Evidence for macro-evolution

[Astrophile]

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.

It is interesting that there appears to have been a previous increase in biodiversity, called the Avalon explosion, about 575 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period. According to Avalon explosion - Wikipedia , during the period of this 'explosion', 'animals became bilateral and with increasing complexity. Many animals during this time fit into the annelid, arthropod, echinoderm and cnidarian phyla.' In addition, the 'Avalon explosion' saw the appearance of plants, that fitted into a now extinct phylum, called Vendobionta.

It is perhaps appropriate that one of the features of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, which gave its name to this early increase in biodiversity, is Conception Bay.

 

[NxNW]

Horses don't become giraffes.

Nobody is claiming otherwise.

And God said animals will multiply "after their kind."

According to the theory of evolution, every creature is the same species as its parents and its offspring. Speciation happens between populations, not individuals. So it seems to me that you're defining macroevolution out of existence, because what you're asking for is nonsensical.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Cambrian

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

What odds? Where's the calculation?

In a sense it's not complicated. DNA represents digital information which requires precise sequences to describe biological form and function.

So we can objectively calculate the mathematical odds of particular genetic sequences arising by chance, in the same way we can calculate the odds of a chimp accidentally typing War & Peace, and it's not good. It's how we might discern for example, in a purely hypothetical case of course, that sequences in a certain virus were most likely written in through intelligent design in a lab, and not by accidental mutation in the wild.

By some calculations, if you multiplied the number of nanoseconds the universe has existed, by the number of elementary particles that constitute the universe, you don't have enough time and space, for enough singular events of any kind, to match the number of random tries it would take to create just one modest length new protein.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

In a sense it's not complicated. DNA represents digital information which requires precise sequences to describe biological form and function.

So we can objectively calculate the mathematical odds of particular genetic sequences arising by chance, in the same way we can calculate the odds of a chimp accidentally typing War & Peace, and it's not good. It's how we might discern for example, in a purely hypothetical case of course, that sequences in a certain virus were most likely written in through intelligent design in a lab, and not by accidental mutation in the wild.

By some calculations, if you multiplied the number of nanoseconds the universe has existed, by the number of elementary particles that constitute the universe, you don't have enough time and space, for enough singular events of any kind, to match the number of random tries it would take to create just one modest length new protein.

But DNA isn't digital information.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

In a sense it's not complicated. DNA represents digital information which requires precise sequences to describe biological form and function.

So we can objectively calculate the mathematical odds of particular genetic sequences arising by chance, in the same way we can calculate the odds of a chimp accidentally typing War & Peace, and it's not good. It's how we might discern for example, in a purely hypothetical case of course, that sequences in a certain virus were most likely written in through intelligent design in a lab, and not by accidental mutation in the wild.

By some calculations, if you multiplied the number of nanoseconds the universe has existed, by the number of elementary particles that constitute the universe, you don't have enough time and space, for enough singular events of any kind, to match the number of random tries it would take to create just one modest length new protein.

Calculating the odds of something happening after it has happened is meaningless. The odds of an event occurring after it has occurred are necessarily 1.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But DNA isn't digital information.

"After Watson and Crick, we know that genes themselves, within their minute internal structure, are long strings of pure digital information. What is more, they are truly digital, in the full and strong sense of computers and compact disks, not in the weak sense of the nervous system."

Richard Dawkins

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Calculating the odds of something happening after it has happened is meaningless. The odds of an event occurring after it has occurred are necessarily 1.

Well that's the thing, it most probably never happened...

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

"After Watson and Crick, we know that genes themselves, within their minute internal structure, are long strings of pure digital information. What is more, they are truly digital, in the full and strong sense of computers and compact disks, not in the weak sense of the nervous system."

Richard Dawkins

How can a biological system, acid and molecules, be digital?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Well that's the thing, it most probably never happened.

Now that is a cop out answer if I eve saw one.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

How can a biological system, acid and molecules, be digital?

The same way electronic impulses in silicon chips are used to record genome projects. And that same digital information could be represented with chalk on a blackboard or lines in the sand if you really wanted to.

And vice versa, you could theoretically use DNA to create a digital version of an encyclopedia.

i.e. digital information itself is not inherently bound to the medium which carries it. DNA is just another medium for digital information to exist in.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

The same way electronic impulses in silicon chips are used to record genome projects. And that same digital information could be represented with chalk on a blackboard or lines in the sand if you really wanted to.

And vice versa, you could theoretically use DNA to create a digital version of an encyclopedia.

i.e. digital information itself is not inherently bound to the medium which carries it. DNA is just another medium for digital information to exist in.

Eh, I'll grant you that, but I still think you're very much putting too much emphasis on the information idea without taking into account the medium that carries the information.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Now that is a cop out answer if I eve saw one.

It's what I've been saying all along, the odds don't support all the genetic information required for macro-evolution being created by blind chance.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

It's what I've been saying all along, the odds don't support all the genetic information required for macro-evolution being created by blind chance.

But as was said: you're trying to work out the odds going backwards from an event that has already happened.

And the information that we have, from various sources, show evolution to be a fact. So it has happened, regardless of whatever the odds you think were.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Eh, I'll grant you that, but I still think you're very much putting too much emphasis on the information idea without taking into account the medium that carries the information.

Likewise, I take your point.

But the thread was about Darwinian macro-evolution, and as many Darwinists point out, the theory does not concern itself with origins of life and DNA/RNA itself.

In that larger context, I'd say the medium of DNA itself does carry its own, possibly much stronger argument against a purely naturalistic explanation for life.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Likewise, I take your point.

But the thread was about Darwinian macro-evolution, and as many Darwinists point out, the theory does not concern itself with origins of life and DNA/RNA itself.

In that larger context, I'd say the medium of DNA itself does carry its own, possibly much stronger argument against a purely naturalistic explanation for life.

Which is an argument that requires you to step outside of science and into religion and theology which, along with it being an argument from incredulity on your part, renders the argument moot.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But as was said: you're trying to work out the odds going backwards from an event that has already happened.

And the information that we have, from various sources, show evolution to be a fact. So it has happened, regardless of whatever the odds you think were.

"If we look at the fossil record, we can see that evolution has certainly occurred, if we define evolution as merely change over time. But it does not tell us how that change occurred, and that is really the question"

David Raup, Paleontologist and curator at the Chicago Field Museum.

I agree with this, ( the quote is from memory, so it may not be verbatim)

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

"If we look at the fossil record, we can see that evolution has certainly occurred, if we define evolution as merely change over time. But it does not tell us how that change occurred, and that is really the question"

David Raup, Paleontologist and curator at the Chicago Field Museum.

I agree with this, ( the quote is from memory, so it may not be verbatim)

Quoting from someone else is not a good reply to a pertinent statment. Your entire argument hinges on it relying on both your religious beliefs, and also an argument from incredlity on your part.

Simply saying that it couldn't have been the biological process of evolution via natural selection that led to the life forms we see today is not showing your argument to be true. All it does is show that you don't agree with the theory of evolution and the science behind it. That's it.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Which is an argument that requires you to step outside of science and into religion and theology which, along with it being an argument from incredulity on your part, renders the argument moot.

Dawkins acknowledges the possibility that DNA was engineered by an alien civilization within our universe, and that this might overcome some of the problems with it's naturalistic origin. Is this an inherently religious/theological position?

i.e. invoking creative input, is not necessarily a religious or theistic position, again depending on what subjective definitions we might have for 'religious' or 'scientific'

I think we can do away with either label and just ask what is least improbable- whatever the implications on either world view.

'I don't care if it's science or not science, I care if it's true or not true': Stephen Meyer, philosopher of science

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Dawkins acknowledges the possibility that DNA was engineered by an alien civilization within our universe, and that this might overcome some of the problems with it's naturalistic origin. Is this an inherently religious/theological position?

i.e. invoking creative input, is not necessarily a religious or theistic position, again depending on what subjective definitions we might have for 'religious' or 'scientific'

I think we can do away with either label and just ask what is least improbable- whatever the implications on either world view.

'I don't care if it's science or not science, I care if it's true or not true': Stephen Meyer, philosopher of science

It's a very pseudoscientific answer for sure.

And if you want truth, here's truth: we have evidence that evolution occured, and we also have evidence that evolution occured through natural means, and we have no evidence that non-natural causes were behind it. Those are the scientific facts.