What has creation science brought us?

Epiphoskei said:

That's not "testing" in a scientific sense. This may seem like splitting hairs, however it is necesarry that we differentiate between historical analysis and the scientific method. The latter tends to settle questions. A process happens and you can do the same experiment over and over again to prove it. The former, historical analysis of evidence, often, if not always, leads to drastically different conclusions.

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Actually, we can't "prove" anything in science. We can only use the scientific method to disprove a set of alternative hypotheses, and what remains we accept as "true" (if only for the moment). That is the scientific method (or "strong inference"), and it applies equally well for testing hypotheses concerning the present and the past. They are both "'testing' in the scientific sense."

lemmings said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection

Better foods and medicine, without the agricultural techniques developed in the 20th century, there is no way that we could support 6.5 Billion people without causing massive damage to the environment like what we saw during the Great Depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation

Evolutionary computation is still in its infancy, but in it is going to be the only way to develop AI and it has already shown advances in the manufacturing industry.

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artificial selection =/= evolution science.

artificial selection has almost always been around in some form.

and how does having AI make the world a better place?

Mallon said:

Actually, we can't "prove" anything in science. We can only use the scientific method to disprove a set of alternative hypotheses, and what remains we accept as "true" (if only for the moment). That is the scientific method (or "strong inference"), and it applies equally well for testing hypotheses concerning the present and the past. They are both "'testing' in the scientific sense."

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All right, "prove" was a poor choice of words. I am well aware of how science establishes by negation. But the fact remains without repeatable experimentation in a controlled environment there is no scientific method, so you cannot apply that to the past.

Epiphoskei said:

All right, "prove" was a poor choice of words. I am well aware of how science establishes by negation. But the fact remains without repeatable experimentation in a controlled environment there is no scientific method, so you cannot apply that to the past.

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All other things being equal, you probably could. But of course, that's the problem with the past.

Epiphoskei said:

But the fact remains without repeatable experimentation in a controlled environment there is no scientific method, so you cannot apply that to the past.

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I agree that evolutionary science cannot necessarily repeat past events, but it can repeat tests of past events. It is those tests that need to be repeatable, not the events themselves.
Think about it: we throw people in jail every day on the basis of the above. No defense lawyer for a murderer would ever argue that, because the victim cannot be killed twice, there is no way to be certain that his client was the murderer. To convict the man, the events need not be repeatable -- it's the forensic test (often performed by independent labs) that requires repeatability.
Out of curiosity, Epiphoskei, do you think people should be convicted of crimes on the basis of forensic evidence? Do you think murderers who were convicted, say, on the basis of DNA evidence should be released because the murder cannot be repeated?

Epiphoskei said:

That's not evolution, that's just genetics. Prior to Neo-Darwinism, Evolution and Mendelian genetics were in opposition to each other.

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Or rather, they were thought to be in opposition to each other. For one thing, Mendelian genetics did not include any reference to mutation, so novelty was impossible in a purely Mendelian system.

Remember, Darwinism was essentially Lamarkian. The belief that microevolution leads to macroevolution is impossible within Mendelian genetics. In Lamarkism, so called microevolution adds new, aquired traits to a species.

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The problem with Lamarckism is that it relies on traits acquired by a living organism through its life experience. However, such traits are not heritable. Only changes affecting the germ cells which form the new organism can be transmitted to the next generation.

Once it was understood that new alleles would be produced by the mutations of genes, the marriage of genetics and evolution became possible.

Accordingly, Neo-Darwinism posits that new genes are added through mutation alone, and natual selection only removes the bad new genes.

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Not quite. Natural selection also removes bad old genes (when the newer version is better than the old).

We should not believe, then, that any form of Mendelian genetics were somehow brought to us courtasy of evolution, or that selection in a Mendelian system should be regarded as a form of evolution, even in a micro sense.

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Selection of genetic differences is evolution. Otherwise you would get the constancy of allelic distribution which Mendel measured.

Incientally, artificial selection, othewise known as animal husbandry, has been in existance for millenia without any help from evolution.

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Just because they didn't know anything about evolution doesn't mean they were not relying on it. Artificial selection would be impossible without evolution. The only difference between natural selection and artificial selection is who/what determines which alleles will survive.

this is a dumb argument....

neither creation science nor evolution science are applied sciences, they're both pure sciences.

itisdeliciouscake said:

this is a dumb argument....

neither creation science nor evolution science are applied sciences, they're both pure sciences.

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I gave two separate fields that are the byproduct of the theory of evolution.

If you want applications for Artificial Selection that does not involve domestication, here.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18400866

In short, they are using existing harmless retroviruses to insert genes into our DNA. Our bodies’ immune system rejects these viruses so we can’t use them yet. To get around this hurdle, we are using Natural Selection to create a new species which can evade our immune system.

If you really think that artificial intelligence is insignificant, why didn’t you just buy a typewriter and calculator? The Internet wouldn’t even exist if governments weren’t looking for an intelligent method of transmitting information from one part of the world to another.

gluadys said:

Selection of genetic differences is evolution. Otherwise you would get the constancy of allelic distribution which Mendel measured. Just because they didn't know anything about evolution doesn't mean they were not relying on it. Artificial selection would be impossible without evolution. The only difference between natural selection and artificial selection is who/what determines which alleles will survive.

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No, selection of genetic differences is not evolution because it cannot introduce new genetic material. You don't get the allelic distribution because you're artificially removing undesirable alleles and including desirable alleles, but all genetic material present in the selected offspring existed previously in the species. Improving the quality of the average member of a species by filtering out the bad is not the same thing as improving the species through real evolution, the addition of previously non-existant better genetic material.

Epiphoskei said:

No, selection of genetic differences is not evolution because it cannot introduce new genetic material.

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Since when is evolution defined as the introduction of new genetic material? I've never seen that definition used (except maybe by neocreationists).
Evolution is simply defined as a change in allele frequencies through time, whether the gene pool be growing, shrinking, or static (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0/evo_02). That's evolution at its most basic level. Simply because you don't like that definition doesn't mean you get to change it.

Since when can evolution as a concept be defined as anything genetic or allelic, since the very concepts did not exist at the time of Darwin? The fact that they can be integrated does not make them the most basic level of the theory or even a critical part - perhaps critical to solve problems and make the theory viable, but not a critical part of the thought.

This shouldn't be that difficult. If variation within species cannot "evolve" a species from something it was to something it wasn't, it can't be legitimatly called "evolution." Accordingly, just about whenever the word evolution is used it is in the context of macroevolution, and the only reason the word microevolution is even used for selection is because originally Lamarkian evolution married the two concepts into one process, positing that natural selection in and of itself can lead to macroevolution. This is not a minor problem, this is a fatal flaw. Selection and macroevolution must be considered divorced concepts, and when macroevolution is questioned, to support it with selection is bait-and-switch.

Epiphoskei said:

No, selection of genetic differences is not evolution because it cannot introduce new genetic material.

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You are working from an incorrect definition of evolution. It might be helpful to distinguish what evolution is from how it happens. Evolution is a change in the distribution of alleles in the gene pool. How is that change brought about? Through selection. The production of new alleles is not necessary to evolution. As long as there is more than one version (allele) of a gene in the population, you get evolution by changing the proportion of the population with that allele.

Does that mean we never get new alleles: ones that were never seen before? No. We do. Mutations generate new alleles.

But generating new alleles does not produce evolution. Generating new alleles only adds more variability to the population.

Once introduced, the new allele is on the same footing as all the others (and there can be anywhere from a handful to several thousands) already in the gene pool. You only get evolution when the alleles, new or old, are being selected in a way that changes the overall distribution of alleles in the gene pool.

You don't get the allelic distribution because you're artificially removing undesirable alleles and including desirable alleles, but all genetic material present in the selected offspring existed previously in the species.

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Yes you do. It doesn't matter how long the alleles have existed. They can all have been part of the species for hundreds of millions of years. But if something (or someone) selects one of those alleles over the others and makes it more or less common than it was, then you have evolution. Evolution does not happen without selection. It can happen without new alleles.

And it can happen with new alleles too.

Improving the quality of the average member of a species by filtering out the bad is not the same thing as improving the species through real evolution, the addition of previously non-existant better genetic material.

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Now you allude to a real difference between artificial breeding and natural selection. The breeder is looking to improve the breed. This means he is trying 1) to maintain a certain standard, and 2) set a higher standard. And that standard is set out in the terms agreed to by the breeder's association. In short, he has a clear goal in mind, and he defines "improvement" as getting closer to that goal.

Nature has no such standards, no goal. Nature is not trying to improve any species or even to maintain a species. All nature does is act in a non-random way on organisms when it comes to factors that determine whether they can a) survive to maturity, b) reproduce, c) produce viable and fertile offspring and d) produce more of such offspring than other members of the population.

Speaking of evolutionary changes as "improvements" is a rather human value judgment introduced into a process that doesn't really have improvement in mind, for it has no standards, no ideal, that it is trying to achieve.

Epiphoskei said:

Since when can evolution as a concept be defined as anything genetic or allelic, since the very concepts did not exist at the time of Darwin?

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Exactly the point I was just making. Darwin did not need to know anything about genes to talk about selection. Since he did not have the concept of genes to work with, he used the concept of phenotypic variation.

Genes were brought into it when (thanks to the work of Mendel) it was realized that variations in phenotype are based in variations in the genotype. So even though he did not have the concept of genes to work with, Darwin did unwittingly use genetics as part of his theory of evolution. For the variations he considered as subject to natural selection are the visible expression of genetic differences.

The fact that they can be integrated does not make them the most basic level of the theory or even a critical part - perhaps critical to solve problems and make the theory viable, but not a critical part of the thought.

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Right. Selection, not variation per se, is still the critical process in evolution.

This shouldn't be that difficult. If variation within species cannot "evolve" a species from something it was to something it wasn't, it can't be legitimatly called "evolution."

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Exactly what do you mean by "evolve a species from something it was to something it wasn't"? Creationists generally allow for variation/evolution within a "kind" i.e they agree that wolves, coyotes, domestic and wild dogs all have a common ancestor (and one might include foxes and their kin as well).

Since evolution is a matter of descent with modification, this can also describe macro-evolution and common descent. For there is no process of evolution that would take a new species out of the same "kind" as its ancestor. (Depends on how one defines "kind" of course). But the reason we have a phylogeny (a universal family tree) is that we can work out which species belong to which lineages. And we don't find them jumping from one branch ("kind") of the tree to a different one. All we find is branches producing more and more sub-branches just the way a creationist views an original canid ancestor producing the many canine species we know today.

It is exactly the same process, just on a larger scale.

Selection and macroevolution must be considered divorced concepts, and when macroevolution is questioned, to support it with selection is bait-and-switch.

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Maybe "separate" rather that "divorced". It is not as if they had nothing to do with each other. But macro-evolution applies not only to selection, but to selection + speciation. Evolution applies both to selection within a species (changing the distribution of alleles) and to the way selection functions to divide populations into species and generate divergence between them.

If you want to define words the way you want to define them, nothing's stopping you, but you cannot simply claim and conflate seperate sciences into evolution and then point to them when the worth of evolutionary theory is questioned if the sciences in question exist independantly. Simply because evolutionary theory touches upon or uses many aspects of biology does not mean that those aspects or the study thereof would be in any way lessened if macroevolution were simply ignored. That was the question. What has evolutionary theory brought us? It is remarkably anachronistic to claim selective breeding as a benefit of evolutionary theory which we would not have without evolutionary theory when it predates the theory by seven thousand years.

Epiphoskei said:

If you want to define words the way you want to define them, nothing's stopping you,

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When working with science it is important to define terms as scientists define them. Then we all know we are saying the same thing. The scientific definition of evolution is a change in the distribution of alleles in a gene pool transcending generations. So that is not me defining words the way I want to. That is the standard textbook definition of evolution that scientists work with.

Simply because evolutionary theory touches upon or uses many aspects of biology does not mean that those aspects or the study thereof would be in any way lessened if macroevolution were simply ignored.

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Quite right. You can study a lot of biology and do a lot of biological research without needing to consider evolution. Yet evolution will explain almost everything a biologist works with, whether she uses it daily or not.

That was the question. What has evolutionary theory brought us?

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Actually the question in the OP is "what has creation science brought us?"

It is remarkably anachronistic to claim selective breeding as a benefit of evolutionary theory which we would not have without evolutionary theory when it predates the theory by seven thousand years.

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I didn't say they benefited from the theory--though breeders today do. They can be more effective when they apply evolutionary principles.

I said they unwittingly made use of evolution: not the theory, the actual process of evolutionary change in organisms. Artificial breeding is only possible because evolution happens. It is a way of controlling evolution in the direction the breeder wants it to go.

The breeder doesn't need to know that to be successful. But when a breeder selects for certain characteristics, he is (whether he knows it or not) selecting for certain genes, and so changing the distribution of alleles in the population he is working with.

gluadys said:

When working with science it is important to define terms as scientists define them. Then we all know we are saying the same thing. The scientific definition of evolution is a change in the distribution of alleles in a gene pool transcending generations. So that is not me defining words the way I want to. That is the standard textbook definition of evolution that scientists work with.

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That's sophistry on the part of the evolutionist. Usage defines terms, not declarations of definition. If indeed this is the definition then one must accept that every human is a evolutionist and that six day literal creationsist are also evolutionists and that evolution does not contradict six day literal creationism. If not, then clearly the definition you've given is not the definition of evolution.

In Evolution's early days, a famous example was given about the moth population in England changing its color due to environmental factors. This was incorrectly given as an example of the same kind of evolution, merely on a smaller scale, as the kind of evolution that changes fish into reptiles into birds. We now know that the process of selection cannot in and of itself ever lead to macroevolution. Can you not see, therefore, that someone like myself looking back at all this might view the notion that selection should still be considered evolution as a dishonest attempt to cover up the fact that classical evolution is fundimentally bunk?

gluadys said:

Actually the question in the OP is "what has creation science brought us?"

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It was turned on it's head and you went along with it.

Epiphoskei said:

That's sophistry on the part of the evolutionist. Usage defines terms, not declarations of definition. If indeed this is the definition then one must accept that every human is a evolutionist and that six day literal creationsist are also evolutionists and that evolution does not contradict six day literal creationism. If not, then clearly the definition you've given is not the definition of evolution.

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And you've made a very good point!

The very first creationists, notably Louis Agassiz, believed in fixity of species - that species simply did not change at all.

Then, forced by the evidence, creationists accepted microevolution - that species change but new species don't diverge from old ones.

Then, forced by more evidence, creationists accepted limited macroevolution - that many related species descended from one parent species, the famed creationist "kind" or "baramin".

And now, forced by even more evidence, Intelligent Design theorists have accepted macroevolution as an explanation for just about all life - except of course for incredulously, sorry, irreducibly complex systems which are itty-bitty parts of said life.

You're quite right. Modern "creationists" are really evolutionists in ways that would have appalled their forebears.

Epiphoskei said:

In Evolution's early days, a famous example was given about the moth population in England changing its color due to environmental factors. This was incorrectly given as an example of the same kind of evolution, merely on a smaller scale, as the kind of evolution that changes fish into reptiles into birds. We now know that the process of selection cannot in and of itself ever lead to macroevolution. Can you not see, therefore, that someone like myself looking back at all this might view the notion that selection should still be considered evolution as a dishonest attempt to cover up the fact that classical evolution is fundimentally bunk?

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Firstly, moths never changed their colors - rather, the color distribution changed from generation to generation of moth. Individuals don't evolve, populations do.

Secondly, definitions change with time in ways their original promulgators could never have guessed. Entropy is a favorite example of mine. Used to be defined as something along the lines of heat transferred divided by environmental temperature. Then it was defined as the number of accessible microstates that gave a total macrostate, and now everybody knows entropy as the thing that accumulates if you don't tell your children to clean up their room. What a massive shift of definitions! Does that mean that thermodynamics before Boltzmann was a massive scandal of a failure that needed to be covered up by changing what words mean?

Hardly. We just happened to learn new things.

Now I'm no biologist so the definition of evolution doesn't make sense to me sometimes. But here's an analogy that just came to me that might be useful to you.

What comes to mind when I say "driving"? You think of getting behind a steering wheel, turning a key, holding the wheel, knowing how to press the pedal (the *right* pedal, if you're driving a real [manual] car ), obeying the road signs, parking, swearing at traffic lights. (Hopefully the last one doesn't apply.)

Do you think about pumping petrol? When somebody asks me if I can drive, knowing how to pump petrol doesn't normally come to mind. My driving instructor certainly didn't teach me how to pump petrol. In Australia you need to do a hundred hours of driving on your P license to convert it to a full license; the law says nothing about how many times you have to practice refueling your car. And yet, of course, you can't get very far without knowing how to fill your tank.

Evolution is the process (or set of processes) by which the allele distribution of a population changes. Is mutation a part of it? I guess not. Subject any population to selection and, whether or not new alleles are introduced, its allele distribution will change. Not in very impressive or interesting ways, of course, but it will still "evolve", just as I can quite convincingly simulate driving motions even on a car with an empty tank without getting anywhere.

Is it a semantic mess? A little. Does evolution work? You bet.

Epiphoskei said:

Usage defines terms, not declarations of definition.

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And in scientific usage, evolution is a change in the distribution of alleles in a population.

If indeed this is the definition then one must accept that every human is a evolutionist and that six day literal creationsist are also evolutionists and that evolution does not contradict six day literal creationism. If not, then clearly the definition you've given is not the definition of evolution.

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Yes, today, most creationists are evolutionists. See shernren's reply.

In Evolution's early days, a famous example was given about the moth population in England changing its color due to environmental factors. This was incorrectly given as an example of the same kind of evolution, merely on a smaller scale, as the kind of evolution that changes fish into reptiles into birds.

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It was not incorrect. That is an excellent example of how natural selection results in a change in the distribution of alleles in a population. And exactly the same process accounts for all evolution.

What you are doing is identifying the process (changing the distribution of alleles in the population) with an outcome (common descent). You want to distinguish between the process (changing the distribution of alleles) which you accept and the outcome (common descent) which you do not accept.

Does "evolution" refer to both? Yes, and I understand that this can be confusing. But it doesn't help to say that the process of evolution (changing the distribution of alleles) is not evolution.

We now know that the process of selection cannot in and of itself ever lead to macroevolution.

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Here it is helpful to distinguish two phases of evolution. In one: (phyletic or anagenic evolution) the same population changes over time, change after change after change until it is no longer useful to describe the ancestor and the descendant as the same species. We have examples of this in which all the various intermediate stages still exist. We call them "ring species" and in such species, each population readily mates with its nearest neighbours, but the populations at the two ends of the ring are still different species and do not hybridize. One way to think of phyletic evolution is that it is a ring species through the dimension of time instead of geography.

In the second (cladistic evolution) a single population splits into separate branches. (a "clade" is a branch). At first the separate populations may not be different species, just two different groups of the same species. But since they are separate--and this is most important--they will not change the distribution of their alleles in the same way. Furthermore, if a mutation occurs in one group, it will not be shared with the other group. The lack of sharing (gene flow) between the groups means they will diverge in their characteristics, become more and more different from each other. Eventually they will be different species. This is true speciation.

Common descent depends mostly on cladistic speciation. This is the sort of speciation that creationists are thinking of when they speak of a single feline kind diverging into groups like lions, tigers, jaguars, and pussycats.

But just as a single feline kind can become so many types of cat, so a single ancestral mammalian carnivore kind can diverge into felids (cat-kinds), canids (dog-kinds) and ursids (bear-kinds). In fact we have fossils of ancient species that are possible ancestors of both bears and cats.

I expect creationists have no difficulty understanding that all different sorts of cattle today come from one ancestor; same with sheep and goats. You might even consider that all these animals had a single common ancestor. Then there are the many varieties of deer, elk, antelope, moose, etc. All from one common ancestor.

Can we also say that all the cattle-kind and all the deer-kind came from the same common ancestor? Yes, we have the fossils that show their common heritage. And we also know that hippopotami are part of the same overall group, and so are all the whale-dolphin-porpoise species. If you can accept that--and you should for it is well-established, why not that all mammals have a common ancestor?

It is important to realize that universal common ancestry is not a pre-supposition of evolution. The picture of a universal family-tree was built up by following the evidence, by asking what species belong together. (You will note that creationists have to pose the same question to decide which species all belong in the same baramin.) We all agree that some groups of species have a common ancestor. And just as we can ask of our grandparents--who were your parents--and do research into our family tree asking--and who were the parents of my great-grandparents, and who were their parents, and theirs before them, and so on---so we can ask of any species, which precursor was your ancestor? are there other species today with the same ancestor? And what was the pre-cursor of your common ancestor? Do any species today go back to that more distant ancestor? And what about that ancestor's ancestor? And so on...

And the evidence has accumulated to the extent that we are now confident in saying that all life has its roots in some ancestral unicellular species or group of species--probably some type of archaea.

Every "kind" every "baramin" has an ancestral kind which it shares with other "kinds" in a family-tree arrangement. Until you get a single phylogeny in which the only "kind" is life itself.

And to get back to the main point: this is not so much evolution as the outcome of evolution. Common descent is what you get when species evolve over a long, long time. Especially when they start separating into different population groups that necessarily diverge from one another. Throughout this whole history, the process of evolution--changing the distribution of alleles in a population--remains the same, just as in the moths.

Can you not see, therefore, that someone like myself looking back at all this might view the notion that selection should still be considered evolution as a dishonest attempt to cover up the fact that classical evolution is fundimentally bunk?

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Sure, if you have been fed a diet of "evolution is bunk" and ridiculous scenarios (like whales evolving from cows instead of whales and cows having a common ancestor). But take the challenge to learn what evolution really is and what the evidence really is, and you may find yourself changing your mind.

Trying to learn about evolution from creationist sources is like trying to learn about Christianity from Richard Dawkins. You will get a seriously distorted image.