MarkT said:
It all depends on your interpretation. The evidence really doesn't prove anything.
I never cease to be amazed at how many professing Christians gladly embrace post-modernism and Eastern religious concepts. Seriously. I continue to bang my jaw on my keyboard when I see things like "You interpret those mountains as being 70,000,000 years old, I interpret them as being 4,000." It's as if the word
reality only desribes a TV genre for them...
MarkT said:
Speciation, for example, can be observed but it doesn't prove anything.
Well it certainly would provide evidence that speciation occurs wouldn't you say? And I must say, it's quite refreshing to see this admission.
MarkT said:
We can see fish are still fish and birds are still birds, even though new species are continually being created.
Hold on a second. If you're discussing speciation, why did you start with Classes, and then discuss species? Why didn't you say "an albacore tuna is still an albacore tuna and a red-tailed hawk is still a red tailed hawk?" We haven't seen a new Class rise since birds and mammals during the Jurassic/Cretaceous time frame.
MarkT said:
And it's not likely genetic mutations can lead to new characters on a preexisting organism. We seem to be pretty well defined by nature and the genetic sequence to be what we are. And that applies to all living things.
What do you mean by "characters?" Do you mean "characteristics?" If so, you're half-right. Nature's a lot better at using certain parts to make different parts than it is in innovating novel parts. If you look at all the tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) they all have their four limbs, but just have adapted them in different ways. If you want to get right down to it, every organizism from worms on up is basically a food tube with different accutrements.
MarkT said:
Let's say we have most of the genes for wings. That would be like saying we're 98% similar to birds, for example.
I realize you're just using this for illustrative purposes, but by bouncing all over the place with classifications it really weakens any point you're trying to make. Since you're referring to humans, how about sticking with mammals and referencing bats to make you point wings.
And no, the genome is far to large for something (say an atavistic ability to grow enormously long fingers and membranes of skin between our sides and our fingertips {wasn't Bat Boy in the Weekly World News?} like the presence of wing making DNA to make us 98% similar. That would probably only account for a few percentage points of similarity in addition to all the other shared characteristics of the two compared taxa.
MarkT said:
All we're missing, theoretically, is a few genes. But to make even one and make it fit, would affect a change in the entire sequence. We wouldn't be human anymore.
Correct. Humans (and I'm sticking with bats here) don't fly, are not nocturnal, have different teeth, etc. etc. from bats. But in order for there to be a real Bat Boy, the change in DNA would need to be much more than just a few genes. We'd need to be much smaller, our bones would need to be much lighter, our posture would need to change radically, we'd need those giant fingers and we'd need the flap of skin from basically our ankle to grow large enough for us to take flight. It would take many gene changes to create a Bat Boy and we would have stopped being human long before the final result.
MarkT said:
Wings require the right size body for some reason. Science doesn't explain why and evolution or random changes would not predict it.
Really? Ever hear of the Moa, Elephant Bird, Cassowary, Emu or Ostrich? Wings might be a requirement for heavier than air flight, but just because an animal has wings, it doesn't mean evolution will select for them to fly, nor does it place limitations on body size - unless the species is meant to fly.
MarkT said:
But the idea that we are descended from a common ancestor is what the theory predicts. Logically it would be impossible given the limited nature of mutational changes that an organism can survive without dying.
Here's that post-modernism again. Trying to apply logic to a hard science. But if you want to take that road, logically we would see new adaptations in species which developed out of previous adaptations. And that's exactly what we see in the fossil record which is verified by looking at DNA. Lobe finned fish gave rise to the tetrapod Classes, and each of them have characteristics based on that 4 limbed body scheme - even those like snakes and whales which don't seem to at first glance.
MarkT said:
You could still have evolution and observe speciation but that wouldn't prove everything is related by descent to a common ancestor.
Yes, that's why we
look at things like phylogenies, atavisms, biogeography, endogenous retrovial insertions and DNA evidence to demonstrate that common descent has occured.