Over at UD, we have a thread entitled:
Why does defending Darwin increasingly remind one of defending communist economics?
It features some quotes from J. William Schopf, regarding some ancient fossils that appear morphologically identical to modern microorganisms.
“It seems astounding that life has not evolved for more than 2 billion years — nearly half the history of Earth,” said J. William Schopf, a UCLA professor of earth, planetary and space sciences in the UCLA College who was the study’s lead author. “Given that evolution is a fact, this lack of evolution needs to be explained.”
and
“The rule of biology is not to evolve unless the physical or biological environment changes, which is consistent with Darwin,” said Schopf, who also is director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. The environment in which these microorganisms live has remained essentially unchanged for 3 billion years, he said.
Jerry Coyne has blogged the same topic:
At UD, Mapou has posted:
The only problem with this is that random mutations, the engine of change in Darwinian evolution, do not care whether the environment changes or not. Mutations keep occurring no matter what. You just got to love Darwinists.
Which, ironically, is the same thing Jerry Coyne says.
My question to mapou is, how does that work out for Mendel’s Account, and for kariosfocus, whose critique of evolution depends on the isolation of functional sequences and the inevitable degradation of genomes.
Maybe the intelligent designer is so inordinately fond of these microbes that he periodically infuses them with new information to offset the effects of genetic entropy.
Yeah, cause ID predicted…no wait, what did it predict?
Well, it predicted that whether the bacteria changed (noticeably) or not, they’d be designed, only not in the same way that objects observed to be designed are.
And you can’t deny that organisms aren’t like known designed objects. So there.
Glen Davidson
There’s much more to microorganisms than their superficial morphology, almost none of which can be gleaned from staring at some degraded, spherical nodules in rock.
As usual the arguments on UD are stupid and deliberately ignorant in the extreme.
Notice how, after probably 4 billion years of evolution, life is still made of cells? Hmmm.
Even worse, every living thing at least passes through a single cell stage.
This is the sort of thing that would send Larry Moran into a fit over at Sandwalk! It synonomises evolution with Natural Selection, which is indeed incorrect.
The paper’s abstract says:
Note the “if paralleled by their molecular biology”.
EVOLUTION IS A FACT. Thats hilarious that a FACT debunks the common sense observation that if a billion years can pass without evolution then its likely evolution never happened in nature.
First its not a billion years.
Second. Its so easy to say, aw shucks, it was a perfect home and no need to change! Really. that perfect. That simple explanation for waving away a important criticism of critics of evolution?!
So while bugs turn into buffaloes this stuff is done.
Evolutionism needs to have a great changing earth in every nook and corner.
How did these things miss? Where on earth, by evos standards, did things not change constantly over such time?
Evolution stopped in its tracks for any biology is a unlikely thing if evolution is true.
Such stasis should be the apple landing on the ground HUNCH.
So what you are saying, Joe, is that maybe its not really slow perhaps the molecular biology and the morphological biology do not parallel each other, so the fact that it is not really slow would support evolution.
Likewise if the morphological biology mirrors the molecular, well, that also is no problem for evolution, because that is also what you would expect.
And if really there is stasis in evolution, AGAIN, no problem for evolution, because, well, you see, the environment just hasn’t really changed much, so the best solutions for life have already been worked out billions of years ago.
What a great theory you support. It is capable and incapable of anything!
phoodoo,
So, compare and contrast with Design Theory.
There is, incidentally, no rule that says evolution MUST occur, certainly at a morphological level. Nor that its rate must be constant.
However, if mutation occurs at some level, you cannot actually turn evolution off … unless, ironically, there is selection.
Examples of stasis as evidence of the ‘failure’ of evolution are hilarious. There’s this vast global array of diversity and continuity in the rocks and in genomes … but no, look at these blue-green algae, or those cave-dwelling beetles that still have opsins! Die, evolution!
So? Many unlikely things happen.
How did intelligent design of living organisms happened? What’s the designer? How does Id explain lungs in whales and female spiders eating male spiders?
So far, ID has really proven to be a theory incapable of anything..
Phoodoo: what does it say about kariosfocus’ isolated islands of function if neutral evolution can replace a large percentage of gene coding with no effect on phenotype?
Can you do this with computer code? You ask for predictions. Does design. Theory predict neutral mutations?
I anxiously await Stephen Meyer’s next book on the subject, the premise of which will no doubt be: “rates of evolution too slow, therefore ID”.
Every indication is that rates of evolution do not vary much. Morphology can be static, and metabolism can be static, but molecular evolution chugs along. How is this possible if function is isolated on unbridged islands? Mendel’s Accountant, where is thy sting?
As opposed to his most recent book, which had the premise “rates of evolution too fast, therefore ID”.
Joe Felsenstein,
So you premise Joe, is fast, slow, stasis, change, morphological-molecular phylogeny same/ different, …all works.
Where is your space to criticize? Don’t blame Stephen Meyer because he has shown your theory has no predictive value whatsoever. He simply exposed the BS that says evolution needs a long time to occur. Now apparently any time frame is fine.
And there we have it.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s just modified information.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s just another esterase class enzyme, so not really new.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just an enzyme.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just a protein.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just a gene.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just a bacterium.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just a fish.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just an animal.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just made of cells.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still just an organism.
Bwaha evolutionists, it’s still only alive until it dies.
Where does this idiocy end?
No, if they had found a 2 billion year old rabbit we would have a problem.
No. If there really had been 2 billion years of genetic stasis, that would be a problem.
The problem here for you is you don’t have any 2 billion year old genes, you just have superficial fossil morphology, but you’re sad you don’t actually any good evidence that evolution is false, so you’re just blathering about unfalsifiability.
Let’s compare it to design:
We observe 9 billion year old human skulls in meteors: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe a stegosaurus fossil in 300 year old sediments: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe that everything fits exactly with phyletic gradualism, no missing fossils, no ambiguities in the genetic data (in other words, a perfect world for an evolutionist): Well fuck me, that’s just what the designer wanted.
We observe lots of similarities in multiple nested hierarchies:
That’s what the designer wanted.
We don’t observe ANY similarities: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe SOME similarities but no particular pattern can be gleaned from them: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe mammal fossils before bacterial fossils: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe Jesus Tomb on Mars: That’s what the designer wanted.
We observe Thor’s hammer on Titan: That’s what the designer wanted.
So phoodoo, how do we observationally falsify ID?
You betcha.
While Creationists and IDers are busy gloating about how this article allegedly shows evolutionary theory to be unfalsifiable, I don’t see them making any attempt to explain the stasis in terms of “IDT”. Where was the Designer during the multi-billion year gap between creating life and accelerating the radiation of novel body plans around the Cambrian?
I can only assume that must have been the seventh day.
We do not have molecular data for the fossils, but we do know that genes can change sequence over time without dramatic changes to function. And E.coli don’t just mutate genes. They swap genes with other microbes, changing enzymes while retaining E.coli.
If we followed the ID computer code paradigm, it would be like programs swapping object modules without losing functionality
Which — to me — means the computer code analogy is worthless. Chemistry is permissive.
Rumraket,
No – it would be interesting! 😀 An instance of absence of evolution would certainly not falsify it, any more than 1 designed creature would.
True, it would not mean that everything else for which we have good evidence it evolved, suddenly didn’t.
But contemporary evolutionary theory would have a problem explaining how it could be so, if we really had evidence that no molecular evolution took place in this organism for two billion years.
An absence of molecular evolution over that time period would certainly be troublesome to explain. You would have to look for some extremely aggressive purifying selection.
petrushka,
Or perfect replication.
The Phoodoos of the world see no contradiction between a microbe’s ability to survive for two billion years, and the predictions of Mendle’s Accountant. It wooshes right over their heads. MA is just about the only predictive tool that ID has come up with.
It is pretty close to a rule. Evolution is all about how change affecting reproductive success is the rule of nature.
THEN , they say, a billion years hoes by and NO CHANGE.
Just as it would be if no evolution happened on earth.
I say evolutionism doesn’t welcome these cases.
The claimed cases of evolution are wrong reasons for biological diversity.
the fossils are not evidence for evolution but living things that failed to evolve are evidence for failure of a hypothesis.
There was no billion. Just 6000 years.
I think bioligical change, like in people, comes from innate triggers in bodies. Its in the memory of our genetics for the body to react to important needs.
memory is everything.
Robert Byers,
Close, but not actually a rule.
Evolution recognises that replication is imperfect, and hence leads to variation, and that sampling that variation with and without bias tends towards its elimination. If replication were perfect (or selection highly targeted), evolution would not occur. The non-occurrence of evolution is a possible consequence of replication – just as is the occurrence of evolution. Two sides of one coin. Replication is the essence.
Evolutionism really couldn’t give a damn. If every lineage showed evidence of perpetual stasis, there might be an issue. There would be no evolution, but then there wouldn’t be any need for a theory of evolution either. Separate creation with perfect polymerases and no mutagens is a possibility, but it would not explain what we find.
So the entire hypothesis fails because of a few unproven exceptions – for example, blue green algae and one protein in one species of beetle? Gimme a break.
Unfortunatly for evolutionists darwinism do not become falsifiable if ID do not, darwinism do not increase predictability if ID do not, darwinism do not become science if ID do not.
To me the big question about this bacteria is how many years you need to evolve a bacteria that do not major changes in 2000 Mya? How many years the common ancestor of the whale and this bacteria needs to become this bacteria?
So how many years between the origin of life and the first species of sulfur-metabolizing bacteria? Hard question to answer, among other reasons because we don’t know with great certainty when the origin of life happened. Estimates range between 4.4 to 3.8 billion years for the origin of life. To give an approximate answer you’d have to see if you can find publications that seek to establish the origin of sulfur-metabolising bacteria or archaea and subtract the age from the age of the origin of life.
The common ancestor of whales and bacteria lived approximately 3.5 billion years ago.
All this is true, “Darwinism” is unrelated to ID.
Robert Byers,
So when you put a bunch of people on, say, a boat, and give them no fruit or fresh veg, in what way do they consistently react to their need for Vitamin C?
Blas,
Blas, there is a difference between unfalsifiable and unfalsified. ID is unfalsifiable. Evolution has yet to be falsified. There are many things that could, in principle, falsify evolution – for example, if it were discovered that no genetic change ever occurred, or that there was absolutely no signal of genetic continuity between species or higher taxa. Of course, that isn’t the case. Deep genetic sequencing and phylogenetic analysis was actually a triumph for ‘Darwinism’, because it confirmed common descent in spades, some 100+ years on from the Origin and Darwin’s very uncertain genetics.
Communist economics? About which Denyse knows … what in Toronto?
The conversation takes a turn with the inclusion of non-evolutionary change-over-time. Since change is the master category, non-evolutionary change takes many names. What are those names? After that, the question is frame and scale shifting (from myr to seconds or moments & also thinking spatially).
You may ask Denyse about her headlines at her site. Here, I am asking a different question.
What on earth do you mean by non-evolutionary change?
Neutral change? Neutral Drift?
Well, he should speak for himself, but in the past Gregory has been primarliy concerned with the inappropriateness of using biological evolution as a framework to describe cultural change. So presumably that is what he is alluding to.
The hypothesis is dealt a blow by the unlikely fact of no evolutionary change in the timelines that evolution thrives on.
You say evolution is fine with stasis .
A billion years? It revolved to year one then it was done until now.
Indeed variation is a result of reproduction and yet no selection AT ALL!!!
Just a perfect fit. In many cases and more to be found.
climate, endless sediment loads being deposited everywhere, predation, moving continents but this thing was unimpressed. Just fine.
Very unlikely in a hypothesis that is a very unlikely explanation for bio origins.
Evolution says its a simple matter for selection on mutations, them aplenty a going on everywhere, to redesign biology items. In mere millions of years doing a lot.
Yet a billion did nothing for this and that.
Evolution does not welcome these cases surely. It hints something is wrong with the hypothesis.
byers, here you are again with your YEC ‘lines of reasoning’. According to you, ‘lines of reasoning’ are biased and worthless, and the only thing that matters is biological evidence (“gooey stuff'” in your lingo). So, where’s your gooey stuff evidence that supports all of your beliefs and claims? Let’s see it.
Start with the gooey stuff evidence of your chosen, so-called ‘God’s’ existence, followed by the gooey stuff evidence of the existence of jesus and moses, the exodus, the garden of eden, a talking serpent, the flud, 900+ year old people, the 6,000 year age of Earth, etc., etc., etc.
Yes, it’s much more likely that Jesus did it, agreed.
Robert Byers,
Yes, evolution is fine with stasis. It’s not at all proven that morphological stasis = genetic stasis anyway, but let’s just say it is, for the hell of it. What then? You have a handful of examples of such stasis. If there were nothing but stasis there would be a problem (but then, no need for a ToE to explain the pattern, because the pattern the ToE explains is not there). But once evoluion has adapted an organism as far as it can, there isn’t really any driver for it to keep adapting. When you’re the best, how would you get better?
You need to find some rabbits of contemporaneous age with the blue-green algae, then you might have something. Evolutionary theory would be troubled by universal non-evolution, but hardly by a few instances – with NO molecular data. When the molecular data of ‘living fossils’ are investigated, we find clear evidence of evolution, static outer form notwithstanding.
Expecting blue-green algae to be troubled by continents moving is an import from your impossibly-fast view of things. Continents move at 2-10 cm a year. That’s probably slower than the growth rate of a blue-green algal filament.
Aside from the fact that a good deal of genetic change likely has occurred in the sulfur bacteria, the real evolutionary issue is, how did these sulfur bacteria end up like all other organisms on earth, related to all other life and very much showing the sort of extreme derivation that one would expect from evolution? Gee, I wonder, could it be evolution?
Show how the kinds of inheritance patterns and intensely derivative nature of these sulfur bacteria arises from anything but inheritance and derivation, and then you’ll finally have some kind of alternative explanation. Without that, you just have a lot of lame carping about the one real explanation that can actually account for sulfur bacteria being related to all other life in the manner expected from common ancestry with modification.
Not that Robert is likely to follow such lines of reasoning, but will merely follow up with unrelated lines of unreasoning, as per the usual.
Glen Davidson
Superficially Archaea and bacteria look exactly the same. They cannot be told apart from their size or body morphology alone. But internally their genes, structures and biochemistry almost couldn’t be more different. They have been diverging for over 3.5 billion years.
Notice what Nick Lane says about 5 minutes into this video.
Allan Miller,
Well I can only say the exceptions here are a test of the hypothesis of evolution and it fails big time.
So much time, so much claimed change in everyone else, and so much action on earth and yet a billion couldn’t do it. So would another billion?
Selection eas dormant and genetic change without select also non existent and somethings wrong here.
I think these examples never changed only because the examples are from a few thousand years ago in fossil form and they are things that can live anywhere.
The rest of biology simply changed in minor ways etc from original kinds due to some needs. Not evolution by selection on mutation.
Creationism would predict these cases and its helpful to make a good case of how unlikely evolution is as a mechanism.
GlenDavidson,
Common design predicts any common basic or special reactions in biology.
Seeing like laws in biology is not evidence of common descent. Its a hunch that was not tested with the common design option.
ICR in its acts and facts last/and this momnths issue(on the internet free0 also teaches this important concept about how common design not being included when testing evo hypothesis based on looking at like looks and concluding like common descent means it is a failure as a scientific investigation.
Of course it was tested, and it failed. Biologists weren’t impressed with Paley even before Darwin, because so much in life makes no sense from a design standpoint.
Why do bat wings have a very basic commonality with fish’s lobed-fins, pterosaur wings, bird wings, and dolphin fins, but no commonality with bird wings or pterosaur wings with respect to flight characteristics (apart from aerodynamic essentials)? Why is there commonality of some traits, yet complete non-commonality in other traits, throughout life, in just the patterns expected of inheritance with modification and without the patterns seen in designed objects?
Why does the same type of derivation that indicates “microevolution” not indicate “macroevolution,” except for a lack of intellectual consistency? If it made sense to say that Darwin’s Finches show common design–which they don’t–it would also make sense to say that dolphins and manatees show common design–which they don’t. The problem with both cases is that they in fact betray patterns of inheritance with change, and not the freedom of derivation that design embodies.
Unfortunately, Robert will merely repeat the same nonsense about “common design” without hope for an end, because he neither pays attention to what we write nor even understands the points. Repeating non sequiturs is all that he knows.
Glen Davidson
Robert Byers,
You can say that, but you would be wrong. The ‘hypothesis of evolution’ is that diversity, the nested hierarchy of morphological and molecular traits, and apparent change in fossils, are explained by descent with modification. If there are a few instances which really show stasis (unproven, since only superficial morphology is tested), there is simply nothing for evolution to explain.
Who knows. You focus our microscopes on the blue-green algae, completely ignoring the vast majority of species which have NO close identity with a fossil example (though they frequently have clear similarity).
Yes – your understanding. You have no evidence that selection was dormant, nor that genetic change without selection did not happen.
How come they are very much the exception rather than the rule? Oh, here we go, the ad hoc Byers ‘hypothesis’:
So stasis is good for Creationism. Change is also good for Creationism. For lo:
Because … well, blue-green algae.
Robert Byers,
Common design is a joke.
If a cell is genetically identical to its sibling, the hypothesis that they were both made that way is not even worth considering, given that there is a mechanism by which the genetic material is duplicated – common descent. Moving out from species, ‘like needs’ may seem a plausible alternative account for superficial similarities among closely related species of similar form and habit, but it soon loses traction with deeper taxonomic divides. There is no physiological reason for the cytochrome c’s of whales to more closely resemble those of pigs, hippos and deer than (say) seals and manatees, nor for those of whales to be closer to deer than deer are to pigs, and so on.
And there is even less reason for the variations in underlying DNA which lead to identical versions of a protein to follow this exact pattern. Less reason still to expect that (for example) transposon insertion sites should follow this hierarchic pattern too, due to ‘like needs’. Scientists don’t include the ‘common design’ hypothesis because they aren’t morons. Common descent has been tested again and again and again, and wins every time.