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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I’ve seem both sides using arguments from science here at TSZ. People can argue for themselves but as for myself, do you see me as being on the opposite side? And do you think I have used science backed arguments?
The problem is both sides see each other as making dubious, unsupported claims. It’s the flying “crap” that should be ignored.
There are, as I’m sure you know, tens of thousands of books, and many hundreds of thousands of published research papers, providing explanations for evolution, supported by evidence of a wide variety.
Now, to paraphrase Gould, you seem to see a sliding scale of certainty, running from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Nobody seems able to communicate that facts and theories are different categories. Theories are proposed explanations for sets of related observations. A theory can never be a fact, and a fact can never be a theory. The facts are the raw observations. Theories are not observations.
I think it’s necessary to get that out of the way before pointing out that what is taught in school rests primarily on observations and facts, and only then is any TESTABLE proposed explanation presented. I agree that scientists fight to get unsupported supposition and religious doctrine presented in school as science. Nobody is fighting to prevent religious doctrines from being presented in comparative religion classes.
As for the “problems with evolution theory”, what problem do you see other than lack of congruence with your religion? Do you think it would be appropriate for the science teacher to say “of course, these and other scientific findings are rejected out of hand by creationists and Republicans, for whom emotional convictions outweigh facts”? If you were to present a valid scientific problem with any scientific theory, people would listen.
The flying crap actually consists of the side making the dubious and unsupported claims hurling feces at those armed with evidence, extensive testing, and genuine understandings. But alas, when you have no theory, no facts, and no tests, hurling feces is your remaining tactic. Reading, listening, studying, these weapons are only available to one side.
If you wrote a book it’d probably have a great cover, I’d buy it and read it. And stick it next to my other books with great covers. 😛
You are what the IDers should aspire to be. You actually discuss your ideas, which actually exist in a coherent, seemingly internally consistent form that you can articulate. Unlike them there is more to you then bitterness.
If there were only two sides I don’t think you are on theirs, no.
Thank you for those comments.
What follows is an instance of some ideas that I think are worth discussing.
There have been arguments about the evolution of the elephant’s trunk. Here is my Steiner inspired take on this remarkable appendage.
The archetypal vertebrate is a threefold entity consisting of the metabolic limb system, the rhythmic system and the nerve/sense system which all interpenetrate each other somewhat and ideally should evolve in a balanced manner. Even for those averse to the concept of archetypes they should still have no objection to having a close look at these three individual aspects of the organism.
Elephants have a one-sided slant towards the metabolic limb system which is under much greater influence from gravity than the other two. Their four limbs can do nothing but support its massive bulk. There is no way that any of its limbs could be co-opted for any other function. And looking at the opposite pole, the nerve/sense system, what can be observed? The nose has taken on some of the attributes of forelimbs. In mammals with a more balanced makeup the nasal apparatus is restricted to the nerve/sense and rhythmic systems . In elephants they are prehensile and so can be used for gasping and manipulating in the same way we use our arms and hands.
Birds are an example of creatures which have become more one-sided in the opposite direction, the nerve/sense pole. Far more free from the effects of gravity than elephants with the inhaled air reaching even into the hollow bones.
The Bible gives us the animals which are representatives of these three aspects of vertebrates in the bull, the lion and the eagle.
And now you’re wishing you hadn’t encouraged me 🙂
phoodoo,
Ahh, I see now. You may understand how I could misunderstand given your wording. What I don’t understand is the sheer amount of anger over a point so small. Could it be you’re losing your footing?
You should listen to me, as I know quite a bit more about it than you do. As for common descent, I wouldn’t say that I love the phenomenon itself, though I do greatly enjoy learning about its implications, such as homology of stingers. As far as a creator, I have no fear of one as I don’t believe in one. Similarly, I doubt that you greatly fear Cthulhu.
What you fundamentally don’t understand here is that, despite the slow nature of it, you could take a “snapshot” of sorts of a population of organisms at a certain point in time. If you gathered a representative sample of a population, you could theoretically sequence their DNA and note all points where there are differences. You could then return a decade later, do the same thing, and see a change in the proportion of that population containing one particular allele.
That being said, your idea that major new features of an animal should pop up in one generation is simply incorrect. These changes occur on a much longer timescale, as has been explained to you probably hundreds of times at this point.
Now, I really have to insist on asking you to take a crack at the questions I asked you. What you don’t seem to grasp is that the questions take the initial position of assuming “not evolution” and then ask you to explain why certain things are the way they are given that evolution is false. So, given that nothing has ever evolved and that all evolutionary mechanisms are false, why do genes show the remarkable trait of arranging very naturally into a tree representing nested hierarchy? For example, why is it the case that wasp genes imply a pattern of relatedness in which bee ancestors first evolved a stinging ancestor, and then lost it in others? And why do their genes, through similarity, imply that they are the closest living ancestors of bees who possess stings?
Furthermore, if stings are not co-opted ovipositors, then why do males not possess them?
Please take your time and return to me fully considered answers. Thank you for your time phoodoo. I can’t wait to hear from you again.
Schizophora,
Another skeptic who can’t understand the difference between common descent and the theory of evolution. Ho hum, just another day.
There sure is a lot of you folks.
Moved duplicate comment to guano
Odd how short and information-free your response is to a comment packed with information and indeed questions for you to answer to demonstrate the superiority of your view. If you answered those questions you’d demonstrate that your superior attitude was indeed warranted.
But you did not, because you could not. And pretending not to see them is your only way out it seems.
No, he’ll never do that because he can only destroy, not build.
Oddly the IDists claim that when evolution does happen it proceeds by destroying rather then creating. And yet phoodoo cannot create through destruction.
You believe that common descent is a thing do you? Why not common design?
My point was that appealing to mountain ranges to say that evolution is not visible in real time is misguided. It is simply not the case that evolution only takes place over very long periods of time and that it is invisible to the naked eye. The analogy is misleading.
And evolution doesn’t make huge leaps either, so that’s a bit of a straw man.
I make clear and unambiguous statements and yet people still don’t know. 🙂
Is that because they simply can’t stand the idea that an IDist would accept the reality of common descent and evolution?
Would he have said it in German though?
phoodoo,
Ok then, this is a great chance for you to both answer the questions I posed and also explain why/how there would be universal common descent without evolution.
No, it’s because it’s incoherent. Just call yourself a theistic evolutionist and be done with it.
I suspect people have given up trying to work out when you are serious and when you are not. It’s just not worth the effort.
As stated in my previous comment, I was responding to Robert. In his OP, he defined evolution as the appearance of new body plans. If you think you can see new body plans popping up in real time, you should probably consult your GP.
As in?
A known fact: seeing through instruments is seeing.
Genetic change is NOT evolution. Genetic change is directionless noise.
Wake up! I deny that, not you. Genetic changes are not “evolutionary changes”!
But what if genetic changes do NOT actually accumulate? As in all the examples I cited and none of the examples you can cite to support accumulation. Here’s your chance again. Cite ONE example where we see accumulating changes. ONE! Real time. Measurable. Today. Like the mountains. ONE!
Out of interest, what do you think is responsible for e.g. the change over time we observe in the fossil record?
Perhaps you should leave my name out of it then. 🙂
Oh my giddy aunt! He denies it. On est foutu!
Extinction.
Accumulating changes in what?
Sorry about that, Mung. But you and Flint were responding to the discussion, and the original context was evidently lost.
If you visit my original comment, you’ll see that I said that evolution can be witnessed on human time scales, but we will not be seeing new bodyplans in our days.
The definition of an evolutionary change I usually wield is a change in allele frequency. Hence evolutionary change is by definition synonymous with genetic change.
Can you try to describe what you would accept as an evolutionary change?
Not clear what you are asking. Of course genetic changes accumulate. What’s to stop them? If you need an experimental demonstration, here you go. Enjoy!
The examples of “mountains” are all around you. Each and every one modern species is a mountain, and no two of them have identical genomes. John Harshman’s paper on crocodiles is as good a demonstration of this fact as any of the tens of thousands of others.
Genetic changes accumulate in modern species. Genetic changes exist between modern species. How did modern species get to be different? Hmmmm, let me think ….
So new body plans can never be seen?
What do you consider to be a new body-plan? Deuterostomes are basically doughnuts. Everything from the basic tube is derivable by folding
Like Alan, I’d like to know what you mean by “new body plans”. Since you, like plenty other IDists, accept common descent, you undoubtedly realise that the appearance of blueprint-like body plans is actually caused by inheritance of shared ancestral morphology.
I suspect that something that you would recognize as a new body plan will eventually evolve, but we will not live to see it.
Several of you keep saying this, and I have no idea what you mean by this. Will anyone see it. Would someone alive 1 million years ago have seen it?
Corneel,
See I think evolutionists have a hard time explaining what a new body part development is like. For instance, what would a new body part in a human develop like, in your mind. Say, some people have slighter longer heads. Could the top of human heads eventually stretch like the coneheads on SNL, until one day that cone could be used like a vessel for holding a new organ? Like first the extra dome on top could be used as a defense tool, but then it would slowly fill with an organ which senses radio waves, and could be used to navigate in complete darkness. Something this could happen, but we could never see it, because each generation would be so subtle we could never realize that some people can navigate in the dark and some can’t?
Again, this depends on what you accept as a new body plan. If you think dolphins and humans are built to different plans, then we are talking on the order of 100 million years to see sufficient divergence from the ancestor. However, if you believe all vertebrates are built to the same plan, then you may need to wait ten times longer.
Well, according to J-Mac, the development of secondary sexual characteristics represents a new body plan.
On the other hand, he also refers to a generic dog/wolf/fox body plan, so there’s evidently some confusion here…
Is that hard to believe? In industrialized countries, people have been rapidly growing taller (due to better nutrition and health, not evolution). Yet, nobody is consciously seeing this happen. And this has been happening in the span of decades, much faster than evolutionary changes.
One of the most famous novel evolutionary tricks in humans is lactase persistence. And, conform your description of evolution in action, some people can tolerate lactose whereas others can’t. Yet, I bet you never said to yourself how remarkable it is that this variation exists among humans.
Stop embarrassing yourself! You can’t even quotemine anymore?
If you believe baldness represents a new body plan, maybe you should see your shrink to have your meds adjusted…
I’m not going to even comment on the broken wolf to dog “body plans” because if you don’t get how the growth hormone genes work, it means you are plain ignorant…
For those who care, Behe explains the “evolution” within kind (s); descent with modifications within kinds…
I have been reading his Darwin Devolves and we finally agree on someting…😉
The concept of body “plans” is typical design thinking, of course. I suspect it will run into the same problems as delineating kinds, for much the same reasons.
Corneel,
So to you lactase persistence is a new body plan?? Huh?
I am not so sure what you are having trouble understanding, I don’t think its that complicated. New wings, new organs, new heads, a big droopy trunk, fangs for shooting venom, four limbs, six limbs, 13 limbs, eyes, ears, etc…
A new body part that didn’t exist before and serves a distinct function. You have seen a few of these things I presume, like if you ever went to a zoo.
So, ok, lay it out, taller isn’t a new part, right? Its not a new function, yea? It is not new bones right? Its not a new species right? So what will an example of humans obtaining new functional body parts look like. Sorry, I don’t think anyone would say, have you seen the new neighbor down the street? He can drink milk. Weird species.
Phoodoo won’t be happy until he sees this evolve in real time.
Really? What does Behe define as a “kind”? Please enlighten us with your stupendous Creationist knowledge.
BEHE doesn’t use the word KIND. I do. I should have made this clear. Sorry.
There is no clear definition of KINDS just as there is no clear definition of SPECIES…
Wolf to chihuahua is the devolution in real time and devastating one to Darwinism…😊
Which makes the earlier claim of limited descent within “kinds” to be meaningless.
What did the wolf devolve from?
So, you are shooting yourself in the foot? 😉
Fine with me…lol
Not at all. You’re the one blithering the silly Creationist nonsense about “kinds”.
It must have been another evolutionary miracle… 😉
You should ask Dawkins that… lol
Creationist ignorance noted. Yawn.
You are calling Dawkins a creationist? It’s his idea that dogs evolved from wolves, you know…😊
Loening and Behe proved that it is a devolution in real time by breaking genes…
Take you pills! I beg you! 🤗
You are requesting evidence for a process that nobody claims exists: instant arrival of complex structures. Wings, trunk, and venomous fangs did not arrive as fully formed structures, but all evolved by the gradual modification and repurposing of existing structures: wings are modified front limbs, an elephants trunk is a modified nose and upper lip, and snake venom is modified saliva.
Completely new structures do appear, such as butterfly eye spots, but of course they don’t start out complex.
So what is it that you find so hard to accept? Appearance of a new function? A new species? A new body plan? Or a new body part? You have already been given examples of all of those things occurring, but you seem to remain unconvinced.
phoodoo,
We’ve covered this ground before…
ETA: I had forgotten how hilarious that thread was, with lots of pretty photos ‘n’all.