a huge number of harmful mutations that could overwhelm the gene pool instead, which would be far too likely. This is an objection to effective evolution depending on mutations.

The harmful mutations don't get established in the gene pool. They die off pretty quickly, and don't proliferate. So one individual might be born with a harmful mutation, but that individual doesn't live long enough or can't find a partner in order to procreate.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The harmful mutations don't get established in the gene pool. They die off pretty quickly, and don't proliferate. So one individual might be born with a harmful mutation, but that individual doesn't live long enough or can't find a partner in order to procreate.

If it is harmful enough yes, the individual may not reach full term or sexual maturity

But other than that, 'slightly' deleterious mutations will always vastly outnumber 'slightly' advantageous ones. There are always infinitely more ways to degrade designs than to improve on them.

If you take the case of a mountain gorilla, an average female may only have 3 offspring in her entire life- so how significant would a mutation have to be to raise this to 4, or drop it to 2? pretty huge...

i.e. without any limits on the range of variability, slightly deleterious mutations would slowly but surely accumulate before selective pressure could weed them out, the species slowly devolves into extinction.

aka entropy, random change without any goal is always going to be destructive on balance.

 

[pitabread]

Of course, artificial selection has the advantage of working towards a goal v random chaos that can readily select inferior genetic lines

It's not really an "advantage" though. We're talking apples and oranges; there is no specific advantage in this context.

And different environmental contexts aren't "random chaos" either.

so creating them via randomly mutating DNA (as the theory goes) only adds an additional layer of difficulty for chance to succeed

This doesn't mean anything.

As we learned more about the structure and information systems in the cell, the staggering improbability of life occurring by chance

But again, qualifying everything as "by chance" is playing loose with what is actually being proposed. Biochemical interactions aren't strictly chance. Neither are evolutionary mechanisms.

Hence why abiogenesis scenarios look at different environmental conditions and chemical makeups to understand the process of going from non-life to life. But it's not a case of pure random chance.

 

[pitabread]

If you take the case of a mountain gorilla, an average female may only have 3 offspring in her entire life- so how significant would a mutation have to be to raise this to 4, or drop it to 2? pretty huge...

i.e. without any limits on the range of variability, slightly deleterious mutations would slowly but surely accumulate before selective pressure could weed them out, the species slowly devolves into extinction.

aka entropy, random change without any goal is always going to be destructive on balance.

We can actually test claims of genetic entropy in fast-reproducing populations with high mutation rates and those claims just aren't borne out. Genetic entropy has no biological reality.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

We can actually test claims of genetic entropy in fast-reproducing populations with high mutation rates and those claims just aren't borne out. Genetic entropy has no biological reality.

Exactly-

Direct observations support the logical model; biological design somehow resists the entropy that would inevitably overcome natural selection acting on random mutation. Thus other mechanisms are at work.

Otherwise we would not observe horseshoe crabs remaining virtually unchanged in the fossil record for 100s of millions of years..

As I recall you are quite fond of analogies :
If an office memo is still legible after 10,000 copies, you know it's coming from a master copy, not 10,000 successive generations all introducing random errors along the way.

 

[stevil]

aka entropy, random change without any goal is always going to be destructive on balance.

Except for the part that isn't random. The selective pressures
Those that are quicker or more camouflaged don't get eaten, those that are more beautiful are more likely to get a breeding partner.

 

[Phred]

Then let me tell you what I think of you!

I think you are probably a perfectly rational, intelligent person, capable of critical thought. I like to think I was also when I was an atheist and believer in Darwinian evolution over about 30 years- at least that assumption makes for a more interesting discussion than trading insults

I can't speak for creationists, but facts are notoriously subjective things..

The Big Bang was branded 'religious pseudoscience' while Newton's laws were still declared 'immutable'
Piltdown man formed the basis for the understanding of human evolution for decades.

Your first link acknowledges a distinction between micro and macroevolution

'small' and 'large' scale

I think we can also make a distinction between what we can observe, test, repeat
and what remains inherently beyond empirical scientific investigation.

i.e. there is plenty of room for good, intelligent people to disagree.

I acknowledge a distinction between micro and macroevolution. But not in nearly the same way you do.

Do you understand that little things sometimes build up and amount to big things?

When a football team runs the ball for four yards a play they end up with a first down after three plays. Then they do it again. And again. Eventually they score a touchdown. They never have to run a single play of over four yards. Just keep running the ball. Four yards every time. Eventually that leads to seven points. Small running plays become first downs. First downs become a touchdown. It's exactly how microevolution works. Constant small changes add up. There's nothing to stop them. But somehow you folks have decided that because there's a word for looking at a greater period of time, macroevolution, we have a problem.

We just have the advantage of being able to look at fossils from long distances apart. In time. So we can see how the build up of lots of small changes has affected them. One or two generations - microevolution. 100 generations, macroevolution.

It's in the eye of the beholder.

As to your ranting about science being wrong. Yeah. So? I'd rather we got some things wrong and learned from it then be like religion and get everything wrong and refuse to admit it.

Facts are not subjective things. The data that we call facts are, in fact, quite solid. But it serves your purpose to make the world squishy. Because one of the facts in the world is there is no evidence to suggest a god or gods exist.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Except for the part that isn't random. The selective pressures
Those that are quicker or more camouflaged don't get eaten, those that are more beautiful are more likely to get a breeding partner.

Selection of what?

through random error-

your speed is far more likely to be impeded than improved
your camouflage is far more likely to give you away
and there are always infinitely more ways to make something more ugly than more beautiful.

As always- survival of the fittest is not in contention here, it's the arrival of significantly fitter designs to select from that is the tricky part, which ToE lays entirely at the feet of pure blind chance- no way around that

 

[pitabread]

Direct observations support the logical model; biological design somehow resists the entropy that would inevitably overcome natural selection acting on random mutation. Thus other mechanisms are at work.

We already know the mechanism at work; it's an equilibrium state reached as a consequence of selective pressures: Mutation–selection balance - Wikipedia

There's nothing mysterious happening here.

 

[pitabread]

it's the arrival of significantly fitter designs to select from that is the tricky part

What is tricky about that?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I acknowledge a distinction between micro and macroevolution. But not in nearly the same way you do.

Do you understand that little things sometimes build up and amount to big things?

When a football team runs the ball for four yards a play they end up with a first down after three plays. Then they do it again. And again. Eventually they score a touchdown. They never have to run a single play of over four yards. Just keep running the ball. Four yards every time. Eventually that leads to seven points. Small running plays become first downs. First downs become a touchdown. It's exactly how microevolution works. Constant small changes add up. There's nothing to stop them. But somehow you folks have decided that because there's a word for looking at a greater period of time, macroevolution, we have a problem.

I have no problem with that, I always like a good analogy to work with!
So the players have a goal, they act with the anticipation of scoring goals and winning the match.. with this advantage yes, small gains can add up to large ones

But according to ToE, there is no anticipation or goal, just random error- so our players must run in random changing directions- running out of bounds has them called off (extinct) and so the entire team ends up out of play before a touchdown is scored- again aka entropy.

I think there is a form of unintentional bias involved here, everything we do is in anticipation of a future consequence- and so it is very hard to strip this intuition from our thought experiments.

We just have the advantage of being able to look at fossils from long distances apart. In time. So we can see how the build up of lots of small changes has affected them. One or two generations - microevolution. 100 generations, macroevolution.

that was certainly the prediction in Darwin's time, that events like the Cambrian explosion would turn out to be mere artifacts of an incomplete record- to be filled in and smoothed out later. But the opposite unfolded - these events have become ever more explosive, followed by long periods of stasis and/or extinction- very little evidence of slow gradual improvement as renowned Paleontologist David Raup noted:

"We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much... We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time."

"In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks."

As to your ranting about science being wrong. Yeah. So? I'd rather we got some things wrong and learned from it then be like religion and get everything wrong and refuse to admit it.

So I think the aspect of faith is important here, that we acknowledge our beliefs as such.
'blind faith is faith which does not recognize itself'

Facts are not subjective things. The data that we call facts are, in fact, quite solid. But it serves your purpose to make the world squishy. Because one of the facts in the world is there is no evidence to suggest a god or gods exist.

Well that is debatable- which is why we are here!

I appreciate your thoughts, must run for now

 

[pitabread]

But according to ToE, there is no anticipation or goal, just random error- so our players must run in random changing directions- running out of bounds has them called off (extinct) and so the entire team ends up out of play before a touchdown is scored- again aka entropy.

The assumption here is that the entire species would go extinct, but that isn't the case due to the equilibrium state that the population would reach. Some individuals may be selected out of the population, but not the whole population. Others will remain "in bounds" so to speak and continue to reproduce.

You're repeating an argument that has no basis in observed biology.

For further reading see:

Mutation–selection balance - Wikipedia
Negative selection (natural selection) - Wikipedia
Stabilizing selection - Wikipedia

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The assumption here is that the entire species would go extinct, but that isn't the case due to the equilibrium state that the population would reach. Some individuals may be selected out of the population, but not the whole population. Others will remain "in bounds" so to speak and continue to reproduce.

You're repeating an argument that has no basis in observed biology.

For further reading see:

Mutation–selection balance - Wikipedia
Negative selection (natural selection) - Wikipedia
Stabilizing selection - Wikipedia

which again would be my point, the observations show something else is constraining changes within stable viable ranges that would not be set by purely random mutations.

Survival of the fittest says nothing about survival of the fitter or even the 'as fit as the previous generation'

"Stabilizing selection (not to be confused with negative or purifying selection[1][2]) is a type of natural selection in which the population mean stabilizes on a particular non-extreme trait value. This is thought to be the most common mechanism of action for natural selection because most traits do not appear to change drastically over time.[3] Stabilizing selection commonly uses negative selection (a.k.a. purifying selection) to select against extreme values of the character. Stabilizing selection is the opposite of disruptive selection. Instead of favoring individuals with extreme phenotypes, it favors the intermediate variants"

^ as above, the observation that not much seems to change over time is agreed upon- and we agree that extremely deleterious mutations would obviously be selected out more quickly..

So what does that leave us? 'Intermediate variants' is an interestingly vague choice of words- because they of course would not be entirely neutral, they would always still lean deleterious if left to random mutation, because there will always be infinitely more ways to degrade a biological design than improve on it. Even if only slight, these would be the changes that would accumulate-
survival of the fittest still operates, but in this case means; survival of the least degraded version of previous generations.

 

[pitabread]

which again would be my point, the observations show something else is constraining changes within stable viable ranges that would not be set by purely random mutations.

That "something else" is natural selection.

Again, this isn't some mystery. This is already known.

Survival of the fittest says nothing about survival of the fitter or even the 'as fit as the previous generation'

Survival of the fittest is a bit of misnomer when it comes to how selection actually works. I wouldn't treat that phrase as literal.

 

[stevil]

Selection of what?

through random error-

your speed is far more likely to be impeded than improved
your camouflage is far more likely to give you away
and there are always infinitely more ways to make something more ugly than more beautiful.

And yet, we have fast creatures, we have camouflaged creatures, we have beautiful creatures.

They ought to be slow, uncamoflaged and ugly and yet they aren't.
It seems that they are being selected because they are more likely to survive and have offspring and share their DNA to the next generation.

As always- survival of the fittest is not in contention here, it's the arrival of significantly fitter designs to select from that is the tricky part, which ToE lays entirely at the feet of pure blind chance- no way around that

If all the slow antelope get eaten you only have the fast ones left.
In the next generation or so there will be some slower, some faster. The faster ones are more likely to survive.
So the next generation gets faster overall, on average faster, but they still have variability, some slower, some faster. The faster ones survive. so the average gets faster. Over multiple generations you get really, really fast antelope.
Problem is the Cheetas keep getting faster too.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

That "something else" is natural selection.

But you cannot select anything into existence- only what is already available.
And random corruption of genetic information is not a preserver of genetic information.

Again, this isn't some mystery. This is already known.

It is already observed - that genetic lines remain stable, they are not constantly evolving as once thought.
And so from within the confines of ToE, of course you must propose a Darwinian explanation- which is by definition still constrained to 'natural selection acting on random mutation'

But like many mistaken transitionals, fossils that had to be placed somewhere on the Darwinian 'tree'
is this explanation demanded by the evidence, or the theory?

Survival of the fittest is a bit of misnomer when it comes to how selection actually works. I wouldn't treat that phrase as literal.

I'd agree it is often used in a misleading context- not intentionally I don't think

Ultimately selection is a destructive filtering process, you start with a larger set of options, and end with a smaller one. right? i.e.- the opposite of the 'tree of life'

So you can originate exactly nothing by selection, you can only select what has already been originated

And so 'Origin of species, by means of natural selection' is oxymoronic.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

And yet, we have fast creatures, we have camouflaged creatures, we have beautiful creatures.

They ought to be slow, uncamoflaged and ugly and yet they aren't.

That's my point again, we don't see what the algorithm strictly describes
so something other than natural selection acting on random mutation is at work

It seems that they are being selected because they are more likely to survive and have offspring and share their DNA to the next generation.

If all the slow antelope get eaten you only have the fast ones left.
In the next generation or so there will be some slower, some faster. The faster ones are more likely to survive.
So the next generation gets faster overall, on average faster, but they still have variability, some slower, some faster. The faster ones survive. so the average gets faster. Over multiple generations you get really, really fast antelope.
Problem is the Cheetas keep getting faster too.

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.

And so as Paleontologist David Raup noted," 250,000 species of plants and animals recorded and deposited in museums throughout the world did not support the gradual unfolding hoped for by Darwin"

we see very little evidence of gradual improvement- we see sudden appearance followed by vast periods of stasis and/or extinction

We do see unambiguous examples of genetic destruction, birds losing flight, fish losing sight, it's much more difficult to find examples of the opposite occurring.