Fig 1: Somewhat similar? YES. Related by birth? NO. Proof is impossible.
- When Napoleon’s army invaded Egypt in 1798, a large number of animal mummies were brought back to France.
- These represented many species, including cats, jackals, dogs, crocodiles, snakes, sacred ibis, and other birds, as well as human mummies. George Cuvier analyzed the samples and concluded that no detectable anatomical changes had occurred over the time passed since those animals were mummified. This made him the first to test and disprove the idea of evolution. In opposition, Lamarck’s argument was that a passage of 3,000 years would have been insufficient to observe evolutionary processes because the environmental conditions in Egypt had not changed during this time. Couvier countered that longer timescales simply contain the sum of changes within shorter periods. In other words, he reasoned that since no changes had been observed over approximately 3,000 years, it was unreasonable to argue that any longer timescale would produce them. Is that debate still relevant? Who was right?
- Since many still insist that “evolution” is true, yet we cannot document any historic “evolution”, the debate is relevant to this day. To settle it, we note that environmental conditions change continuously, and that Lamarck could not have known – much less proved – that they did not, therefore his argument was invalid. But aren’t Darwin’s finches, the peppered moth, antibiotic resistance, the great lakes cichlids, etc. examples of ongoing “evolution”? They are certainly examples of adaptations. Yet “evolution”, if true, requires much more than temporary, reversible adaptations as most (all?) of those examples are. To confirm a trend, we must compare short versus intermediate versus long term trends. If we see no intermediate term trends (say 3000 years), then the short term trends are merely noise aka temporary, reversible, inconsequential adaptations. It also means that postulated long term trends – the sum of intermediate trends – are very much doubtful. The only way a long term change is compatible with intermediate term stasis is if nothing happens for a very long time, then everything happens suddenly – a scenario not considered by Couvier. Could it be?
- Punctuated equilibrium is a desperate and failed attempt to explain away the evidence against “evolution”. Belatedly catching up to Couvier, Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Darwin is virtually nonexistent (!) in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species… Before them, Mayr was concerned with explaining the morphological discontinuity (or “sudden jumps”) found in the fossil record. Lack of gradualism in the fossil record is clear evidence against “evolution” and should have prompted these people to discard the theory. However, their blind faith prompted them instead to propose the purely hypothetical scenario (removed from any historical or experimental facts) called “punctuated equilibrium”. Yet, if “sudden jumps” were real, somewhere, sometimes, in one of the many species out there, “evolution” would happen and be observed in real time. In addition, “sudden jumps” would have to be triggered by specific conditions replicable in a lab. Thus we would confirm “evolution” both in nature and in the laboratory. That this is not the case is proof that “evolution” in general and “punctuated equilibrium” in particular are just fantasy.
- “Transitional fossils” presuppose “evolution”, therefore cannot be an argument in its favor. The fossil record consists of more or less incomplete individual finds. No flesh, no colors and certainly no arrows linking one to the other. When fossils in different strata match, we infer stasis over that time interval. Not because we know one particular sample descends from the other, but because we know that any organism descends from matching organisms. This we can observe in the living and thus extrapolate to the extinct like the trilobites. But when a fossil looks like a mix between an earlier fossilized organism and a more recent one, we cannot infer that said organism is transitional between the older and the younger one. Unless we presuppose “evolution” true. That is because we witness no such transitions. The so called “transitional fossils” require “evolution” to be true to even make conceptual sense. Only then these “transitional fossils” may support “evolution” in a classical circular reasoning. So let us not presuppose “evolution” true. Then what is an Australopithecus to us humans? Epihippus to a horse, Pakicetus to a whale, etc.? Nothing! Just extinct organisms that came from nowhere and went nowhere.
- What exactly does “evolution” predict, and how does it stack up against the fossil record? The theory came after some fossils had been known and thus it had a chance to be reconciled with the fossil record. And yet, gradualism and divergence of character – two main predictions of the theory – are clearly disproved by the long term stasis we see everywhere in the fossil record. The trilobites stasis is estimated to have lasted 270 million years and cyanobacteria 3.5 billion. Actually, all organisms current or extinct have undergone stasis periods long enough to invalidate the “theory of evolution”. And when they do transition into or out of existence, said transition is always instantaneous with no intermediate steps as the “theory of evolution” would dictate. Other predictions of the theory are beneficial mutations (improvements), specific response to specific environmental condition changes, and directionless changes. However, the sudden appearance, long term stasis, and eventual demise of organism that disappeared, such as trilobites and dinosaurs, is inexplicable and in fact contrary to the theory of “evolution” as they were not better adapted and were not replaced by better adapted than them organisms. They could not have been poorly designed and yet last millions of years or even a few hundred generations. Furthermore, environmental changes explain nothing in their story, though it should according to the Darwinist theory. This is because homeostasis reduces organisms’ sensitivity to the environment. Vestigial organs and atavism refute the “evolution” story since, on one hand massive “evolution” changes, while on the other “persistence” of useless and even detrimental traits are claimed. Incidentally, these traits make perfect sense if organisms are designed for “manufacturability”, obsolescence, and optionality. Comparative similar progress of all branches (apes vs humans) should also be expected. Therefore, it is illogical that humans would have “evolved” so much when other apes were essentially static over the same period of time and geography. Absence of a precambrian rabbit is not an expectation since “evolution” is supposedly directionless and because of the “convergent evolution” claim. Unity of life is expected not just from “evolution”, but also from creation, panspermia and other theories.
- Organisms vary greatly and populations change all the time without “evolving”. If in the distant future one would find fossils of two contemporary dog breeds, they would likely classify those as two different “species”, just as Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans are currently classified. Despite the genetic evidence that they mated with each other which, by the most lenient definition, means they were the same “species”. Other “ongoing evolution” examples (the finches, the moth, antibacterial resistance, etc.) are not “origin of species” transformative but mere reversible minor adaptations as noted.
- Ever increasing life complexity disproves “directionless evolution” and “beneficial mutations”. Current time progression models show ever increasing complexity of life. This is contrary to “undirected evolution”. As new organisms appeared, old ones continued as well, thus resulting in more diversity and increased complexity of life. For instance, when eukaryotes appeared, the prokaryote kingdom continued seemingly unperturbed. Life complexity increased and new life forms are demonstrably no better than the older ones since one did not replace the other. Cetaceans are different from the fish they share an environment with, and thus another example of complexity increased. If “evolution” were true and directionless as theorized, one would expect some intermediate organisms to have “evolved” from “primitive” organisms and other from more “advanced” ones. For instance, some amphibians would be expected to have “evolved” from fish and others from mammals, were “directionless evolution” true.
- “But transitional fossils fit so well, don’t they?” No. They only seem to fit due to the confirmation bias – the tendency to favor information that confirms one’s previously existing beliefs or biases. In this case, the prejudice in favor of “evolution” and against any other explanation. Thus the artist’s impression meant to convince us of the “excellent fit” draws little from the actual fragmentary fossil and much from the myth and theory of evolution. And let us not “affirm the consequent”. Is there anything unique to “evolution” but not to any other theory that would result in the fossil record we know? The answer is “no”. Even if newer organisms derived from older ones by descent – big unsupported if – that would still not validate “evolution” or any of its other associated claims including “natural selection”, undirected, unguided “process”, etc.
- Darwin was right, Kelvin was wrong? Kelvin opposed evolution on the account of the age of the earth. Darwin knew from his work with pigeons that even deliberately breeding for specific characteristics took a long time to produce them. But how much time was necessary? Darwin felt that it required at least hundreds of millions of years. By 1895 the consensus physics view was that the age of the planet lay in the range 20–40 million years. Natural selection appeared to be doomed. Whereas today the consensus is 4.5 billion years, so evolution is safe? Turns out, the consensus (that fellow again) is that there is no scientific basis for determining the speed of evolution. Does anyone wonder why? The story is often presented as “Darwin owning Kelvin or physics for that matter”. The real lesson is the absurdity of a theory entirely based on feelings and not one bit on anything measurable.
Links:
scientificamerican.com/article/when-lord-kelvin-nearly-killed-darwins-theory
wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
I accept the possibility of an intelligent creator.
If we examine the evidence, it seems pretty clear that if there was an intelligent creator then that creator used natural methods, including evolution, to create and maintain the current biosphere.
Taking it one paragraph at a time:
No real need for photographs. Oxford had just completed an exhaustive two year inventory of every animal in all the Wuhan wet markets. Number sold per month, and prices. It is a bit sloppy to use the phrase”known to be infected”, when the meaning is “known to be susceptible”. It is also sloppy to assume the path is always animal to human. In fact, during the course of the pandemic, the dominant path was human to animal. Unless animals all over the world were somehow infected by Chinese bats.
Okay. Animals were infected. Animals became infected all over the world. The timing would seem to be important.
The date is wrong. The first reported case had symptoms by Dec 1 (Lancet). It is reasonable to assume that the virus was circulating before December. A significant percentage of early cases had no known exposure to the market. Or to each other.
Again, I’d ask for some actual evidence of the direction of animal/human transmission. A great deal depends on dates.
petrushka,
The date may be wrong, but the rest of it is correct.
Given the proportion of cases that are known to be asymptomatic, the wildly high association between early cases and time spent in the Huanan market is frankly surprising. So much so that the experts suspected the association was enhanced by ascertainment bias. Apparently not.
But keep parroting those MAGA talking points; now that the worst of the pandemic has passed, your evidence-free musings have no downside: they’re just funny.
I notice that Chervonsky’s response seems to be saying that by this late date, and lacking the precise evidence he requires, the dispute cannot be resolved. So what both sides are trying to present is basically a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. He seems to be demanding information that simply was not collected at the time or in the places he requires. Both a market spillover and a lab leak are entirely plausible; indirect evidence of either is insufficient to rule the other out.
I agree that this debate is rapidly becoming moot. The market is still there, the lab is still there, the dangers both represent are undiminished.
Flint,
Chervonsky is being disingenuous. He is asking for a level of certainty that he knows is unavailable. He reminds me of the crackpot that Colbert made fun of who claimed that the there was a 50% probability that the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole and destroy the earth. “Either it will, or it won’t. It’s 50:50” [accompanied by full on ‘on the one hand, one the other’ hand gestures!]
Colbert’s response “Errr, that’s not how probabilities work”
The preponderance of evidence points to zoonosis. The only people with any subject matter expertise who think otherwise are the DOE and the FBI, whose argument reduces to “research is dangerous and these guys are sloppy”. They are ignoring all of the molecular and epidemiological evidence.
By way of illustration, Chervonsky writes
That is moronic. I want to be really clear about this point: that is an incredibly stupid thing to write. He needs to put down the pom-poms.
I will agree that the debate is moot. Only hard core Sinophobes have any interest in it these days.
Well, except the epi. Where are all the early cases associated with the WIV?
Unlike any other work environments, where the same people are in prolonged contact with each other, day after day.
I think this is what’s important. I understood that Chervonsky recognizes this, and defending the FBI position requires that he resort to a demand for absolute certainty knowing that’s impossible. Colbert’s response is appropriate here, that “bothsidesism” is intended to grant weight to a side that otherwise wouldn’t have any. I found myself wondering what sort of dog Chervonsky has in this fight.
Flint,
Good question and thanks for the discussion. The finding that would convince me that common ancestry (of vertebrates) was a reasonable hypothesis is discovery of a reproductive mechanism that can generate new gene sequences reliably. If you look at the Howe Venn I posted each animal has thousands of distinct genes. We would need to assign their origin to reproduction and some mechanism that generated them.
Based on my current understanding reproduction in populations limits variation by error correction mechanisms, purifying selection and drift in populations.
Not to mention mutations, sexual recombination, and (necessarily) imperfect error correction. Now take all of these sources of variation, allow for inheritance and selection, stir in a few billion years of time, and watch what happens.
But wait! That IS a reasonable hypothesis, and it has already been tested quite thoroughly in multiple ways, and it passes all tests. And if that hypothesis is correct, one would surely predict the appearance of unique genes within lineages (meaning no means of sharing them with other lineages).
But oddly enough, this is exactly the finding you say would convince you of common ancestry. Yet it has not. What would possibly be the reason for that?
Flint,
Where is the test that shows the mechanisms that you talked about can produce a new functional gene sequence?
The image shows 10k unique gene sequences between the 4 animals. The common answer for the process is gene duplication and subsequent divergence. This process (to get change fixed in a population) takes millions of years for two functional changes to a single gene and up to a hundreds million years for 6 functional changes to a single gene.
You need to study the theory on your own as you are making claims based on the non scientifically validated version of the theory. Animal populations are inherent based on your worldview and what science can model and test.
colewd,
You appear to have missed my previous request and I have become rather curious as to your answer. Do you still endorse your previous statement that “[i]f we are talking about changes to existing populations […] evolution especially population genetics is solid science. ” This statement is not really sitting well with your recent suggestion that all vertebrate species were independently created. I strongly doubt this view is shared by Sy Garte or any other of your big heroes.
Sure. What “correct predictions” do you have in mind? I just showed how the fossil record is being misinterpreted. Let’s start there.
As the adult in the room, I’ll accommodate the cry baby. Maybe you will grow up and reciprocate.
Your false hope comes from multiple definitions of adaptation. This definition is acceptable:
while this one is not:
The reason why the second is not acceptable is because of “heritable” (it need not be) and “fitness or survival” because it’s not clear if fitness = survival or not. If yes, how can “natural selection” act upon survival. if not what is “fitness” if independent of survival and how can one measure said “fitness”?
This is also acceptable:
This last definition might be even better as the characteristic that allows for the adjustment is preexisting (built in).
Meh. I’ll ask for the relevance to “evolution” first. Is there any? Start by explaining how a nonliving thing matters at all.
And why does you “evidence” rest on something recently unknown like covid? Was there any “evidence” before? Obviously not in the fossil record…
Status means what in science? Oh wait, “evolution” is not science. Therefore, saving it means making it a real science. You know, …Pinocchio…
You can’t possibly understand that which is fake and doesn’t work. You’re just being fooled.
Don’t know if you’ve been to school. If you did, you would know there are two type of exams. One multiple choice and one “show your work”.
This is not multiple choice and certainly not multiple choice with a single question that you pick. No!
This is “show your work” meaning show:
1. how anything in “evolution theory” prompts you to forecast certain things that are…
2. uniquely predicated on “evolution” true and in this case (if you insist)…
3. show how something that isn’t even alive has anything to do with a “theory” supposedly of the living.
I don’t think I cited “regression to the mean” in virology. That would have been wrong given that viruses are not alive. You most certainly are conflating things too hard for you to understand.
The article is obviously random with respect to “evolution” – our topic of interest – regardless of other topics like… virology for instance.
And what about that fossil record? Why not address this analysis instead of the latest fad which is already passe? Was there no “evolution” before covid? A simple ‘yes’ will suffice.
There are no “natural” methods that work. What Darwin proposed certainly doesn’t. I’ve demolished every single one of his proposals.
Can you see that even the fossil record falsifies “evolution”? If not, what part of this analysis do you dispute and on what basis?
And what exactly caused it’s passage? Was it doctor Putin and his u-cranian adventure? It certainly wasn’t the pathetic masks, ineffective “vaccines”, the imprisonment of the population, or the evil persecution of the children that cured us from Covid.
BTW and totally relevant : https://babylonbee.com/news/scientists-discover-strong-correlation-between-trusting-government-and-eating-paint-chips
I am not a population geneticist. What I read is that if there are two alleles of a single gene, eventually one is lost and the other is fixed — that is, found in all individuals. I don’t know about new genes. I can understand about duplication followed by divergence, but I would like to read the source you are using for your post. Your claim that fossils “falsify evolution” is much like the claim that telescopes falsify astronomy. Again, I need to see your source.
OK. You showed no such thing. Tell the truth for once, and someone might take you seriously.
On another forum, someone once showed up claiming the earth was flat, and defied anyone to prove otherwise. A few patient people provided some simple observations, and he started in about conspiracies, misinterpretations, peoples’ refusal to see the obvious, etc. So everyone went away and never came back. Why bother? You are following in his exact footsteps.
The boy who cried wolf? Slim chance! 😉
Nonlin.org,
I’ll probably regret asking, but what do you think caused the passage of the pandemic?
You do know that The Babylon Bee is a satirical site, like The Onion, right? I mean, its strapline is “Babylon Bee | Fake News You Can Trust” ffs!
Comedy Gold!
Recently, The Onion revealed that the cost of living now exceeds the benefits. I’m not sure if that qualifies as satire!
The Onion and the Bee constantly run afoul of Poe’s Law.
There should be a corollary: any sufficiently well written satire will be true or will become true.
Corneel,
The claim is that zebra fish, chickens, mice, and humans do not share ancestry based on the Howe Venn diagram and the observed gene family differences. I am not sure if Sy Garte has seen this evidence.
Flint,
The data comes from two papers that generated models. The third paper is a clarification of Lynch’s claims by Behe.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253472/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2286568/
https://doi.org/10.1110%2Fps.051674105
.
This is not a claim I have made.
I looked at the first paper, and the conclusion was, uh, interesting:
To put it as simply as possible, this paper considered a model that underestimates the rate of origin of new gene functions by orders of magnitude, and STILL predicts new gene functions originating faster than Behe and Snoke. And conventional models in a Darwinian framework are fully adequate.
The second model suggests that fixation of genes by point mutation alone is slower than observed in reality. I wonder if this is a typical creationist study demonstrating that something nobody claims happens, doesn’t happen.
Is this really what you intended to convey?
You entitled this thread “Fossil record falsifies evolution.” That’s your claim. I wanted a link to a source that says this. Understand, if the link is to “evolution news”, you run the risk of being suspected of looking through discredited material to cherry pick congenial results. If you link to something reputable, it’s honest to link to refutations.
In general, if you do not want people to dismiss your material out of hand, you must find refutations of what is actually claimed according to conventional evolutionary theory. “Proving” the falsehood of claims no real biologists has made is useless.
To be fair to colewd, he did not start this thread.
Flint,
I think you may have confused the superficially polite colewd with the congenitally insult-spewing nonlin.
There share an impressive disconnect from reality, but the styles are distinct.
Oops, sorry about that. My apologies to colewd.
See? That wasn’t so hard.
Your definitions describe the process of adaptation instead of the adaptive traits which you referred to in the OP, but that is just a minor quibble. You also reject definitions that stipulate that adaptations are heritable. That is perfectly fine by me. Also, you avoid the word “fitness”, even though in its original meaning it just meant being fit for (= suited to) a particular environment. Whatever! Yours are perfectly acceptable definitions to me.
Now can we agree that
1) a “characteristic of a plant or animal” is just another word for a phenotypic trait
2) adaptations are context-dependent, since they rely on the conditions of a particular environment
3) in the presence of an antibiotic, antibiotic resistance will increase the growth rate of a bacterial colony that possesses this adaptation as compared to one that lacks AR?
Thanks!
BTW: Here is the definition that I have been using, as taken from my trusty “Evolutionary Analysis” by Freeman and Herron:
As you can see, it resembles your definitions but it explicitly mentions survival and reproduction as measures of being suited to a particular environment. Is that also acceptable to you?
Nonlin.org,
Now, I promised that I would comment on your OP. The first thing that caught my eye was this, in paragraph 2:
Amusingly, you yourself deep-six that claim in the very next paragraph by citing several known well-studied cases of rapid evolution: industrial melanism in the peppered moth and evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. There have been many, many examples since: The Trinidad guppy project, the Park Grass experiment and of course the long-term evolution experiment from the Lenski lab. If you want to get a sample of those, read Jonathan Losos’ “Improbable Destinies”. So we can now safely conclude that Georges Cuvier was wrong that evolutionary changes could not be observed in our time.
You predictably counter these example with denialism, as you claim that these changes will automatically revert. But as there is no memory of the previous state, I don’t see why that would happen. As I see it, reversal will only occur if selection is reversed, as happened in the case of the peppered moth after the pollution decreased again.
Yes! RNA viruses evolve rapidly, sometimes within a single host. This has profound impact on outbreak management.
You think viruses don’t matter? Never got the flu, did you?
Oh, yes. Heaps of it. You even mention some of it in your OP. The thing about the COVID-19 pandemic is that there was a global effort to monitor the spread of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants which was disseminated to a broad audience. It is an example that everyone is familiar with and is an in-your-face demonstration of evolution in action. Creationists are now reduced to making lame excuses like “viruses are not alive so they don’t count”, even though the processes by which viruses evolve are identical to that observed in living organisms.
Here is the question, once again, without much hope:
Do you still endorse the statement
If you do, then why would “dramatic gene changes” sudddenly pose a problem?
Then, for the gazillionth time: The issue of common descent is distinct from the origin of novel features. If the Intelligent Designer is God, as you believe Him to be, then poofing a few thousand genes into existence in his super secret laboratory outside time and space and inserting them in their intended recipients after zebrafish, chickens, mice, and humans have split from a common ancestor is not a problem!
If the Designer is omnipotent and omniscient, then any scenario is possible, including universal common descent, with or without intervention. Hence, your resistance to the shared ancestry of all vertebrates cannot have anything to do with the number of species-specific genes.
I would not get my hopes up that your new champion believes in special creation, if I were you. I recall that didn’t go down so well with your previous hero Michael Behe. keiths has been making fun of you for months.
The papers show that functional fixation takes too long to explain the Howe Venn. The papers use bacteria with substantially faster reproductive rates than vertebrates. There are many other issues but these papers illustrate that populations remain essentially the same over time.
This is confirmed by the Lenski experiment (60000) generations where billions of mutations occurred yet only 70 became fixed in the population.
These papers support the hypothesis that zebra fish, chickens, mice and humans are the product of separate origin events due to their different gene arrangements.
Corneel,
Populations do not make dramatic changes. No evidence supports this conclusion.
The problem here is that when and if God is involved it becomes a separate origin event. The people using the theory as a tool do not consider this possibility.
I know Mike Behe and Keiths does not. Neither Mike or Sy have interest in challenging universal common descent. This has been a smart strategy on both their parts. The problem is the current scientific model is broken and misleading people.
So much for evolution and especially population genetics being solid science.
Would you be so good at explaining how that works? Suppose we have some population of critters. Then God says “Let there be species A” and half of them receive a thousand species A-specific genes. Then God says “Let there be species B” and the other half of the critters suddenly are in the happy possession a thousand species B-specific genes. And He saw that it was good.
And behold: Species A and Species B descended from a common ancestor even though it involved God.
So where exactly did my hypothetical scenario go wrong, according to you?
Corneel,
It is solid science to figuring out the changes to existing populations. It does not tell us how that population came into existence.
It’s hypothetical and one of an unknown number of possible explanations. The bigger problem is the current model is used with the assumption that reproduction and associated natural changes explain the pattern. Thousands of papers are based on an assumption that is most likely false.
Its time to change the model based on current genetic information.
I asked first. Go ahead.
Tell me about it. You apparently don’t understand how satire works. Is there anything you DO understand?
So you have no knowledge of any “correct predictions”. Of course.
I answered your question. Your “evolutionary” wooden tongue doesn’t suit me. Let’s leave it at that. Now what exactly is your point on adaptation? If any.
Adaptation is a capability of the organism. Certain organisms are capable of some responses while others of other responses (if at all). The environment is not the driver.
It’s a never ending war between bacteria and host. Remember that the apocalypse predicted re AR has not happened. And it will not. Why? Because this war has been going on probably forever. AR is not a net benefit – there’s no such thing, remember? Otherwise AR would never go away. But it does.
Couvier certified “no evolution” in his study. That’s an absolute as far as his study goes.
Next, just because you chose to call those “evolution” doesn’t mean they are “evolution”. Let’s think this through: since this is the process you dream of, what would it take for adaptation to become “evolution”?
Were “evolution” true, the peppered moth would not have reverted BACK.
They would not have been capable since “evolution doesn’t retrace”.
Or does it?
Or there is no “evolution” to speak of?
I explained noise vs. divergence. We see noise about a mean and never divergence. If you disagree, show me one! example of divergence.
Anyway, this is just a tiny fraction of my analysis. What about all the other inconvenient (to you) points I’m making? Care to comment?
Hold on a sec. Aren’t viruses manufactured products? Incapable of anything by themselves? At best you can speak of the host. And when is a change (oops, not the right word as explained before – remember?) not “evolution”?
It’s no different than past pandemics. Those were not “evolution” , but this is??? Wish.
But we do NOT OBSERVE any “evolution” in any living organisms. Starting with Couvier and ending with the misrepresented adaptations I cited.
Here we are 200+ years after Couvier vs Lamarck. And still Darwinistas have nothing to show other than empty words. Tome after tome of empty words. And nothing… Worse, every in-depth analysis of the promises of “evolution” show nothing but failures.
What does nonlin mean I wonder? Adaptation doesn’t happen to individuals. It is a shift in gene frequency within a population. New combinations of alleles happen at meiosis and some of those new combinations do better (depending on the niche) and spread while others do less well and disappear.
This is basic stuff. I suggest nonlin would be a more effective critic if he made a little effort to understand how evolution actually works.
Projection by empty words! 🙂
Nonlin explicitly stated that being heritable was not a requirement for his definition of adaptation, so he is definitely going to reject your “shift in gene frequencies”. You’d better adjust, Alan: Nonlin is currently stuck in a debate that occurred over two hundred years ago 😀
Corneel, your superior, just told you that you’re wrong. Listen to him if not to me.