Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Quote:

farmerman wrote:

If youre a cReationist you believe that every island on the planet had its own set of animals and plants created for that island.

Sez?

Why must I believe that?

How 'bout if it so happens that many species have attempted to live in a given area and the ones we see there now are the ones who've managed to survive and thrive?

I don't know anyone who believes the odd type of creation that you set forth, FM. (Doesn't mean there isn't. . But your contention that I believe it, or must believe it to be a creationist, is a little strange. Ok more than a little. )

As a CReationist you cant play dodge ball, its intellectually dishonest. Why are you afraid to come out ?. You must "believe" in something because surely any of the mass of evidence doesnt help you out. I assume Then, that your belief as a Creationist must then force you to rely on the fact that all similar species of an organism had been created at once at one place and then all the others of that group simply died out except for the one remaining on that island or continent?
Now you are stepping off the dock . Lets look at one easily mapped group of birds, the Rattites (this is the group that contains emus,tinamous, ostriches,rheas."elephant birds" cassowaries, Moas,kiwis, etc). All these quite different, but related, flightless with raftlike sterna, birds are geologically distributed and specifically adapted to aSouthern island or continent with no fossil evidence of the others except for a general "flightless model archetype" , now is that your contention?That they were all created together and then some were rafted off and others stayed put?(leaving no trail of their passing on the "mother land"? Are we back to your absence of evidence bumper sticker?.

The science of allometry is the study of organs and morphological features in relationship to the whole organism. To see the many body plans of rattites as they populate each island and believe that they were Created in one place and then rafted away from each other would mean(condsidering geophysical evidence alone) that "Post Flood continental drift" would be moving at speeds of up to 4.5 miles per year for new Zealand separating from South America, Australia, Madagascar and Africa. (Surfs really up in your world. And Im sure somebody woulda noticed their island had moved 45 miles in 10 years).

Also, getting back to allometry, kiwis and Moas , from biogeographic positioning and shared features, these two look more likely to have evolved from a single common ancestor. The kiwi evolved smaller and the Moa evolved to a big "bird".(The reason for the allometric reference is because while both seem to share taxanomic "Order" features, the kiwi seems to demonstrate that it retained relict "half evolved" features like the production of an egg that is over 25% of its body volume. In other words, a kiwi evolved from a much bigger bird and has not evolved a small egg while it has evolved a small frame and very small respiratory system.(sort of like a cheetah whose respiratory system is not fully evolved for it being a high speed runner because its mitochondria are relatively tiny. It can run blazingly fast but only for about 10 or 15 seconds, whereas its prey ,with huge mitochondria, can run all day at slightly lower speeds)

All the rattites share "superorder features , so they are most simply described by macroevolution adapting to different environments as the entire southern island continents split apart (all the ancestral "killerbird" ratites first popped up in the days pre split up of Gondwana. (At least thats what the best fossil evidence shows. aLL THESE birds appear in the Cenozoic along with a more generalized common ancestor.

To make matters worse, each of the ratites has separate species that are endemic and unique to only that island group (eg like there are about 4 kiwi species that only appear on separate areas of the New Zealand archipelago, and the Moa species are extinct entirely .Im not sure of how your mechanism of Creation really works, so if you could explain it to this ole farmer, hed be much obliged.

0 Replies

neologist said

Quote:

Do you think it possible that one or another variation of homo sapiens will develop a trait which would define a new species?

There is nothing in natural selection that precludes it. If a population of humans remains isolated for , say 200 generations or so, its possible that a new species can arise from accumulated cumulative changes.
There were two species of Homo sapiens(that we know of), now there is but one.
What prevents speciation is the cosmo nature of humans, we are feely interbreeding and promote dissemination of genetic variability without any sexual isolation. We have culturslly based isolation mechanisms that can transfer significant genetic mutations. These are the feedstock of evolution. In my area, the AMish population is about 100000 strong , with a bigger population in Ohio. The cultural isolation of this sect has produced a number of endemic congenital illnesses and conditions that relate to the issue of "inbreeding" or reductive population isolation. The original Amish sock in the US was only 35 distinct family lines. Now there has been some conversion into the sect, providing some new genetic diversity, but not so much that it overcomes the reinforcement of existing lethal or sublethal traits.

We (all of our individual populations) derive from a single stock that was severely reduced in numbers by natural catastrophies , the most recent catastrophy was about 71000 years ago. The population of humans was reduced to only about 5 or 10000 people. The Homo sapiens idaltu line thereafter became extinct in its isolate area of the Afar triangle. These humans, called'the old ones" in Afar had a few phenotypic mods that made them morphologically unique. So the point is that there is nothing in natural selection or "cultural" selection that prevents further speciation from happening.Raups "rules for becoming extinct" include the admonition that you should never let your genus get down to only one species because you become so adapted to your limited environment that you are held captive to it. Say we have another Ice Age next week. How many people will survive? maybe some Sherpas or some Innuit. How long? even the Innuit were blocked from passage in the Ice choked North during the beginning of the last interstadial Wurm.

0 Replies

farmerman wrote:

[ As a CReationist you cant play dodge ball, its intellectually dishonest. Why are you afraid to come out ?. You must "believe" in something because surely any of the mass of evidence doesnt help you out. I assume Then, that your belief as a Creationist must then force you to rely on the fact that all similar species of an organism had been created at once at one place and then all the others of that group simply died out except for the one remaining on that island or continent?

Hi Farmerman,

Hope you are doing well.

If you recall our previous discussions on this, you know that you admitted that the term (and thus the classification) 'species' is purely arbitrary.

It is there because someone drew an arbitrary line and said 'this is X species, and THAT ain't '

So your assumption that I am 'forced' to believe something about 'the creation of species' is a convenient strawman (a term I don't use often, but it fits here).

Therefore, I don't believe that each 'species' HAD to be (fill in the blank).

Also as we have discussed, many separate 'species' can and do interbreed .

Remember our discussion with timber about whether polars can or do interbreed with other 'species' of bears in the wild? Should I pull up the picture again?

So, it isn't me who's playing dodgeball, farmerman.

You dodged a direct answer to my challenge regarding K-Ar dating for several days. Don't preach to me about dodging. Laughing

0 Replies

neologist wrote:

I'm following you here, RL. But, so far the differences in human species would, I believe, be defined as 'micro evolution'.

There aren't different homo species, and in particular, the "race" card which "real life" is attempting to play is a canard. Not only are different "races" able to consistently, successfully interbreed to produce fertile offspring, but the superficial traits which distinguish them (hair, skin and eye color) are derived from biological material which is present in all "races"--the differences in skin and eye color arise from adaptation which relies upon biological material which is present in all "races." Take a large number of "white folks," and put them in southern Africa for a few thousand years, and you will have a population of dark-skinned people. Take a population of "black folks" and put them in Norway for a few thousand years, and you will have a population of light-skinned people. That is because the biological material (melanin and melanocytes) which respond adaptively are present in all humans. The Lemba of southern Africa are evidence of this--they may well, of course, have gotten their dark skins as a result of intermarriage, but there is no evidence of any recessive trait for "white" skin among them, even though the genetic evidence is that they are descended from Jews, because the biological material, the melanin and the melanocytes, responded adaptively to the environment.

There was a good deal of racist horseshit put forward in the 19th century, which many racists still repeat, which attempt to suggest that there are significant morphological differences between the alleged races. However, there are white an black people with "no butts," just as is so common in east Asian populations. There are also east Asians and white boys and girls with "butts" that are prominently protuberant, just as has been alleged to be the case with black Africans. Adaptive mechanism can kick in whenever they are of benefit to assure reproductive success, but they also reside in all humans, and can appear in all human populations. FM has pointed out that small, squat people do better in cold climates, and tall, lanky people do better in hot climates. Switch populations as described above, and those among the white populations who are tall and lanky will eventually become predominant because their breeding opportunity will be enhanced; and those among the black populations who are small and stocky will eventually predominate because their breeding opportunities will be enhanced.

All of that, however, can only be true with pre-technological human beings, because technological sophistication assures that tall, lanky people in cold climates will have just as good a breeding opportunity as small, stocky people, and that small and stocky people will have the same opportunity to reproduce in a hot climate. The reason i said that i thought it unlikely that humans will "evolve" further is that our technological sophistication allows us to overcome environmental factors which once favored one morphological array over another, and because literacy and books allows us to overcome the limitations of personal memory. It is not a certainty, of course, but it is highly likely that we've moved our gene pool to a lovely gymnasium separate from the climate which still has a profound impact on the gene pools of other critters.

0 Replies

By the way, there are, of course, already populations (and the evidence is that there long have been) of short, stocky "black" people, and tall, lanky "white" people. In fact, the evidence is that for tens of thousands of years, homo sapiens sapiens has been sufficiently technologically sophisticated to overcome the environmental factors which impose morphological "types" on people. Humans were able to find and exploit and enhance natural shelter such as shelter bluffs and caves; and to create their own shelters (in the Ukrainian steppes, archaeologists have found the remains of lodges like the "long houses" of North American Indians with which we are familiar in our history, which date to more than 20,000 years ago, and which allowed them to shelter from harsh winters).

There is also abundant archaeological evidence that humans have long made garments from animal hides. Many which have been found have been soft and supple, and highly decorated, which is strong inferential evidence that humans were so good at making garments, and all of the other skills necessary for survival, that they had the time and leisure to spend on decorating their garments with beads made of bone, animal quills and bird's feathers. From that, it is completely reasonable to infer that people have long been on the path which leads them away from the harsh imperatives of environment which cause other species to evolve rapidly--or die.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

neologist wrote:
I'm following you here, RL. But, so far the differences in human species would, I believe, be defined as 'micro evolution'.

There aren't different homo species, and in particular, the "race" card which "real life" is attempting to play is a canard. Not only are different "races" able to consistently, successfully interbreed to produce fertile offspring, but the superficial traits which distinguish them (hair, skin and eye color) are derived from biological material which is present in all "races"--the differences in skin and eye color arise from adaptation which relies upon biological material which is present in all "races." Take a large number of "white folks," and put them in southern Africa for a few thousand years, and you will have a population of dark-skinned people. Take a population of "black folks" and put them in Norway for a few thousand years, and you will have a population of light-skinned people. That is because the biological material (melanin and melanocytes) which respond adaptively are present in all humans. The Lemba of southern Africa are evidence of this--they may well, of course, have gotten their dark skins as a result of intermarriage, but there is no evidence of any recessive trait for "white" skin among them, even though the genetic evidence is that they are descended from Jews, because the biological material, the melanin and the melanocytes, responded adaptively to the environment.

There was a good deal of racist horseshit put forward in the 19th century, which many racists still repeat, which attempt to suggest that there are significant morphological differences between the alleged races. However, there are white an black people with "no butts," just as is so common in east Asian populations. There are also east Asians and white boys and girls with "butts" that are prominently protuberant, just as has been alleged to be the case with black Africans. Adaptive mechanism can kick in whenever they are of benefit to assure reproductive success, but they also reside in all humans, and can appear in all human populations. FM has pointed out that small, squat people do better in cold climates, and tall, lanky people do better in hot climates. Switch populations as described above, and those among the white populations who are tall and lanky will eventually become predominant because their breeding opportunity will be enhanced; and those among the black populations who are small and stocky will eventually predominate because their breeding opportunities will be enhanced.

All of that, however, can only be true with pre-technological human beings, because technological sophistication assures that tall, lanky people in cold climates will have just as good a breeding opportunity as small, stocky people, and that small and stocky people will have the same opportunity to reproduce in a hot climate. The reason i said that i thought it unlikely that humans will "evolve" further is that our technological sophistication allows us to overcome environmental factors which once favored one morphological array over another, and because literacy and books allows us to overcome the limitations of personal memory. It is not a certainty, of course, but it is highly likely that we've moved our gene pool to a lovely gymnasium separate from the climate which still has a profound impact on the gene pools of other critters.

Sorry, I should have said the varieties in the human species

0 Replies

neologist wrote:

Sorry, I should have said the varieties in the human species

Well, i have, at least inferentially, answered that, too. The "varieties" derive from biological material which is present in all humans. Tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, fat ones, black ones, white ones, yellow ones, red ones, silly ones--they all are products of adaptation derived from evolutionary factors present in all humans before they differentiated.

0 Replies

Case in point: Some years ago, I went on safari to Africa for almost three weeks, and came back with a "tan." When I went into the family room where grandma was sitting, I said "hello, grandma." She said "who are you?" She didn't recognize me, because I was so dark. The tan disappears after a couple of months at home.

0 Replies

cicerone imposter wrote:

Case in point: Some years ago, I went on safari to Africa for almost three weeks, and came back with a "tan." When I went into the family room where grandma was sitting, I said "hello, grandma." She said "who are you?" She didn't recognize me, because I was so dark. The tan disappears after a couple of months at home.

But it wasn't because you had evolved.

And you wouldn't be able to pass your tan to your offspring.

0 Replies

rl

Quote:

you know that you admitted that the term (and thus the classification) 'species' is purely arbitrary.

You are full of crap. My statement has always been that the reproductive isolation defines species separation. of like varieties

Quote:

It is there because someone drew an arbitrary line and said 'this is X species, and THAT ain't '

I dont know from what pseudo science text you get this from but its all wrong. Species are reproductive isolates .The rfact that occasional members of a species will mate with another similar species is a statistical raity but does happen. Polar bears and brown bears arise from the same stock. Theyve undergone allopatric isolation and statistically are reproductively isolated. H neanderthalensis may have mated with H sapiens but becasue of the adaptive specializations, they were mostly isolated and became culturally isolated

Quote:

So your assumption that I am 'forced' to believe something about 'the creation
of species' is a convenient strawman (a term I don't use often, but it fits here).

You are the one doging , Im merely trying to understand where you have any attachment to science at all. Im trying to dissect your basis of how various geographically isolated species came about> SO are you now saying that Moas and Reheas and kiwis are merely "root stock" from which the various families and genera arose (THAT WOULD BE MACROEVOLUTION Shocked

)

Quote:

Also as we have discussed, many separate 'species' can and do interbreed .

Please elucidate, Is this rare? frequent? going on all the time ?

Quote:

You dodged a direct answer to my challenge regarding K-Ar dating for several days.

And Im pretty much the one who (when I got home from my fiekld work, for which I apologized about missing a few days posts) I hadnt left off on you about how Steve Austins inabilaty to provide the labs with calibration needs, ranges of expected dates, instructions o Ar/Ar concordia. I think Im the one who pushed you so that you had no answers except a mantra regarding K/Ar. You could have looked at a number of links, many of which I provided you over a year ago and you never reviewed them. Thats stone headed directionally induced ignorance. If you wish to debate a subject, please have the honesty to learn what you are talking about or else just keep quiet.

Ill continue the argument re/K/Ar dating and calibration and QA (even sample prep). I HAVE ACTUALLY DONE K?Ar field sampling and have always instructed the labs in the basis of where we expectr the dates to cluster because of all the other data. (The lab has to be relly dumb or they were kept in the dark purposely by Austin so that no degassing calibration and 3 separate isotopic ratios and Ca isotopes could be done) Also, had the lab known, they would have reccomended against running the sample entirely. WE DONT "CONFIRM" VISUAL REAL TIME EVIDENCE WITH INTERPRETIVE EVIDENCE. I once Qa'd a field party's work where they did a very expensive geophysical survey for density of illite and we could see illite lags lying on the surface. When you dont even understand the deceit that Austin ws perping on the trade, and how his fraud was discovered in 1986(for Chrisessakes, this **** storm of lab fraud is now over 20 years old and your still dredging it up , ever hear of "get some new data"?) The science network has dismissed him as a false prophet waay back when the you guys were still pushing the Paluxey Man.

Don't preach to me about dodging. I will continue preaching whenever you take a false claim or keep using an incorrect mantra asone of your soundbites.

0 Replies

real, You're missing the "whole" point of my post. What it shows is that the human skins ability to acclimate to our environment; and by long-term exposure, our body evolves to live in those climates for the long term as the level of the biological material (melanin and melanocytes) helps to protect us. That's the long and short of it.

0 Replies

farmerman wrote:

rl
Quote:
you know that you admitted that the term (and thus the classification) 'species' is purely arbitrary.
You are full of crap.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/a2k-post2158839.html&highlight=arbitrary+species#2158839

farmerman wrote:

Now hes trying to do a 180 and say that , since species is an arbitrary term (and it is) everything has been derived from a more convenient group of "kinds" which then transformed into modern "kinds" by some process.

0 Replies

You are being quite disengenuous and are mixing apples and oranges hoping that youd score. In that thread we were talking primarily about evidence of evolution through "fossils" in which the term species is actually a kind of an assigned classification based solely on a fossils morphology and geologic positioning and therefore, it IS totally arbitrary I admit . We can never know the breeding characteristics of two fossils , theyre quite dead. As far as living animals, we have established that species are defined by contemporary organism that are first "reproductively" isolated. Thats pretty much the definition. Youve merely conflated the two definitions from two sciences. Also, in couin collecting and jewelry "specie" is precious metal content so maybe I can stipulate to that without drawing a foul .(BTW, I recall having had this discussion with another Creationist a long time ago and he tried to do the same "quick pin" by pulling stuff out of context.

When it comes to living orgasnisms , Ive consistently leaned onto the biological working definition of species. which is from
Mayr,
" A (biological) species is a population of freely interbreeding individuals under natural conditions., and are sexually isolated from related populations. "
Wilson goes a bit further
. Each biological species is a closed gene pool, an assemblage of organisms that doesnt exchange genes with other similar species. Thus insulated, it evolves diagnostic hereditary traits and comes to occupy a unique geographical range. ..Over many generations all the populations that belong to the same biological species are tied together. Linked as one by ancestry and future descent"

Why did a polar bear interbreed with a brown bear in the case displayed, its a mystery to me, but not an example of a definition in distress since the Polar bear and brown bears were derived from a common ancestor. The arbitrariness of this would be ,in my field, where we would merely assign a species name to Arctos and maritimus based solely upon morphology of fossils cause thats all weve got. How about if I give and say that, perhaps the evolution of the two species is undergoing some radical environmentally induced change bringing the two species into contact and limited congress. After all, tigers and lions have reproduced under the husbandry of Roman circuses.

0 Replies

The definition of 'species' is arbitrary because WE decide how and where to draw the line.

Whether we decide the 'line in the sand' is the ability to interbreed, or the color of the hair, it is something we have arbitrarily chosen.

Critters don't come with tags on them saying 'this is X species' and 'this is Y species'. We put the tags on 'em. It is our arbitrary decision what criteria to use and how rigidly we apply them.

This is the case whether we are talking about living critters or extinct ones. We decided what to tag 'em.

farmerman wrote:

Ill continue the argument re/K/Ar dating and calibration and QA (even sample prep). I HAVE ACTUALLY DONE K?Ar field sampling and have always instructed the labs in the basis of where we expectr the dates to cluster because of all the other data.

In an objective test , why would the lab need a cue card to tell them what date to expect?

You have not squared with the basic question.

If the assumption is that there is zero argon in the rock when it is formed, then Austin's data clearly shows that false.

If you concede that there is 'some' argon in the rock when it is formed-----

----- then since you do not know how much there was, you cannot determine how much argon was formed in between then and now.

You want to sidetrack the issue by discussing ratios of argon-to-X.

But you don't know how much of ANY of these was present when the rock was formed, so the ratios don't allow you to 'date' the sample based on that.

0 Replies

real life wrote:

The definition of 'species' is arbitrary because WE decide how and where to draw the line.

It is arbitrary only when done by a non-expert. When species are classified by zoologists or evolutionary biologists, it is not arbritary but rather based on expertise.

0 Replies

wandeljw wrote:

real life wrote:
The definition of 'species' is arbitrary because WE decide how and where to draw the line.

It is arbitrary only when done by a non-expert. When species are classified by zoologists or evolutionary biologists, it is not arbritary but rather based on expertise.

To maintain:

Quote:

X and Y are separate species because they do not interbreed except when they do interbreed

strikes me as rather arbitrary .

Sorry that you don't agree, wandeljw. That's okay. Cool

0 Replies

I guess that I am more willing to rely on experts than you are, real life. Science is so specialized that no one person can acquire expertise in every scientific field.

0 Replies

It seems real thinks he's an expert in all fields - of religious' belief.

0 Replies

It should be pointed out that the different 'varieties' or 'races' or 'breeds' of humans (whatever you want to call them) is not necessarity a result of selection.

There are other evolutionary forces at work in all populations, and some of them are especially strong in humans due to population restrictions and rapid expansion.

For instance, Genetic Drift and The Founder Effect probably have more to do with differences in human populations than any degree of selection.

It's a mistake to think that selection and adaptation are required for every difference in trait distribution in a population.

Genetic Drift
The Founder Effect

Quote:

The two most important mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and genetic drift. Most people have a reasonable understanding of natural selection but they don't realize that drift is also important. The anti- evolutionists, in particular, concentrate their attack on natural selection not realizing that there is much more to evolution. Darwin didn't know about genetic drift, this is one of the reasons why modern evolutionary biologists are no longer "Darwinists". (When anti-evolutionists equate evolution with Darwinism you know that they have not done their homework!)

Random genetic drift is a stochastic process (by definition). One aspect of genetic drift is the random nature of transmitting alleles from one generation to the next given that only a fraction of all possible zygotes become mature adults. The easiest case to visualize is the one which involves binomial sampling error. If a pair of diploid sexually reproducing parents (such as humans) have only a small number of offspring then not all of the parent's alleles will be passed on to their progeny due to chance assortment of chromosomes at meiosis. In a large population this will not have much effect in each generation because the random nature of the process will tend to average out. But in a small population the effect could be rapid and significant.

0 Replies

good point ros, STR alleles are a result of overlapping populations and genetic drift. so the changes in the genomes become further and further differentiable from adjacent populations of humans.

rl

Quote:

In an objective test , why would the lab need a cue card to tell them what date to expect?

You have not squared with the basic question.

If the assumption is that there is zero argon in the rock when it is formed, then Austin's data clearly shows that false.

Obviously you havent a clue but Ill try once more.
1Why wouldnt you clue the lab? why would you have them saturate a detector from an old sample with lots of daughter product It will just take the lab longer to decon their detectors and then theyll charge YOU for the downtime. A lab is first A BUSINESS. Its not a mo)nstery devoted to the arcane sample values . WE ALWAYS TELL THE LABS THE RANGES AND the substances WE EXPECT> ITS DONE ALL THE TIME IN ALL ANALYTICAL LABS someone is doing a qualitative analysis. If you were exploring for , say, gold, would you not tell the labs that youre looking for gold in the sample rather than let them just aimlessly search around and do prepps for substances that you have no interest in?

No, AUstin had a nice moral lapse and the reason he got soundly thrashed by the geological society was that he didnt do any calibration and kept the lab out of the loop . What you ask is not standard GLP protocol. Whether you feel differently is immaterial (and actually kind of stupid cause your client will wind up paying for your stupidity) I understand that AUstins whole point was deception so, by not telling the labs to check on the CA /Ar ratios (that would have told them right away that they were dealing with very young material and the lab would then have stopped and asked, "is this at a 100K year threshold in your estimate?"

Iknew you were gonna try your normal snottiness with your species comment. I would have expected nothing less from you. Species are defined based upon interbreeding and sexual isolation. The fact that some different species CAN interbreed (at least until evolution compounds the differences that separate them by yet higher taxa) doesnt mean that they do. Sexual isolation is almost 100% active in all species. The fact that a polar bear and a brown bear "did it" is more a fact that these two species come into seson almost at exact same times. The fact that they are only recntly overlapping ranges is showing that a dynamic other than normal population distribution is going on. Climate change is forcing polar bears south and brown bers north. They meet, have a cuppa coffee and get it on. The viability of the offspring ? who knows.

I have a feeling that youre going to continue ignoring my question regarding the ratite birds and their "special Creation?"
Do you really believe that , somehow all these animals were created and then after the flood were rafted off to their respective geographic niches?
How did that happen?
?

0 Replies

Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know