Evolution is only a theory!

[Anthony]

The Evolution Debate has come to what might be it's final resting point. Which is Creation via Mututation, creation from a series and the accumulation of mistakes over time.

 

[Chris H]

Anthony, (not to be mean in the least)...this brings up three questions...
1. What do you really know about the types of mutations and how they occur??

2. How do the different types of Mutations fit into evolutionary theory?

3. What is wrong with the current models of genetic change via natural slection?

Pick any one and answer it and we'll continue the discussion.

Chris

 

[Anthony]

Chris

The discussion and debate of Evolution, is now well beyond the scope of the average person. Most of these debates have become debating by proxy. People simply throw other people's thoughts, writings, conclusions, and positions at one another. This topic is well beyond anyone who is not a micro-biologist. Accordingly I no longer chose to debate a subject which I am not knowledgeable about, even though I have read many books on the subject. I feel simply parroting what I have read is not enough to debate the subject. These debates have become robotic and predictable with no end.

 

[Chris H]

Anthony, thank you for your intellectually honest reply. I would like to see a real debate carried on at the scientific/biological level. However, once people seem to get their hands on the actual evidence, they become evolutionists and no real debate occurs.

I enjoy the debates at Infidels, however I am a thiest and not also not a trained scientist so I really don't get that involved there. Several friends who are scientists do believe in Macroevolution and Can provide oodles of evidence and exaples to support it.

In terms of debating by proxy, a whole lot of the time your right. People do just parrot others views. My son does like to collect fossils, however. What he and several other friends who are into amatuer geology have found does seem to support the geological collumn, old earth, and common descent. So I guess you could say that all of my firsthand expereince has convinced me more that evolution is a pretty good model of nature.

Chris

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Anthony Also this debate is no longer one of simple thought debating

It's not a "debate" at all. Debate implies two valid positions. The data refuted creationism over 150 years ago.  Creationism is a falsified theory and not valid.  What we have today is simply some people, for misguided religious motives, who refuse to accept that God created by evolution instead of creationism.

Evolution is one of those words used which has many meanings. Micro-Evolution, which is the evolution of animals by natural selection has been known long before Darwin, and is accepted by both evolutionists and creationist.

The real debate over evolution is Macro-Evolution, which is the evolution of cell-to-man, lizard-to-bird, ape-to-man evolution. This is Evolution by Mutation or evolution by mistake. This is where the real debate lies.

I submit that macroevolution is where creationists have tried to hide. If you read Owen, Sedgwick, and others who advocated the theory of special creation, you see that species were unchanged and unchangeable.  Species were the same now as when they were created.  Microevolution refutes this in such a manner that even creationists can't deny it.  So they took a word from evolutionary biology -- macroevolution -- and attached their own definition to it so they can try to avoid having the theory falsified.

In reality, "macroevolution" is speciation.  Species are the only biological reality. All the "higher taxa" are simply groups of species. So, once you get a new species, the "debate" is over. And there are numerous instances of observed speciation, both in the lab and in the wild.  Once you get speciation, then the reptile to bird, ape to human, and any other transformation is simply multiple speciation events spread through time.  The issue then is to discover the exact path of multiple speciation events, not whether they happened.

Nor is there an "evolution by mutation" or "evolution by mistake". It's evolution by natural selection, and selection is not a mistake.  It is a determined choice.  Once again it seems creationists -- this time Anthony -- is playing with the definitions.

, the subject matter is much more technical.

Perhaps, but the subject matter is accessible to anyone who actually wants to go look at the data. 

So in these debates there is never a real conclusion,

Because creationists have made the terribly tragic logical mistake of tying the how of creation to the who and why. For creationists, I submit that the real issue is not evolution, but the very existence of their deity.  Emotionally, they can't accept the data because they mistakenly think that evolution contradicts Christianity. One only has to look at eXtreme's posts to see this clearly.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Anthony
The Evolution Debate has come to what might be it's final resting point. Which is Creation via Mututation, creation from a series and the accumulation of mistakes over time.

Let's get back to Darwin's original description of natural selection:

"If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized.  This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.]

Now, no one doubts that individuals vary.  You only have to go out on the street of any city and look at people to see this.  And humans have much less genetic diversity than nearly any other species.

Also, the mutation rate is a little over 1 per genome.  That means you and I are "mutants".  While mutations are, in some general sense, a "mistake" in copying DNA, that does not mean they are a "mistake" in some metaphysical fashion that you are saying. Mutations are the variations among individuals. 

Put another way, mutations/variations are the possible designs to solve design problems posed by the environment.  As such, some of these variations are not "mistakes" at all -- instead they are very good designs.  Because there are more individuals than the environment can support, there is a competition among these design solutions and only the best of the possible design solutions will survive the competition.

The competition is certainly not a "mistake". Any more than the NFL season and elimination tournament at the end of it is a "mistake" in finding the best of this year's pro football teams. 

What we have is creation by Darwinian (natural) selection. Darwinian selection is an algorithm to get design, and therefore not a "mistake". In fact, as far as I can tell, Darwinian selection is the only way to get design. Even a deity "designing" organisms is going to throw up several variations in it's mind and then mentally select those variations it wants.  Darwinian selection.

Our exact physical form may not have been intended, but turning Darwinian selection loose guarantees a deity that some species capable of communicating with it is going to evolve.

 

[Anthony]

Evolution by Natural Selection is Micro-Evolution, and was known long before Darwin. Darwin's real contribution was the concept of Macro-Evolution, single cell to man evolution. This requires lots and lots of mutations. Natural selection just needs to select from the already avialable gene pool ( in simple terms ).

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Anthony
Evolution by Natural Selection is Micro-Evolution, and was known long before Darwin. Darwin's real contribution was the concept of Macro-Evolution, single cell to man evolution. This requires lots and lots of mutations. Natural selection just needs to select from the already avialable gene pool ( in simple terms ).

Although a few people had glimpses of natural selection before, Darwin was the one who realized 1) that NS accounts for the designs in biological organisms and 2) the accumulation of changes by NS would transform one species into another.

As I said, the mutation rate is about 1 per genome, so you have the lots and lots.  And, of course, once you have a mutation, then it is in the already available gene pool, isn't it? After all, both you and I have a mutation and we're in the gene pool, aren't we?

Remember, Anthony, that natural selection is a two-step process.  The first step is the variations, among which are mutations. The second step is selection.

And there are studies in both the lab and the wild showing that NS will transform one population into a new species with new abilities. 

 

 

[lucaspa]

Macroevolution -- speciation -- results from the same processes as microevolution.  In the standard method of cladogenesis -- splitting one species into 2 -- a small population becomes separated from the main one.  They face a different environment, with different design problems, than the original population. Then NS selects among the "mutations" present in the isolated population (mutations that were there but neutral before and new ones that appear) for designs for the new environment.  And after a while the isolated population is different from the original.

And that is macroevolution.  Keep accumulating differences through dozens of speciation events and you go from ape to human.  Have hundreds of speciation events and you have reptile to bird. And millions of speciation events and you go from single-celled to horse.

 

[ocean]

Microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing. Macroevolution is just to a greater degree.