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 enjoyed the book by Losos.
How do you know this is not evolution in action? I mean just think how much humans have already grown compared to their ancestors. Have you never seen the pictures? I wonder why that evolution stopped and no humans get taller for utterly non-evolutionary reasons.
I predict that in the future this will be touted as incontrovertible proof that evolution takes place in real time and is visible to the naked eye.
That’s not the point. Whether or not this is due to evolution, it’s an example of a very real, very visible trend which is not commonly appreciated simply because it’s slow. Peoples’ sense of elapsed time isn’t very good, so slow trends get overlooked. Someone might consider themselves short now even though they’d have been considered tall 300 years ago, because we compare ourselves with others right now, not with others in the past.
It’s pretty obvious that to many people, slow change isn’t change at all — especially if they have an indelible preconception against that change.
Kooky YECist fantasies aside, this thread reveals quite well why the term “transevolutionary change” is both important and helpful.
NB: I am speaking of human-made things (in the anthropocene), a scale that not just geologists, biologists & palaeontologists can understand and make sense of. We all seem to realize intuitively that transevolutionary change is much more important for its effects on the world around us than evolutionary change. Only hyper-evolutionists wish to deny this, stuck in their “everything evolves” ideology.
Growing taller. Drinking milk? Those are examples of new body parts? Sorry, no you haven’t.
DNA_Jock,
Actually Jock, your example of cats with six digits on each paw, WOULD be an example of what I am talking about, IF we could see populations where that extra digit seemed to be playing a role in spreading through a population, and thus rendering those with less digits inferior. Like because they could do things with the extra digits that those with less couldn’t, perhaps opens can’s of cat food. So we COULD see evolution in action, if it ever happened.
Because this is essentially what your theory claims. Maybe the cats are going to re-purpose those extra digits to make the hand become a huge fan, to keep themselves cool so they can live in the desert. But no one in your camp can seem to explain why we can NEVER see these population with some with a new feature and some without, and the new feature starting to spread. Why AREN’T there some cats with extra digits and some without and those cats with extra are becoming more numerous than those without it. But better still, why didn’t some cats get extra digits 10,000 years ago (since you are always saying the excuse is time) and NOW there are two types of cats, some with five claws and other with six on each leg, and they have different abilities which could affect their reproduction.
Or lets move the time table even further along, shall we? We could have populations of cats where 90% of the cats all now have six claws on every paw, but a few are still left with the old five (we can look at the fossil record and see where they ALL used to have 5!) so then we could clearly see evolution in action, the five toed cats all all being outcompeted and will slowly die out, until eventually six toes is the norm.
Its hard understand why your side claims this is how evolution happens, and yet asked to provide some examples, your side whines, well, how could we, it can’t happen…No living populations of mixed features animals. And since you can’t show any, you are left with saying, “some people are taller than others” as if taller is a new mutation.
Now, if some people had an extra bone in there legs which made them taller, and which also gave them greater jumping ability to hop into trees or skateboard, with the extra thighbone, hey, maybe you could actually show evolution. Never happens though.
Heh.
Phoodoo is still making his moronic Creationist demands.
J-Mac is still playing the clown to hide his ignorance
Mung is still acting as their shit-stirring enabler.
Some things never change. 🙂
What does this mean? What is a “mixed feature”?
I’ll make two guesses. First, you’re asking for two different animals sharing the same feature. Like, why don’t we have multiple animals with legs, heads, mouths, etc.? Well, actually, we do. So that can’t be what you mean.
The second guess is the “crocaduck”, an animal composed of the pasted-on feature of some other current animal. And in the world of fiction we do have jackalopes, flubadubs, griffons. The problem here is, no theory of evolution (ansd no real-world observation) would ever support such a fiction.
So what DO you mean by “mixed features”?
What about elephants losing their tusks?
phoodoo,
It may disappoint you then to know that there are a few breeds of dog which do possess more toes as a whole. As in, the rare mutation of extra toe moved to fixation because it allowed them to climb mountains better.
And allow me to preempt your objection that this occurrence is seen in a human-bred lineage, i.e. one that was artificially selected, and that we wouldn’t see nature do this. That objection is only valid if you can provide a mechanistic reason why this change could be seen in a domesticated lineage and not a wild lineage.
Also, any interest at this point in taking a crack at my questions?
Jock’s muse.
Great, please tell us the story. I thought we could NEVER see evolution. Hooray, Schizo says we can. Perfect case study. Let’s see it.
TSZ’s scientifically illiterate idiot.
It amazing, all of you evolutionist are running around as if you don’t know what the theory of evolution teaches about the existence of diversity of life on the planet. Like it a new story you never heard of, about how eyes developed or how a giraffe neck came to be, or how birds learned to fly. Suddenly its like what, huh, what in the world are you talking about, who thinks this, its a caricature!
So you response is not a story about an animal gaining a new feature, you are suggesting one a group of elephants loses one. Ok, well, tell that story then, what is the new advantage? What is the new mutation spreading?
That accidental mutation that didn’t exist before, but by luck of bad DNA copying provided a reproductive advantage. Ever heard of anyone talk about this process before? Flint I guess never has. Jock never has. Adapa has never heard of anything before. Corneel never has.
Someone should write a book about this new theory, so you all can learn about it.
Call it something like “On the Origin of the…”, I don’t know, I can’t think of a good name right now. Doesn’t matter.
I wonder what psychological issue gives phoodoo cause to demonstrate what a clueless idiot he is on such a regular basis? Coronavirus attacking his brain?
I’m surprised that you have not heard of this.
Not having tusks gives an elephant survival benefits in places where there is ivory hunting (often that hunting is illegal, but it still happens).
Why do you have to attack Jock like that when he praises you so much? So ungrateful.
Neil’s muse!
So you have heard of the theory of evolution then, terrific! Its a start.
So this is how life’s complex features have evolved. You get an accidental mutation, its re-productively advantageous, and so you have more offspring with that lucky mutation.
So in the case of elephants we get to see this, this is so exciting! So how has this case study worked out. Are there more elephants born without tusks now, because they got this mutation? Can we do a survey of the population, and see how many are born that can have tusks and how many that can’t? Now we are talking science! Let’s delve.
TSZ’s scientifically illiterate idiot!
I think it’s great the way you don’t mind making yourself look like such a fool every day poohdoo. Playing the screaming Creationist moron suits you to a tee. Even better than your childish tantrums over moderation. 🙂
Will check it out. Plenty of free time these days.
I don’t think so. The change in human height of the last decades isn’t associated with a change in heritable variation, and therefore doesn’t qualify as evolution.
We discussed bee’s stingers and elephants trunks. You dismissed those as well without motivating why.
Yet, it still disappears like mist!
Indeed.
@ phoodoo.
I’m still wondering what you mean by “new body plan”. I repeat, we (and I mean broadly, as in all deuterostomes) are basically tubular, with mouth, gut and anus, some segmented, some with added appendages, toolbox genes controlling development, information stored and translated from DNA using the same library system.
What do you mean by “new body plan”?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6102531/
On the off chance you are serious….
So how does bringing up human height help your case in any way?
How does bringing up the elephant trunk in anyway help your case, because you also can’t explain it.
Saying everything that ever exists as a physical trait was just a different physical trait that got co-opted does not really help make the case for evolution sound very convincing. Maybe it makes the case for ID-everything that exists already existed in another form. Ok, if you say so. Great Danes to chihuahuas, not the best argument for evolution.
Remind me. What is the case for ID?
Remind me. How does ID explain something?
How does ID explain anything?
Alan Fox,
If all physical traits always existed, just in different forms, but just changed their use, that is called front loading Alan. So if all of life was front loaded-well, that’s not the theory of evolution.
ID.
Tickles me how parochial “Intelligent Design” is as a concept. I had never heard of it prior to 2005 (due to a chance internet encounter). It grew from a ruse to slip Creationism into US school science classes. It has remained as a fringe cult in the US and has almost zero recognition elsewhere, yet phoodoo can still say “ID” as if it means something. Bizarre!
I didn’t say that, as you well know. I just made the point that there are no “new” body plans that cannot be derived from simpler forms by embryological development. You were once a single cell.
But thanks for talking to me, being under house arrest is really boring!
if indeed…
It seems you were not serious. Can’t say I’m surprised. You get what you desperately hope does not exist and your only logical response is to ignore it. I understand.
Something happened somehow by someone for some reason
Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks.
See Flint’s comment.
Don’t see why not. It is a fusion of the upper lip with the nose, so it obviously wasn’t created de novo. You provided a beautiful adaptive explanation for it as well.
You were trotting out irreducible complexity previously in the thread. Co-option deep-sixes the argument that irreducible structures cannot evolve, because it allows for complex traits to start out as a more simple traits with a different function.
Perhaps it does. But if Intelligent Design allows for changing, evolving organisms, then I wonder how you will tell it apart from mainstream evolutionary theory. If you have smart ideas about that, we are all ears.
Ok, so that fusion would have had some reproductive advantage right?
So because of this, there should have been a population, early on, that had only some of those individuals with the fusion and some without. And over time, the numbers would shift, right? First many less with the fusion. But with each successive generation, more with the fusion and less without it. Until eventually, none without the fusion.
And this is the whole premise of my argument. Why shouldn’t we be able to see that? If some of the population had the fusion, and some didn’t that would be visible, right? And depending on when during that spectrum one was around, you would see either a lot with the fusion, or just a few.
You don’t have a time machine?
Anyway, if you are unwilling to read a scientific paper on the very thing you are asking about why would anyone take any of your questions seriously?
Sure, ancestral elephants must have had variation for fusion of the upper lip / nose at one time. So why is that so hard for you to accept? What you are describing is boring old phenotypic variation. ALL species alive on earth have phenotypic variation, most of them have heaps of it. But everytime someone shows you an example, e.g. lactase persistence, melanism or polydactyly, you shrug of it off. Why isn’t that good enough for you?
And I just explained to you ALL of the different phases that one would expect to exist then, right? The first phase would be only one or a few individuals with this mutation, the next phase would be a small minority, the next perhaps half having it, half not until eventually the majority would have it, and they would do much better reproductively.
So since ALL of these phases should be happening constantly if evolution were true, we should be able to point out examples of these different phases in many different groups of animals. So, where can we see these phases (forget about your ridiculous lactase persistence nonsense, who calls that a new feature? What shape is it? What is the mutation like…, you better come up with something better than that) .
You said polydactylyism, ok cool. Now, since you are going to claim this is an example of how evolution starts making new body plans, let’s see some different phases we would expect to see, just as evolution predicts. Some populations with a few, some populations with say half, and some with the majority possessing this new mutation, because it has given some advantage. Any examples? Doesn’t have to be the same mutation, just examples of different phases of the evolutionary process. I can’t wait to hear more about schizophrena’s dogs which climb better (and reproduce better) because they have this mutation. Should be fun.
Evolution happens constantly right? It is not just something that happened in the past right? It happened 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 1000 years ago, right? So in 2020, we should be able to look at examples that started 100 years ago, some that started 1000 years ago, and some from 50 years ago. And some that just started last week. We can see all stages, today!
Yes, this is quite true.
But once again, you use the generic word “see” without defining what you mean. Let’s say a species branching event began today. Nobody could see it yet, of course. Now, wait a few centuries, and some differentiation could be “seen” with the proper instrumentation. Even so, it’s entirely likely that branching events start but never complete, so all you’d see at that point is that genetic variations weren’t evenly distributed among all individuals. Bear in mind that a full branching event (genetic isolation of a subgroup) can take thousands to millions of years to complete!
So it’s essentially certain that some fairly sizeable percentage of current species are in some incipient stage of branching, and many are nearing completion (that is, interbreeding between groups is quite low but still happening). And you should realize that even after full genetic isolation, the human-eye visible differences between the groups may not yet be large enough. Taxonomists are still splitters (“hey, these identical critters are actually different species”) and lumpers (“hey, these two species are actually the same; the adult and juvenile forms were mistakenly thought to be separate species”) because the process of speciation is so slow and differences not obvious.
You often sound like you’re demanding that for “real” evolution to be happening, we should see animals that are half snake and half moose. But criticizing evolution for not being what nobody claims it is doesn’t earn you any points.
Reminder to phoodoo!
What do you consider a NEW body plan? Bodies means multicellular animals – deuterostomes. What do you suggest as an example of a new body plan in this context?
LOL. Do you want some fries with that?
No, I do not need to provide snapshots of every miniscule step in the replacement of an ancestral trait. You can go look for them yourself, if you please. However, we can simplify things. There are four postulates that, when satisfied, ensure that evolution by natural selection occurs:
1) There is phenotypic variation for a trait
2) The phenotypic variation is (partly) heritable
3) There is variation in fitness (survival and reproduction)
4) The variation in the phenotypic trait is correlated with variation in fitness
All four postulates have been observed to be very common in natural populations. It follows that evolution by natural selection is still happening as well.
Mutation and genetic drift keep on chugging along as well, of course.
Isn’t it interesting that you insist that people show you trait variation within a population, but then dismiss every single example that is presented?
Moved a comment to guano. Please use member’s registered names.
Phoodoo won’t be satisfied until he sees something like this
The fossil record doesn’t count. You’re piecing together disparate images to fit your prejudice. I asked for a real time example.
This:
“Mung: We do see evolution happening in real time.”
I don’t care about “the definition of nonsense”. You can’t just define something into existence, you rainbow unicorn.
“Evolutionary change” – as concept – was postulated independent of genetics. Right Darwin? Right. Right Mendel? Right. Then it is for you, Corneel, to demonstrate a link (if any) between these two previously independent concepts. And see above. No “let’s define a link into existence”. Moreover, you have to link both ways. Because you can say Darwin’s “gemules” are the genes. That’s fine, but not enough. Get it?
Apparently clear enough.
Now here’s why your example fails: that is a laboratory experiment, not a natural experiment. That is breeding. Changes do NOT naturally accumulate in breeding. A Creator has to put a lot of work in maintaining those breeds. I am sure a Creator is not what you have in mind. Is it?
First sentence is the one you want to prove. Restating doesn’t do anything.
Second sentence is “OK – so what?” Doesn’t do anything for you.
Third sentence is bogus. And a silly question. There’s a reason I asked for a real time example. So you can prove your point. That is neither real time nor a valid argument: your inability to formulate alternative hypotheses.
nonlin reminds me of Behe on the witness stand. Behe claimed there was no evidence for the evolution of an immune system. He was then presented with a stack of books and papers about 3 feet high all of which detailed the evolution of the immune system, backed by enormous volumes of evidence. He not only rejected all of them because they didn’t fit his unstated definition of evolution, he complained they were too heavy for his lap!
Now we have nonlin complaining that evolution and genetics are unrelated, to reject essentially ALL evolution that has ever occurred. THEN he demands evidence of evolution that fits his conviction that it doesn’t happen. Except when it does, in which case it doesn’t count for whatever reason. Apparently because actual evidence “defines” evolution into existence. Experiments don’t count. Fossils don’t count. Observation doesn’t count.
Correct!
False.
False. Fossils are MISINTERPRETED neutral images of the past. Experiments count, but this particular experiment (LTEE) counts against “evolution”. Observations do count, but someone has yet to provide a real time observation that fits “evolution”. Still waiting… Behe is generally weak, but in that case, if true, he was right to reject all that stupidity.
Moved a comment to guano. Moderation issues are discussed in the appropriate thread; not elsewhere.
You seem to be really struggling to keep a straight story on this one. Didn’t you say that genetic change is NOT evolution? So why can genetic changes all of a sudden not accumulate outside of a laboratory setting?
No, it is time for YOU to explain why the accumulation of genetic changes is prohibited as well. I don’t see how that works when genetic change does not contribute to evolutionary change.