if evolutionism is the mechanism for biological changing of bodyplans then it must be a option it could happen today, and relative to billions of species, it should be happening to a powerful percentage. new population by the millions should be newly created with need for new scientific names. Yet i say there are none or less than six. WHY? I say because evolutionism is not accurate as a mechanism . it never existed. other mechanisms exist. the great evidence against evolutionism is the very unlikely situation of it not having occurred in the last twenty years in great, or any, numbers. Very unlikely but i offer the issue.
578 thoughts on “Amongst the billions of species today is evolution going on? No! Why not !”
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Perhaps you just need to know where to look. A mutation happens in a single generation (in fact, in humans there might be hundreds of mutations per generation). If you were peering through a gene sequencer rather than a telescope, you’d see a change happen instantly.
Let’s say that the very first light sensitive spot occurred in one generation, on one individual. If you’d like to call this a novel new feature, that’s fine. Of course, it might be totally useless to that individual, BUT it’s a new feature. And let’s say that spot is heritable, so we have further generations with it, and perhaps individuals with TWO spots (this sort of duplication is not uncommon). Are we making any progress yet?
Now, let’s say that another small mutation caused these spots to become apparent to a nerve, so there is actually some light input usable by the organism. Are we seeing evolution? Perhaps at some point, this utility becomes a (very slight) reproductive advantage. This could be many tens of thousands of generations down the road. But at some point presumably we could see it with OUR eyes, and not need that gene sequencer. Would that count as the sudden appearance of a new body plan? If not, why not?
You didn’t make a case that new species have been created in the last twenty years relative to billions of speciesv relative to the claimed great mechanism of evolution.
You made excuses for why its not seen.
I don’t agree that what a species is IS mysterious. It doesn’t mean anything unless it means something. it must mean a segregated population that maintains by reproduction its unique bodyplan with genetics included. YES creationists say species are real. Its not a blur of boundaries in a population. thatsw why scientific names are created for species.
No divergence is seen today when on a probility curve it should be the norm or at leasy 27% but less the 1% is a problem for a hypothesis. its not even close to that and is probably zero since columbus sailed the ocean blue.
i say the reason no evolution goes on today is because it never happened. just like with people. YES we changed after the flood into many types of looks/bodyplans but its not happening today. Its from another mechanism that acts fast and furious.
I think creationists win this point. Evolutionists don’t bring it up ever.
“It is altogether remarkable (as Mark Twain observed on the Mississippi) what wholesale returns of conjecture science extracts from its trifling investment of facts.”
– Franklin Harold
Flint,
Your argument is resting on the notion that an eye first developed through genetic neutral drift, not on any reproductive advantage.
Do evolutionists really want to go down the road of claiming any useful trait you can name first spread through neutral drift. Isn’t that sort of stretching credulity all the way to the end of reason? Originally the eye developed not only accidentally, but it wasn’t even useful.
And all these other very useful features, also not advantage. Just luckily turned out good later. I wonder if there are any scientists seriously purposely the neutral theory of eye development. Cornea, not useful, but it still spread. Later was useful.
Flint,
Same thing with the elephant trunk. It was so subtle, it wasn’t even useful, but it still eventually spread across the whole population of previously non-floppy nosed mammals. Another mutation, millions of years later made it even more floppy, but still not useful. After about ten of these events it started getting useful.
I agree with Mark Twain.
Wheres, of course, a magic man going ‘poof’ somewhen, somewhere is eminently more reasonable and credible.
Science can tell us quite a lot about the origin of the elephant. Whereas if I were to start an OP on the origin of the elephant according to Intelligent Design it would simply be a container for abuse and mockery.
However if I were to start an OP on the evolution of the elephant it would have dozens of links to published papers, fossil evidence etc etc.
But as you prefer fables to reality that’s not going to change anything is it. Someone who thinks Uri Geller is physick won’t be convinced by science about anything.
I wonder at the lack of curiosity shown. And with the resources of the web, these days there’s little excuse for ignorance.
The artist’s impression below is of a fossil find named Moeritherium, living in North Africa 36 million years ago. (It’s not thought to be a direct ancestor of modern elephants.)
Evolution science, ha.
I wish the artist would draw some with floppy noses and some without, as if we were actually there.
Sounds like front-loading.
I agree though with Robert that “evolutionism is not accurate as a mechanism.”
So all you evolutionismists should go home and leave science to the rest of us.
Of course not. The species were not “created,” they diverged from their ancestral species. I made a good case about this, you just didn’t get it.
You might have trouble reading. Check that out. Maybe take a course or two of reading for comprehension. I cannot teach you biology. Not my role. I gave you some clues, but, as with anything, in the end it’s up to you to follow up, do your searching, figure things out, or try and understand then ask questions when you get stuck not understanding something.
See what I’m saying? You’re not reading well. I didn’t say mysterious. I said that the line is oftentimes difficult to draw, and that this is due to the very fact new species arise by divergence from prior ones.
WTH? You don’t see the divergence. Loads of field biologists do. What you fail to see is your personal failure, not humanity’s.
Again, that you fail to see it is your personal failure, not humanity’s. Creationists cannot even get a foot in the door. But if you want to imagine they do, suit yourself.
See ya.
Every time I hear an evolutionist say irreducible complexity is not a problem, because like you can use the parts of a mousetrap for a tie, or some other shit like this, I get a great laugh. Every complex system used to be a part of some other system. No need for anything to start from scratch, just reuse what is already there.
And they don’t see the problem.
You don’t seem to understand just how simple a mousetrap can be. Lack of imagination is not a barrier to evolutionisms mechanisms..
You cannot be seriously defending Robert Byers’ young earth creationism, can you, Mung? It’s just a naive YECist at TSZ, who you somehow “feel” you must personally defend from these big bad “skeptics”. And you’re a nice YECist defender, sometimes. That’s all that’s going on here, right?
Byers doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know. And he obviously has “mental” (communications) issues that make him a non-player at the table where adults converse.
This is the kind of me-creationist-too crap that makes quasi-pro-IDst MUNG-DUNG such a bore.
If he wanted to engage, then he should get the courage up & engage. I don’t take lightly to such game-playing nonsense. Or is he really at his height & depth just a Seattle sealion?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I would surmise that nearly all mutations afford an organism no immediate reproductive advantage, or at best a very small advantage. I would also surmise that few mutations reach anything near fixation through drift. Maybe that very first light sensitive spot helped in some small way, but I really do think drift is responsible for most mutations to take root, eventually developing into actual features.
Well, consider the tapir. It resembles a pig, but with a somewhat longer and prehensile snout. Nothing like an elephant, yet this slightly longer nose is quite functional. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to think that if it’s useful now, a mutation to make it slightly longer would also be useful, perhaps moreso. Selection could work in that direction.
I think you should consider that lucky mutations occur rarely, and are retained and spread also very rarely. And very slowly. Possibly with the aid of allopatric speciation, which is also a matter of luck. Also consider that no mutation can make any drastic change, because the mutant couldn’t breed. So when you make your case, you must accept tiny changes and Deep Time.
I took mung to be making a joke about Robert’s use of “evolutionism” (rather than “evolution”).
Neil Rickert,
Ok then, I agree that Robert Byers’ misuse of “evolutionism” is the stuff of jokes. He & his fellow YECist morons have poisoned the proper and balanced opposition to ideological evolutionism. They’ve made anti-evolutionism look like only under-educated self-deluded half-wits should hold that position. Byers doesn’t realize how absurd his views are in Toronto, Canada & he obviously doesn’t care to learn.
Same with the DI & same with Swamidass. Making a bed for YECists to lie in. A sick solution, either way one slices it.
Gregory, I was demonstrating how two people of such divergent views could still find common ground. And of course, evolutionism as mechanism is nonsensical. 🙂
I thought pictures would be better than links for your level of engagement with evolutionary theory. Seems I was right. 😉
This is a great time to go back to the question: if we see the mountains rising (in real time), why don’t we see “evolution” happening in real time?!?
You never answered: “A trend not supported by several period observations must be discarded as noise artifact. “ Do you agree or not?
We do see evolution happening in real time. For those who have eyes to see, that is.
Well, we don’t actually SEE mountains rising in real time, but we have extremely precise measuring techniques that can let us watch mountain growth of fractions of an inch per year (probably 2-3 millimeters art the fastest, minus erosion). Similarly, we have precise ways to measure genetic changes from one generation to the next.
To the naked human eye, the mountains are changeless. If you could go back to the first modern men, 200,000 years ago and look at the same mountains, you’d see no difference – but the fastest-growing mountains probably grew 100 meters in that time. You’d also see no difference in most biological lineages, but they’d have been changing in ways not immediately obvious all that time.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mount+saint+helens+eruption+youtube
But really, no one actually saw it, or recorded it while it was happening.
A better analogy would be earthquakes. No one ever actually sees one of those with the naked eye!
Uh, no. We were comparing the very gradual rise of mountain ranges through tectonic plate collisions, at least as I understood the analogy. I agree Mt. St. Helens shrank visibly in a short time, but how you would regard that as mountain building I can only guess – and I guess the mountain analogy is uncomfortably close for your taste.
Earthquakes, which like volcanos happen very quickly, are exactly the opposite of what we’re talking about, unless you are relating them to plate collisions rather than sudden events. In which case, you have another good analogy, because eventually all of the baja peninsula and half of California will be an island off northern Canada. Another slow process measured in the lifetimes of species, not moments of excitement.
Mountain evolution. Infinitely plastic. But not visible.
Mountain ranges are, of course, composed of mountains. And if a mountain in that range changes suddenly, drastically, visibly, does it not follow that the mountain range itself has changed suddenly, drastically, visibly?
Apparently not.
Mount St. Helens stands alone. A mountain without a mountain range. No wonder it exploded!
Naughty Nonlin. I never denied small evolutionary changes, comparable to “mountains rising” could not be observed. what I actually said was:
We DO see evolution happening in real time. People at TSZ shower you almost daily with examples. The metaphor was meant to demonstrate how creationists like you and Robert deny that the accumulated gradual change can result in the divergence between groups we see today, and demanding we observe the complete change of millions of years played out on human time scales. Something that will never happen. Flint perfectly understood what I meant by that metaphor:
Mung’s and your transparent attempts to abuse the metaphor to suggest evidence of huge evolutionary leaps should be readily available don’t fool anyone:
Nothing to add. Excellent. Thank you, Flint!
I am sorry. Somewhere I must have missed where ID theory explained why only female bees have stingers, and why stingers are homologous structures to ovipositors. Could you repeat that for me, please?
Darwin’s finches?
Nothing new evolved.
You just used plain English words?
Nothing new was said.
Define what you’d consider to be ‘new’ then.
It seems to me you ‘win’ simply by using your own personal definitions not shared by others.
How’s that working out for you? Much the same as nonlin I imagine, achieving literally nothing day after day.
The evidence says yes. The vast majority of arguments and debates are concerned with the hows and whys of evolutionary change and not whether or not it is happening.
Here’s an analogy (I know that Allan Miller can’t get enough of my analogies) 🙂
Remember analogue clocks with hour, minute and second hands? We look at the face and we know that the second hand is moving because we can see it. But we cannot see the hour hand moving. Does this mean that it’s not moving?
In order to tell if it’s moving or not we need something other than direct observation. We look at the clock and see that the hour hand is to the left of XII, we get on with what we are doing and then look back to see that it is now on the right side of XII. We have a picture memory of our first observation and direct experience of our second observation and through the power of thought we can compare the two and come to the reasonable conclusion that the hand has actually moved. This does not answer how it has moved but it does tell us that it has indeed moved.
We cannot rely on observation alone. We need observation, memory and thinking to determine what is real.
But you are right to question the mechanisms of evolution.
Sure. But the difference is only one side is examining those mechanics in a rigiorous way.
phoodoo outright rejects that evolution happens at all.
J-Mac is the same.
Robert is the same.
Mung? Who knows, or cares.
Colewd, is the same.
So who are you talking to when you say that, if people reject that evolution happens at all then what’s the point of suggesting they question the mechanism of something that they reject entirely?
And by extension nothing new can evolve.
Seems phoodoo missed that as he replied after that comment was made and yet did not respond. So I’ll help out and quote the question again.
phoodoo, if nothing evolved where did everything come from?
On a thread asking what we can not, and its argued never could, see evolution doing anything, your reply is-“Well, ID can’t do any better!”
Its is such a bullshit cop-out you guys pull. You have no explanation for anything, and yet, you will fight tooth and nail to prevent any other theories be taught in school, but not only that, your side fight to even let the problems with evolution theory be taught. That’s a fucking joke.
All over the world you materialists are going on and on about how its the most robust theory ever in science, its beyond a theory, its pure fact, yadda, yadda…And then when you are asked to back that up with logical arguments for the theory, you guys just jump to, “Well, so, you got anything better, duh!”
Imagine Einstein being questioned about relativity, and his only response being, “You got a better idea?”
Corneel,
It has also been pointed out to you, probably 1000 times already, that plenty of Idists believe in common descent. You still don’t get that? And yet you still want to argue evidence for the theory of evolution is common descent?
But if the mechanism for evolution is the fairy tale of a lucky mutation for a floppy nose, that bingo, sure worked out good, then THIS is the problem you have to try to somehow make convincing.
Now you guys are saying, well, a marginally floppy nose could just so happen to spread through a group. And then later an even more floppy nose could spread. And then later an EVEN MORE floppy nose could just so happen to spread, and then after about ten of these, the animal’s mind goes, “Hey, wait a second, I could use this dam thing I have been dragging around, let me see if it helps grab a coconut tree? By golly, it sure does! Wow. The chicks are going to love this!!”
Oh, by then, that’s trolling pointing out that problem, isn’t it Alan Fox (the guy who never heard of the Skeptical movement, or atheist conventions)?
Yea, its trolling Alan.
I know we all do it, but I am trying to resist categorising people as belonging to “sides”. I would prefer to treat people as individuals as much as I can.
Does Robert believe there is such a thing as micro-evolution? And that finch beak size and peppered moth colouration are an example of this? I don’t remember what he has written about this previously. If he does then he believes in evolution in that limited sense.
When he says evolutionism (evolution?) as “not having occurred in the last twenty years in great, or any, numbers.” That opens the door for us thinking he believes that there is some sort of limited evolution. Granted he is not always very clear in what he is trying to say. He believes in adaptation and that there are changes within species. Some would say that this is evolution.
As for the others it is possible that they are examining the mechanics in a rigorous way but their interpretation of the evidence is different to the standard line.
Even science evolves. What scientists see a true today may not be seen as true tomorrow.
He was once attacked in a pamphlet “100 Authors against Einstein”” and retorted “If I were wrong, one would be enough”. A better theory than relativity would consign relativity to history.
But you ain’t got a better idea than evolutionary theory, have you?
It’s distorting your original claim, that a Skeptical movement had regular meetings akin to weekly religious gatherings – which is not the case.
What other theories? “Intelligent Design” isn’t a scientific theory. There’s nothing of substance that could be taught. Young Earth Creationism is no less dishonest.
Citation please.
What ‘theory’ is it you would like to have taught? Given that all you can do is point out (albeit ill conceived and ignorant) problems with evolution it’s unclear what you actually want taught as an alternative.
Can you spell it out? What would the lesson plan be?
Citation please. Who is saying that? I believe you are mistaken. Demonstrate otherwise by simply linking to where someone has said what you claim they have said.
I know you won’t because if you could make that case using peoples own words you would not have to invent a story like that, you’d just quote people directly.
I’m sure Jesus is very happy with you.
It’s clear there are two main sides on this site. Those who believe that we can discover facts about the world via science and the other side who do nothing but fling whatever crap they can without offering anything constructive. I know you know this.
I was responding to your complaint that the argument from irreducible complexity was countered by the observation that structures can be co-opted into a new function:
This was just a few posts after you were told that bee stingers were modified ovipositors. If you accept this as fact, then yes, co-option is a devastating criticism of the idea that irreducible complex structures cannot evolve. I read your comment as denying that co-option of complex structures occurs. If so, then the onus is on you to explain the many examples of evolutionary co-option that exist.
This is not a “cop-out”. This is the logical consequence of the fact that when you endorse irreducible complexity, you must supply an alternative to the existing evolutionary explanation of homologous structures with differing biological function.
You have not been very forthcoming about the fact that you accept universal common descent, so I am glad to hear that you embrace the idea.
If you accept that having trunks is adaptive, nothing about this scenario is particularly implausible. After all, why would the Designer create elephants with trunks? Why, because now the elephant can grab the coconut tree and impress the chicks. That is its purpose. So were does ID make the difference? Isn’t that only in insisting that the “marginally floppy nose” is not useful, so modern elephants acquiring a proboscis required foresight?
But if you want to argue that, then it is only fair for others to point out that tapirs are perfectly happy with theirs.
Yes there is an obvious split. Phoodoo too seems to favour the “us and them” stance.
But I’m not so sure that the science backed arguments are just coming from the one side as you suggest.
Isn’t it better to read what individuals contribute and deal with each post on its own merit rather than to assume that someone will have nothing interesting or worthwhile to say before they’ve even said it?
If you don’t see anything of value or substance in a post why not just ignore it rather than encouraging more of the same as you see it.
Sure
There’s also value in pointing out the lack of substance, for reasons other then the progression of science.
Then let me put it another way. One side can answer any question thrown at them either with research that has led to knowledge, an acknowledgement that the question is out of scope or an admission of ignorance.
Whereas the other side, at least on this site alone, can only cast aspersions on the research that has led to knowledge of the other side as they have none of their own. They cannot answer any question on any topic except with an answer that fits all questions asked. The designer designed it that way.
And the utility of an answer is inversely proportional to the number of questions it answers.
It appears phoodoo is proud to accept fables as the preferred answer over knowledge. Who is it here that you suggest is bringing science backed arguments to the table?
Not quite understanding your dichotomy. Ignoring is certainly an option but is responding to a dubious or unsupported claim encouraging more of the same? seems to me the claimant has the greater responsibility to back that claim up with evidence.