Creationists: Explain your understanding of microevolution and macroevolution

[Hans Blaster]

Given the length and scope of your post I may respond is a couple posts. Let's start with this part:

I have no idea of the number of Inuit that have ever lived. From Wikipedia:
Inuit - Wikipedia
There are Inuit populations in Europe, United States, Canada, Greenland, and related ethnic groups from Asia and who knows how many in the past and where. If there were a billion people in that lineage, that would be enough genome replications to give about 1 mutation at every site in the genome. Depending on when the adaptive mutation occurred, the frequency of that variant could increase over generations improving the probability of a recombination event with another parent with a different adaptive allele. As I estimated earlier, this lineage might accumulate 5-10 adaptive mutations for various selection conditions (diseases, diet, thermal stress, etc.) When it comes to creating new alleles, it is all about replication because that's when you have a possibility of a mutation occurring, some will be detrimental, some will be neutral, and on rare occasions, adaptive.

You got close. You found a source we could use to estimate the cumulative population.

THere are about 150,000 Inuit. If we assume an average lifetime of ~70-75 years, about 2,000 people need to be born each year as replacement. If we assume a continuously fixed population size for 10,000 years we get 20,000,000 people.

With a cumulative population of 20 million and a instantaneous size of 150,000 how many adaptive mutations will be fixed in the population according to your model?

 

[SeventhFisherofMen]

In these discussions it's quite common for creationists to claim they accept microevolution, but don't accept macroevolution. What is less clear is precisely what creationists think those two things are.

To clear the air, this thread is for the purpose of creationists explaining their respective understanding of each. If you're a creationist, what do you think microevolution and macroevolution are exactly?

@pitabread
mi·cro·ev·o·lu·tion
noun
BIOLOGY

evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period.

mac·ro·ev·o·lu·tion
noun
BIOLOGY

major evolutionary change. The term applies mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time.

So in short those are the differences according to the internet, micro being minor changes over short term and macro being larger changes over long term.

I am a creationist and I believe exactly what the Bible states, God made all animals and people as they are. Does that mean that there are adaptations or interbreeding within species to cause different types of the same species, YES. Does a finches beak changing in length based on it's need to get food further in a plant give cause for belief in entire leaps of species changing like a fish into a man over billions of years, no.

Adaptation ≠ Evolution

There's is a reason that people call the missing link what it is and it is missing because there is no link between man and monkey thus the term "missing link". There are also no in betweens found of any animal turning into a completely different animal.

Plus the Bible is clear on what happened when God created everything, it's all there in Genesis why do we have to make our own make believe theories like evolution to explain what God already explained in The Bible. And why do Christians feel the need to conform to theories made up by secular scientists?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Fixation is not necessary for adaptation. In fact, evolutionary competition slows adaptation. You have two ways a lineage can get multiple adaptive mutations. One way is through DNA adaptive microevolution. That's demonstrated in the Kishony experiment. As a colony increases in size, mutant variants start to appear. When the colony reaches a size of about 1/(mutation rate) replications, there is a reasonable probability that an adaptive mutation has occurred (as well as mutations at every other site in the genome). That variant with the first adaptive mutation then has to start a new colony and as that new colony grows, the probability a second adaptive mutation improves, and when that second colony achieves a population of about 1/(mutation rate) replications, you have a good probability that one of the members of that colony with the first adaptive mutation will get a second adaptive mutation. This new more fit variant must then form a third colony and the cycle repeats. Note that in this process, new alleles are being produced at each adaptive step.

I said people are not bacteria. Where have you shown this applies to non-microbes? That a new adaptive mutation spreads throughout the population/takes over one mutation at a time.

In another part of the post you said:

They don't have to be in a single lineage.

But if it's not a single lineage, your bacterial mutation model has no validity, does it?

Face it your bacterial model has nothing to do with multi-cellular lifeforms.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

You have to show how these genetic transformations can occur.

You're joking, right?

 

[pitabread]

There's is a reason that people call the missing link what it is and it is missing because there is no link between man and monkey thus the term "missing link". There are also no in betweens found of any animal turning into a completely different animal.

Interestingly enough just in the hominid lineage (e.g. human evolution) there are intermediaries with blended characteristics such that even creationists can't agree on which are human and which are not.

If the boundaries between fossilized species were really that distinct, creationists shouldn't have any trouble putting them into separate categories. But in practice, it turns out that isn't the case at all.

This article has examples of this phenomenon: Comparison of all skulls

There are also more recent examples, such as the disagreement over Todd Wood's classification of extinct hominids: Homo habilis Homo rudolfensis Australopithecus sediba Discussion

 

[Alan Kleinman]

mac·ro·ev·o·lu·tion
noun
BIOLOGY

major evolutionary change. The term applies mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time.

So in short those are the differences according to the internet, micro being minor changes over short term and macro being larger changes over long term.

The only mechanisms of evolutionary change are microevolutionary. The logical flaw that is made here is that whole taxonomic groups are related therefore macroevolution exists. What is worse, is the correct physics and mathematics of microevolution are not being taught in biology departments around the world.

 

[Frank Robert]

@pitabread
mi·cro·ev·o·lu·tion
noun
BIOLOGY

evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period.

mac·ro·ev·o·lu·tion
noun
BIOLOGY

major evolutionary change. The term applies mainly to the evolution of whole taxonomic groups over long periods of time.

You have the correct definitions but your interpretation is faulty. Macroevolution is the accumulation of multiple microevolutionary changes over time.

 

[pitabread]

What is worse, is the correct physics and mathematics of microevolution are not being taught in biology departments around the world.

Given you appear relatively unfamiliar with what *is* taught re: evolution, that opinion doesn't carry a lot of weight.

 

[tas8831]

If there is a more condescending poster on this forum, I can't recall.

Were you here for the pshun2404 days?

 

[tas8831]

I was going to say, thanks for the offer. But why not? Tell us what is evidence and what isn't. Let's see if I can remember anything from my psychiatry lectures in medical school. I hope we don't have to 5150 you.

At that 3rd rate Caribbean back-up school for most aspiring students?
The whole engineering thing didn't pan out for you, I guess....

 

[tas8831]

So you have observed macroevolution?

Have you observed the Intelligent Design creation of a fully formed man from dust?
Or run the probabilities on it?
No? No experiments? Nothing?
Pfft... typical...

 

[Alan Kleinman]

Given the length and scope of your post I may respond is a couple posts. Let's start with this part:



You got close. You found a source we could use to estimate the cumulative population.

THere are about 150,000 Inuit. If we assume an average lifetime of ~70-75 years, about 2,000 people need to be born each year as replacement. If we assume a continuously fixed population size for 10,000 years we get 20,000,000 people.

With a cumulative population of 20 million and a instantaneous size of 150,000 how many adaptive mutations will be fixed in the population according to your model?

The mathematics may be trivial but you are failing to correlate the math to the physics. My model is not a model of competition, it is a model of adaptation. What you can predict with my model based on the number of replications of a particular variant and mutation rate, the probability of at least one adaptive mutation occurring.

Fixation is a possible outcome of competition between different variants in a limited carrying capacity environment. This is why I continually harp on people to study and understand the similarities and differences between the Kishony and Lenski experiments.

The Kishony experiment is carried out in a relatively large carrying capacity environment that allows sufficient population size for adaptation to occur without fixation of any variant. Look again at that experiment. Colonies of drug-adapted variants grow in the regions where drug is present while the drug-sensitive variants replicate along as long as resources are available in the drug-free region.

On the other hand, the Lenski experiment is carried out in a much lower carrying capacity environment that doesn't allow for the population size to be large enough to get that reasonable probability of an adaptive mutation occurring in a single-day growth cycle.

Understand this first and then we can discuss your Inuit example further.

 

[pitabread]

At that 3rd rate Caribbean back-up school for most aspiring students?
The whole engineering thing didn't pan out for you, I guess....

On a related note, this is a fascinating example of the Salem Hypothesis.

 

[Frank Robert]

The only mechanisms of evolutionary change are microevolutionary.

Wrong!

The logical flaw that is made here is that whole taxonomic groups are related therefore macroevolution exists.

Only if you deny the consilience of supportive evidence from multiple independent scientific fields.

What is worse, is the correct physics and mathematics of microevolution are not being taught in biology departments around the world.

Your math happens to explain microevolution in K & L but it does not falsify marcroevolution. Your errors were explained to at PS.

 

[Alan Kleinman]

You're joking, right?

If you don't, you are basing your theory on presumption, not scientific principles. You are presuming taxonomic groups are related and therefore macroevolution exists. That is physically and mathematically illogical.

 

[tas8831]

James Tour for one, synthetic organic chemist and nano-tech pioneer is achieving great things based on an assumption of intelligent design in cells rather than chance creation- it informs an entirely different set of questions, answers and solutions.

James "Screaming Skull" Tour? The one that claimed none of his colleagues could explain macroevolution to him, then when Nick Matzke volunteered to do so as long as their meeting was recorded, Screaming Skull declined?

I'm sure nobody will care what a carbon nanotube creationist thinks about biology.

Still hawking Johnson-Dembskiism?

 

[Alan Kleinman]

You have the correct definitions but your interpretation is faulty. Macroevolution is the accumulation of multiple microevolutionary changes over time.

And how does that accumulation occur mathematically? Why can't HIV accumulate the adaptive mutations to 3 simultaneous selection pressures acting at only two genetic loci?

 

[tas8831]

Tour has good arguments against abiogenesis.

Sure he does...

 

[pitabread]

Your math happens to explain microevolution in K & L

Except even this doesn't appear to have been empirically demonstrated/verified.

Basically he's got little more than an untested model. Everything else is bluff and bluster.

 

[pitabread]

Why can't HIV accumulate the adaptive mutations to 3 simultaneous selection pressures acting at only two genetic loci?

You really should read the first chapter in the Evolutionary Analysis textbook. They explain just that.