http://www.nature.com/news/evolution-of-darwin-s-finches-tracked-at-genetic-level-1.19795
“But their still Finches! Checkmate Evolutionists!”
Or some similar comment. But whatever. Still a very cool study.
138 thoughts on “Evolution of Finch Beaks”
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I find it difficult to take seriously the scientific opinion of somebody who so egregiously mangles English syntax in six words or less.
But the syntax was not mangled by the study; instead, it was deliberately mangled to parody a typical creationist response to the study.
Dammit – I got bitten on the rear end by Poe’s Law again!
Sorry…forgot to add:
/creationistcomment
My bad!
ETA: Should have misspelled “evolutionists” too. Maybe if I’d tried to mimic Gary Gaulin’s writing style, the parody would have come through better. Next time.
Should have noticed it’s context.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
By an amazing coincidence, the DI’s D-List stumblebum Cornelius Hunter over on his blorg wrote about this same paper a few days ago. Among the usual spittle flying and claims this isn’t evolution came the brilliance:
You can’t make up this shit folks, you just can’t. 😀
Yeah. Creationists coming up with a novel argument against evolution may very well require some sort of macro-evolutionary transition
I found your citation very alarming
A few points worthy of consideration IMHO:
1 – Cornelius Hunter is is Adjunct Professor at Biola University, a relatively highly ranked campus (if I understand ranking correctly) and the author of a variety of “anti-Darwinist/anti-Evolutionist” polemics that have blipped on the radar of sandwalk.blogspot
For a review: of one of his books: http://ncse.com/rncse/22/1-2/review-darwins-god
I find it alarming that Professor Hunter can have such a high academic stature in a bona fide American university. Not surprising really considering Donald Trump, but alarming nonetheless for similar reasons.
2 – Cornelius Hunter is guilty of “bearing false witness”. I find it alarming that he can lie for Jesus with such impunity.
Here is a salient quote:
My problem with the glibness of this facile dismissal would be the inherent self-contradictions that stack within each other like so many Matrushka dolls.
Let’s lay the groundwork here
First of all, an intense selection pressure was witnessed; i.e. Hunter concedes that some accelerated natural selection has occurred in Darwinian terms.
Hunter is somewhat correct to suggest that this is “old news” – an avian rehash of the industrial melanization and peppered moth story, as it were.
That said, the effects of this intense selection pressure in Galapagos Finches has been determined to affect the coordination and timing and level of gene expression for a variety of genes in concert (polygenic) and have a variety of effects (pleiotropic) including body(for example) as well as beak size.
The fact that researchers are able to biochemically dissect the impact of new mutations on beak morphology alone, makes this ongoing saga newsworthy, nothing more.
In any case, Hunter was incorrect and conflates some terms. Maybe there were no “new genes” involved – but there were NEW ALLELES (of those genes) which is how they were found to begin with. as well as changes in timing and intensity of gene expression (another topic for another time)
Meanwhile, Hunter suggests:
Both statements are patently false. New beak morphologies rapidly emerged in response to intense selection pressure and phenotype frequencies did not revert when the drought lifted.
Which brings us to the creationist rebuttal of last resort:
Yes… no different in “kind” say Humans and Chimpanzees which also demonstrate remarkable genetic constancy except for so-called “Human Accelerated Regions” which were obviously subject to similar intense selective pressures and even identified along the same lines as “Finch Accelerated Regions”. Both human and Finch versions of “accelerated regions” were “discovered” by identical methodologies.
OK – Let Hunter have it his way – as far as Finches were concerned: “New designs were not created”…
Fine!
But
Ditto Human/Chimps. In other words:
Every child is the same species as its parent.
That was one of Darwin’s major points.
SCIENTISTS
Anticipating Patterns of Repeatable and Predictable Behavior Since 3000 BCE
Seriously, had no idea Corny (or anyone) had posted on this, but it’s just such a pat response from creationists. If only I had a nickle…*sigh*
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that Biola is a fundamentalist bible college. I don’t find it at all surprising that a creationist would be employed there. And note that “adjunct” is not usually considered high ranking.
https://www.biola.edu/about/doctrinal-statement
Didn’t Dembski get in trouble at BIOLA for his peculiar version of Last Thursdayism?
Something about God retroactively changing history after the Fall?
Paging keiths, regarding whether a trickster god can play games with evidence.
Hunter:
Or in other words, what is supposed to typically happen in evolution happened. But because magic didn’t happen, the creationist strawman of evolutionary magic happening is never found.
Ha ha, strawman shot to pieces again by creationists. They’ve got to get the victories possible to them.
Glen Davidson
Unguided evolution doesn’t have a mechanism capable of producing birds, so that would be a problem. But we are sure that evolutionists will ignore it.
Not sure what you are driving at Joe. Evolution (“unguided as a prefix is unnecessary; biological evolution is unguided by definition. If you wish to investigate whether natural processes are guided by some outside force or law, you need to address that in a separate scientific field) is constantly producing birds. We have all sorts of examples of evolutionary avarian fringe species, hybrids, isolation species, selective pressure species (which is what the article I linked to even details), etc. So your statement is nonsense.
Robin,
Evolution is not unguided by definition. Evolution is merely the change in allele frequency over time. Please tell us how to test the claim that unguided evolution produced birds. Start with a model, some testable hypotheses and predictions. Or admit that all you have is nonsense.
Biola University was founded in 1908, under the name Bible Institute Of Los Angeles; they changed the name to “Biola College” in 1949, and then to “Biola University” in 1981. This tidbit of historical information may clear up some of the mystery about how Cornelius Hunter could have high standing at any academic institution.
I seem to recall that it was at Baylor where Dembski had that trouble.
Incidentally, another member of the Biola adjunct faculty is our old friend Paul Nelson, from the Discovery Institute. So you can see what esteemed company Prof. Hunter is in.
Biola, Baylor: almost anagrams.
Pretty sure that was during his stint at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where his End Of Christianity got him in hot water with his YEC bosses. Dembski groveled and had to say Noah’s Flood was real to keep his job.
Yes, that about agrees with my recollection. I’m not aware that Dembski ever had much to do with Biola. He was at Baylor for a while, but that was before he moved to the Baptist seminary (he had a different disagreement at Baylor).
petrushka,
As Adapa points out, it was SWBTS, not Biola, and the trouble was Flood-related, leading to Dembski’s infamous “I bow to the text” statement.
Also, Dembski isn’t any sort of Last Thursdayist. He doesn’t believe that God changed history after the Fall — he thinks the effects of the Fall were retroactive.
Of course he can, and we’ve never disagreed about that. Our disagreement was over your claim that
That’s obviously false, because an omnipotent being can choose to behave with regularity.
keiths,
Omnipotent beings are very obliging that way, choosing to behave in any way that suits one’s preferred theological stance.
If you have all possible choices( omnipotent ), a particular choice is not entailed.
The entailments of an omnipotent being would include the entailments of an intentional agency-> namely the ability to do what nature, operating freely, cannot. Intentional agencies can manipulate nature for a purpose. Intentional agencies produce work and counterflow. Intentional agencies produce and use codes.
I was reading a bit more of that Cornelius Hunter site. There’s a fool named Joe G posting who claims ID shows Biblical created “kinds” (baraminology) which were taken on Noah’s Ark are true. Frankie should go tell him ID has nothing to do with religion.
I read that site also and found no evidence that supports Adapa’s claim. Methinks it is lying, again.
Why do evos have to make stuff up in order to try to make points? Oh, that’s right, they don’t have anything real to rely on so they have to make stuff up
I’ll demonstrate it when you demonstrate that “unguided gravity” holds people down on Earth.
In other words – when you can demonstrate there’s a difference between what is required to support gravity vs evolution in terms of some supposed “unguided” property, I’ll meet your challenge. Unless you can do that however, then there is no burden on science to meet your dubious challenge.
Robin,
LoL! Clueless until the end. Got it.
Gravity is part of the evidence for ID. So what you said doesn’t make any sense. And science has already demonstrated what gravity does. So obviously you have other issues.
Perhaps you should stop making unsupported claims, Robin.
All I am asking is for you or anyone else to support the claims of their position. But thanks for proving that you can’t and all you have is nonsense.
To recap- Robin made a bullshit claim about the definition of “evolution”, gets called on it and responds like a spoiled brat who didn’t get its way.
Allan,
It isn’t so much that omnipotent beings are obliging — they might be or they might not be, depending on individual characteristics. What is true is that out of the huge space of possible omnipotent beings, believers will hypothesize those whose behavior matches their theological expectations.
That’s not all bad, as the YEC example shows. By positing a God with specific entailments, the YECs go out on a limb — and science saws it off. Their God is falsifiable and falsified.
newton,
The bare hypothesis “there is an omnipotent being” isn’t falsifiable, but believers are usually much more specific than that.
keiths,
The bare hypothesis of “unguided evolution” is untestable and its believers demonstrate that every day. 😛
Odd way of describing yourself, but not like I disagree…
Translation: “I have absolutely nothing in terms of an actual rebuttal or a way to show either evolution or gravity as being “intelligently guided” in any scientifically meaningful sense. All I can do is toss out unsubstantiated claims.”
Duly noted Joe. Thanks for the demonstration.
LOL! You’re funny Joe. Given the published study I linked to, I’m not sure you could be any more ironically wrong.
Your continued dismissal (or simple ignoring) of the support provided (and in particular, the one linked to as the basis of this thread) is a testament to the vacuousness of ID and the level of education, to say nothing of basic “intelligent design” ability of its adherents. You really should take your show on the road, Joe. You’d be a hit!
Yep…all science so far Joe! Do let me know when you get around to actually rebutting my point though.
Robin,
LoL! You don’t have any science and you didn’t make a point. The link in the OP does not support unguided evolution. So it definitely doesn’t support the claim that unguided evolution can produce birds.
Also I and others have discussed guided evolution. Genetic algorithms model guided evolution rather nicely
ID is not anti-evolution, Robin. And there is a post that proves that on this blog. Read it and stop arguing from ignorance
It is funny watching evolutionists go all spastic when they are asked to support the claims of their position. Robin lied about the definition of “evolution” and when called on that Robin ignored it and prattled on like a clueless loser.
Isn’t evolution guided by the environment? How would it then be “unguided”?
No, the environment doesn’t guide the mutations. With evolutionism all mutations are undirected and happenstance occurrences. Natural selection is blind and mindless so no guidance there.
Where did you learn about evolution, Richie? Can you post a reference to support your claims? I know I can post several that support mine.
So you don’t think ogranism / environment fit affects reproductive success?
Let us know when you have settled the goalposts. Trees in the road affect my path but do not guide me to my destination. Whatever is good enough to survive and reproduce is all the “guidance” evolutionism has. If you want to take that and say “see evolution is guided” then your desperation just makes my point.
Mayr goes over the unguided nature in “What Evolution Is”. Selection is guided whereas mere elimination of the less fit is not. However mere elimination of the less fit has the advantage over selection in that a wider variation gets the chance to reproduce.
No scare quotes needed. The environment shapes species’ development.
In what way? Whatever is good enough to survive gets the chance to reproduce. In what way does that shape development? And in what way is that guided evolution?
With evolutionism all genetic changes are declared to be accidents, errors and mistakes. It’s just contingent serendipity. Again that isn’t guidance. But we understand why you would insist otherwise.
If organisms were designed to adapt then I would expect the environment to influence species as “built-in responses to environmental cues” would be a main mechanism for that.
You need a morphology that works in your environment, for one.
And? You just pull a morphology out of what? Starting with self-replicating molecules where do you get the morphology from?
Frankie,
Moving goalposts, Joe? 😉 tat is so funny.
Yes, you are moving goalposts, Richie. I am just trying to get you to clarify what you post so you can’t keep doing that.
Why is there so much criticism of people like Hunter and Dembski and very little discussion about the Nature article itself which IMO should be the focus of attention.
From the article:
They say that beak sizes changed for the purpose of avoiding competition. Is this right? It is misleading to say the least. There were finches with large sized and small sized beaks before the drought and after the drought. The only difference was in the frequency of individuals with a certain beak size. So the evolutionary change can be said to have been instigated by the available food and not by any novel genes. Beaks didn’t shrink to avoid anything.
What role exactly did they play?
Here is a quote about the 2003 drought from another source:
To me this shows how species survive by being able to adapt to their fluctuating environment, it does not demonstrate how genes drive evolution.
The Nature article ends with a quote:
And as far as I can tell that physical, material basis is the food supply.
Robin,
Finch beaks only provide evidence of the the interactive relationship between animals and the environment. The change in finch beak size is cyclical, in tandem with the cyclical nature of environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, nutrient availability and characteristics.
Finch beaks provide absolutely no evidence to support the conjecture that RM+NS is responsible for producing an animal such as a bird.
Please don’t make the elementary mistake of conflating variation within a phenotype with the creation of that phenotype. As the old but apt saying goes, RM+NS doesnt explain the arrival of the fit, let alone the fit.
Besides we know that RM+NS is driven by fecundity and therefore doesnt explain it. They are passive components of the system, therefore impotent as an explanation.
Its the most glaring and fundamental weakness of the non-teleological evolutionary position.
All science so far!
It’s odd how despite apparently being in possession of knowledge that could clarify the situation (such as how teleological evolution explains the arrival of the fit) you just imply that you have such knowledge and leave it at that.
If you do indeed have such knowledge, why don’t you share it?
Explain how your position deals with that weakness then. Or retract. Or not. As your honor dictates.