The Problem With Evolution

ChronWatch ^ | 09/25/05 | Edward L. Daley

[DARCPRYNCE]

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection.

However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is often referred to as the Cambrian Explosion, and even Darwin knew about the lack of evidence in the fossil record to support his theory a century and a half ago.

[bobdsmith]

Perhaps it is more likely that noone believed him because he had no evidence - you said yourself he couldn't propose where the water came from.

Geologists don't assume that the earth forms by a gradual process only. Gradual is the overall theme, but it incorperates local catastrophic events along the way.

[Mylo]

Why rely upon logic when a big fat conspiracy theory will do just as well?

[bobdsmith]

The other day I was watching the hummingbirds after the cardinal flowers. The blur of the wings, the angling balance of the tail, the hovering, the fearlessness of humans, moving backwards and downwards like a helicopter...no other bird can do these things. No other bird is so small, or burns so much fuel. So, where's the "in between " bird and hummingbird--? For such differences to emerge, you'd need several "missing links."

Sure and not all missing links will be found. Fossils are rare. Bird fossils are especially rare. But there is recent evidence of hummingbird characteristics in non-hummingbirds in the fossil record:

It's this logical problem that I don't hear addressed, or the question I always ask - how do you evolve an immune system while you're busy trying to evolve a beating heart? And eyes, and the skin...the computer-hormone chemical system that makes an organism's organs all "talk" to one another?

I don't see the problem with different organs evolving in parallel. What would stop eyes evolving at the same time as the heart?

And don't you always need a Mrs. to go with your newly-evolved Mr. Species?

Not if Mr can reproduce asexually.

Why hasn't centuries of breeding livestock, in geographic isolation, not produced a new species of something? If it happens so readily by accident, why can't it be reproduced on purpose?

Why would speciation be more likely to occur in captivity than in the wild? I think the answer is that speciation of animals generally takes a lot of time.

[Mamzelle]

re: Not if Mr can reproduce asexually.)))

LOL! What a silly remark. Obviously the most interesting, complex, and diversified mammals reproduce sexually, and the theory of evolution and speciation is supposed to account for the existence of sexually-reproducing organisms.

IOW---speak for yourself, Mr. ....

My hummingbird was just an example of the problem of "in betweens"--the most obvious "in between" difficulty is mankind.

re: I don't see the problem with different organs evolving in parallel. What would stop eyes evolving at the same time as the heart?)))

The organism would choke and die while trying on contact lenses. Continually silly...

re: Why would speciation be more likely to occur in captivity than in the wild? I think the answer is that speciation of animals generally takes a lot of time.)))

Evos claim that speciation occurs in the wild. If speciation occurs by accident, it ought to be able to be duplicated on purpose. As for time, domesticated animals have been bred to specfication for thousands of years on separate continents. That is, a laboratory of significant history. You'd think, under ideal conditions, that at least one accident would have happened.

Not enough time, eh? Well, that's the stock answer. Billions and billions of years and it'll happen. All these fortuitious accidents in perfect fortuitous order, and not only that....but parallel fortuitous accidents (the lens of the eye) happening with perfect fortuitous cooperation (the circulatory system)...

It's just too absurd for words.

[Mylo]

It happens all the time. New species are discovered every day, and new speciation events have been seen in nature and in the lab. They are most commonly seen in plants.

[Ichneumon]

ID does not disregard the fossil evidence. In fact, it explains it better than Evolution does.

Say WHAT?!? Please support this amazing statement. We'll wait.

Which are no different, fundamentally, than the evolution story, which is just as unsupported by the facts.

ROFL! Okay, feel free to support *this* one was well. How did you ever arrive at the ludicrous conclusion that evolution is "just as unsupported by the facts"?

Be sure to explain how, exactly, the massive DNA evidence for evolution (along dozens of independently confirming lines) is, you allege, not actually support for evolution. This should be really amusing.

Yet, the physical evidence does not support the theory that life came about completely by random chance, out of lifeless chemicals, and then evolved into many different organisms.

...because...? Funny, it sure *looks* that way to the people who are most intimately acquainted with the physical evidence -- over 99% of biologists accept the validity of evolution, based on the evidence.

Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about?

Furthermore, just because science cannot prove the existence of a creator doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. It simply means that human beings have limited abilities to discover the nature of life.

Exactly so, just as the fact that science cannot prove the existence of unicorns doesn't mean that one doesn't exist.

[Ichneumon]

However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago

Wow, what a bald-faced lie. Birds are a "major animal group", and they didn't appear before 150 million years ago. Nor did they appear "fully formed" at that time.

Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about?

And no, dishonestly calling phylum-level taxa "the major animal groups" doesn't fix your lie either, because first, they are not equivalent as you dishonestly (cluelessly?) claim, and second, they hardly appeared "fully formed". Compared to today's "major animal groups", they appear extremely "incompletely formed" -- the earliest vertebrates appear not as cats or crocodiles or birds, they appear as a primitive chordate which most resembles a finned worm. Say hello to your distant ancestor:

That's hardly a "fully formed" mammal, bird, reptile, or fish, now, is it?

Again, I really must ask: Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about? Or are you just knowingly lying?

[LiteKeeper]

How many people were murdered by government leaders convinced of the truth of evoultion, and thus that there was no God? In excess of 135 million in the 2oth century alone: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

Democide

[Ichneumon]

It's just too absurd for words.

The only thing absurd is your multiple misunderstandings and misrepresentations of evolutionary biology. Perhaps you might want to *learn* something about the topic before you attempt to critique it again.

For just one example, you write:

Evos claim that speciation occurs in the wild. If speciation occurs by accident, it ought to be able to be duplicated on purpose. As for time, domesticated animals have been bred to specfication for thousands of years on separate continents. That is, a laboratory of significant history. You'd think, under ideal conditions, that at least one accident would have happened. Not enough time, eh? Well, that's the stock answer. Billions and billions of years and it'll happen.

Um, gee, Einstein, you mean like the way that mankind has created countless new species of domestic plants and animals from their wild ancestral species? Please engage brain before posting next time.

Here's another "too absurd for words" argument from your post:

and not only that....but parallel fortuitous accidents (the lens of the eye) happening with perfect fortuitous cooperation (the circulatory system)...

Lenses evolved before the circulatory system, and did so just fine, thank you. By what failure of understanding did you arrive at the erroneous conclusion that they had to be "perfectly fortuitous" together?

Or were you incoherently trying to say that the lens had to "perfectly fortuitously" arise at the exact same instant as the eye, and that the modern vertebrate circulatory system could only successfully arise "all at once" or not at all? Wrong *AGAIN*, as anyone who has ever bothered to *learn* a tiny bit about biology before they spouted off about it would already know, which of course leaves out the great majority of the anti-evolutionary creationists...

[Right Wing Professor]

The other day I was watching the hummingbirds after the cardinal flowers. The blur of the wings, the angling balance of the tail, the hovering, the fearlessness of humans, moving backwards and downwards like a helicopter...no other bird can do these things. No other bird is so small, or burns so much fuel. So, where's the "in between " bird and hummingbird--? For such differences to emerge, you'd need several "missing links."

There are no hummingbirds in Hawai'i. There are, in fact, very few kinds of bird; there is however one subfamily, called the honeycreepers, which arrived there maybe 10 million years ago, and had very little competition, so they diversified. And the honeycreepers, although they are finches, evolved a bird called the I'iwi. It's small, brightly colored, and very pugnacious, just like a hummingbird. He feeds from flowers, hovers, and has a long down-curved bill, just like a hummingbird. Yet, genetically, he's clearly a finch.

There are other honeycreepers that look and act like ordinary finches; others that look and act like woodpeckers. They're an entire family of missing links.

But if you're really interested in hummingbird evolution, this is about fossil hummingbirds.

It's this logical problem that I don't hear addressed, or the question I always ask--how do you evolve an immune system while you're busy trying to evolve a beating heart?

Why one and and then the other?

[Ichneumon]

When attempting to understand evolution and evolutionists, I get very hung up on the "betweens" that do not exist in nature (or the fossil record, as far as I know.)

I've highlighted the key phrase in your above statement...

It's also instructive to note that the most popular creationist "missing links" of years gone by have all actually been subsequently found (whales with legs, snakes with legs, multiple intermediate stages of bird evolution, etc.) If you're still "hung up on" the few cases you can desperately grasp for which haven't yet been found, instead of getting a clue from the many that *have* been found in accordance with the predictions of evolutionary biology (and in violation of the predictions of the *creationists*), well, that's *your* personal problem.

The other day I was watching the hummingbirds after the cardinal flowers. The blur of the wings, the angling balance of the tail, the hovering, the fearlessness of humans, moving backwards and downwards like a helicopter...no other bird can do these things. No other bird is so small, or burns so much fuel. So, where's the "in between " bird and hummingbird--? For such differences to emerge, you'd need several "missing links."

And there are. Happy now? Or will you just blythley blow that one off and then grasp for *another* possible "gap" you can cling to?

It's this logical problem that I don't hear addressed, or the question I always ask--how do you evolve an immune system while you're busy trying to evolve a beating heart?

By evolving one before the other. Many organisms survive just fine with one and not the other. Where did you get the erroneous impression that they are somehow "required" to both be present for survival?

And eyes, and the skin...

See above. Same answer. Try to learn some biology before you attempt to critique it.

the computer-hormone chemical system that makes an organism's organs all "talk" to one another?

One stage at a time, of course. Evolution proceeds by building on what came before. Your lack of imagination is not a restriction upon nature's possibilities.

And don't you always need a Mrs. to go with your newly-evolved Mr. Species?

Sigh... You have not one, but *two* extremely elementary misconceptions in your question.

First, *populations* evolve, not individuals.

Second, "newly evolved species" do not arise *poof* in one generation. They are the result of multiple mutations accumulating in a population across *many* generations, until eventually the whole breeding population has acquired the new set of mutations. Any one of the mutations individually is neither large enough to "make" a new species by itself, nor create a barrier to interbreeding.

This is Evolutionary Biology 101. Go buy a book or something.

Why hasn't centuries of breeding livestock, in geographic isolation, not produced a new species of something?

It has.

If it happens so readily by accident, why can't it be reproduced on purpose?

It has.

I did study some biology, and believe that it is really impossible to study life without using the "tree of life" theory as a paradigm to illustrate the interrelatedness of organisms.

Apparently *not*, since you seem to misunderstand the subject so badly, and can't even get the most basic things about it correct.

And the "scientists" themselves use language dogmatic, patronizing and unscientific.

...only in response to know-nothings who attempt to "lecture" the scientists about their own field of study, and "disprove" it using stuff from clueless creationist tracts instead of actual knowledge of the subject. Know anyone like that?

Hmm, you're sounding pretty "dogmatic, patronizing and unscientific" yourself.

They don't speak in terms of "best reasonable explanation"--

Yes, they do.

but insist that you believe--

Horse manure. Feel free to believe any silly thing you want. What *will* get a scientist pretty testy, however, is when people who really haven't any clue what in the hell they're talking about attempt to "disprove" evolutionary biology loudly and stridently, and spread complete falsehoods about the subject, and try to use the courts to force psuedoscience into classrooms, and...

Look, believe what you want, but when someone spouts lies or disinformation -- about evolution or any other subject -- they should rightly expect to get slammed for it.

[js1138]

And don't you always need a Mrs. to go with your newly-evolved Mr. Species?

Not if Mr can reproduce asexually.

Incomplete answer. Evolution is a phenomenon of populations, not individuals. There is never a first member of a new species looking for a mate,

[Right Wing Professor]

How many people were murdered by government leaders convinced of the truth of evoultion, and thus that there was no God? In excess of 135 million in the 2oth century alone: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

[Ichneumon]

How many people were murdered by government leaders convinced of the truth of evoultion, and thus that there was no God? In excess of 135 million in the 2oth century alone: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

First, it's completely and obviously false to claim that being "convinced of the truth of evolution" is "thus" to believe that "there is no God". And as I recall, you've already been informed of this before, and it has been pointed out to you that the obvious falseness of this idiotic claim is made clear by the fact that the *majority* of Americans who are "convinced of the truth of evolution" are actually *Christians*.

So please explain your continued use of false claims. Isn't bearing false witness one of the Ten Commandments?

Second, I hate to be the one to have to intrude upon your fantasy with inconvenient facts, but in actuality Hitler leaned on *God* as support for his "ethnic cleansing":

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Hitler's own handwritten notes, drawing an outline of his philosophy:

Hitler divided his study into five sections:

1. The Bible
2. The Aryan
3. His Works
4. The Jew
5. His Work

Under the first section, "The Bible -- Monumental History of Mankind", he lists these topics (among others): "2 human types-- Workers and drones-- Builders and destroyers", "Race Law", "First people's history (based on) the race law-- Eternal course of History".

So it seems that Hitler was actually basing his racial view of mankind on *Biblical* foundations.

Nazi SS belt buckle, with motto "Gott mit uns [God is with us]":

Nazi propaganda paper:

The headline reads, "Declaration of the Higher Clergy/So spoke Jesus Christ". The caption under the cartoon of the marching Hitler Youth reads, "We youth step happily forward facing the sun... With our faith we drive the devil from the land." And as for the communists you mention, if evolution was supposedly the foundation of communism, then I guess Marx had a time machine: Darwin's book on evolution ("Origin of Species"): 1859. Marx's book on communism ("Communist Manifesto"): 1848. What's wrong with this picture?

Hint: If Communism is founded on evolution, then how did Marx lay out the blueprint for Communism eleven years *before* Darwin had ever published his eye?

Nice try.

[Ichneumon]

We may have just a bit of that kind of groupthink going on these days, whatcha think?

I think you're unaware of the vast mountains of evidence which support evolutionary biology, in dozens of independently cross-confirming ways, and thus all you're left with is imagining that it's just a popular notion that hasn't already been validated and revalidated countless thousands of times.

[AZConcervative]

First, Josephus discusses a man that was referred to as the Christ by his followers on multiple occassions. First, in The Antiquities he describes how the high priest Ananias took advantage of the Roman governor Festus- who is also referred in the New Testament- in order to have James killed. His exact words were, "He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others...and delivered them up to be stoned."

He also wrote in the "Testimonium Flavianum", "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amaong us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to lovehim, did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he returned to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

Other accepted historians (Tacitus and Pliny the Younger to name a couple) also refer to Christianity quite explicitly, feel free to do the research.

The reality is that the bible itself is an unarguable historical document as of yet to be proven innaccurate. Many archeologists follow it with great success. There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

There is no srgument from any well educated individual as to whther Christ lived, the point of contention is, was Jesus who he claimed to be? I ask you, does it make any sense that so many thousands, so close to his time would have died the horrible tortures, stonings, or crucifictions all in the name of a lie. A few, maybe even a few hundred, but not the thousands that did.

Whether Jews, Muslim, or Christian, most all refer to Jesus, if not as Christ as a great prophet. My argument to you would be that he either was God or he was a complete wack job. He would not then be a prophet, he would be a fraud.

I pray that you may soon see the truth.

[Ichneumon]

And don't you always need a Mrs. to go with your newly-evolved Mr. Species?

Oh, what the heck... As elementary as this misconception is, it's practically universal among creationists (who are the experts at "elementary misconceptions", at least when it comes to the biology they're ill-equipped to attack), so it seems now might be a good time to repost a few of my prior posts explaining how new species *actually* arise in evolutionary biology (instead of in the creationist cartoon-version).

I know evolutionists believe that the changes occurred gradually. My point was at some point man was fully man. Unless every single creature gained that full manness at the same time, he was mating with something that would have been less (even if it only slightly less) human than he was.

Okay, let's see if I can explain it this way...

First, part of your confusion (in this, and in a lot of other topics in this thread) comes from your insistence on declaring that things must be 100% A or 100% B. The living world is not so black and white. The range of living things is a continuum more often than it's either/or. And not just across time, either -- several people have asked you to ponder the existence of "ring species", but I haven't seen you tackle it yet.

Furthermore, creationists often fail to appreciate the significance of the "nested hierarchies" of living things. It's as incorrect to say that a specific creature must be *either* a human *or* an ape as it is to say that a creature must be *either* a lion *or* a cat. Ponder that one for a moment, and then you'll be ready to understand the point of the essay You Are an Ape. Please read it.

Finally, even if you cling to the view that there's some "required" combination of genetic differences which, as soon as they're acquired, turn a "mere ape" into a "human", *bang*, that still doesn't make the evolution of one into the other a problem, or create any "breeding impossibilities". Here's how it works...

First, keep in mind that even if the "special" combination of genes which make primate DNA be considered human DNA has to all be present before *you'd* finally agree to label the resulting organism "finally human", a creature with only, say, 99% of those genes would still look pretty darned human and not so "classicly" apelike, since it would consist of 99% of the things that "separate" humans from apes. It'd only be missing one little thing out of the full set, so only one part of it would still be "apish" -- for example maybe it'd have more of a protruding brow than most people but all other human characterstics.

The other thing to keep in mind is that any one (or five, or fifty, or...) genetic differences is usually not enough to prevent interbreeding. The genetic differences just "mix and match" in members of the popuation, in the same way that both the blue-eyed gene and the brown-eyed gene swirl through human populations without any big deal.

So now that you've got some of the background, the way in which an "ape" population would evolve into a "human" population is straightforward. At some time a mutation X1 appears in the birth of a member of the population which offers some small advantage by virtue of being a small improvement (which in this example happens to bring the individual slightly closer to the advantages of being "humanlike"). The change is likely to be barely noticeable to those around him, perhaps he stands just slightly more upright, or has a slightly larger brain, or his hands are just a bit more talented, or he can voice a slightly wider range of sounds -- whatever. It's due to a small DNA change within him which just happens, by luck, to make a biochemical improvement to a particular protein in his body in a way that makes some function in his body perform just a touch better than was possible without the change. So, unlike many other mutations in the population, which made no difference, or the ones which caused damage to the functioning of the affected individual and got weeded out by natural selection, the individual who was lucky enough to receive X1 does a little better than the others in his species, and passes on his new X1 gene when he has children.

But wait, you ask, he's a "mutant", wouldn't that prevent him from mating with all the rest of the population since they don't have X1? No, it wouldn't, any more than your brown-eyed gene would prevent you from having children with a blue-eyed man. The "owner" of X1 mates with a woman who has the original form of the gene, call it Q1. Due to ordinary genetics, each of their children will have 2 X1's, or 2 Q1's, or 1 X1 and 1 Q1, by random chance. But because X1 gives a survival boost, more of the children who drew X1's from the genetic deck will have their own children than those who missed out. And so on and so on across generations, causing X1 to become more and more prevalent in the population than the competing "obsolete" Q1. Statistically, eventually X1 will "fix" in the population by virtue of being the only variety of that gene existing in the population, the Q1's having gone extinct when the last few individuals who still had a Q1 either didn't manage to have children, or had children but their children drew X1's from their parents genetic "deck".

So now the whole population is made of individuals with X1 genes and no Q1 genes.

Repeat this process for X2, another gene change which is a step along the road from "apeness" to "humanness". Then for X3, and X4, and... Finally, at some point the population will have genes X1 through X(N-1) out of the N genes which you believe are required to make them "fully human". They already look and behave pretty much entirely human, since they have almost every genetic feature which makes a species human, but you're still unwilling to declare them human because they're missing X(N), the last gene of the set. Okay, fine -- repeat the process I described above about X1 to gene mutation X(N). The first individual which gets that mutation is now "fully human" in your book. Hooray for him. However, he really isn't noticeably different from the other members of his species, since he only varies from them by a single genetic difference. So other than being the guy (or girl) who loses that last tiny remnant of "apeness" which is barely even noticeable in the population (maybe jaws on average protrude just 3% more than his or his offspring will), he has no problem having children with the mate of his choice, because they only differ by a single mutation. And eventually his X(N) gene spreads through the population over the next fifty generations until the old-style Q(N) gene gets replaced by it, and all of his kind are now 100% human instead of 99.9% human as they had been before the X(N) mutation.

And note that all the above is *standard* population genetics, *extremely* well established as ordinary processes which occur all the time in nature. It's not just an "imagine if" story.

Also note that I've simplified it somewhat by implying that, for example, mutation X46 wouldn't happen until mutation X45 had finished "fixing" in the population. Instead, it's just as easy for it to occur and be spreading into the population *while* X45 is in the process of doing so as well, for example. But this just makes the process even *more* likely, not less. There are always multiple sets of alleles floating around in populations without ill effect -- if there weren't we'd all be identical and homozygous clones.

Frankly, though, I don't think we're fully human *yet* -- if nothing else, we really need to get rid of the ape genes we still carry that cause these damned wisdom teeth which fit nicely and were useful in the longer ape jaw but just get jammed up and cause health problems in the rear of our smaller more human jaw. It looks as if we're still waiting for X(N) and haven't quite gotten the "full human" transformation finished just yet...

And:

Oh my, where to start... At the top, I suppose. You start with, "The definition of a species is that it can't reproduce with anything outside the species." No, this is incorrect. While it's true that if two groups *can't* interbreed, they are necessarily separate species, the converse is not true. Groups that can interbreed to some degree can still be separate species. Consider lions and tigers, for example. A better definition is that species are groups that *don't* interbreed to any large degree. A more technical way to put it is that they are independent breeding populations. But there are exceptions and gray areas -- this is because nature itself does not recognize the "species" concept. It's a manmade label applied for convenience and utility to certain groups. If Darwin was right, there should not be clear-cut distinctions between groups as they are in the process of diverging evolutionarily. And indeed, this is exactly what we find, which is why there's no "one definition fits all situations" meaning for "species". Groups like "ring species" throw a monkeywrench into any "nice and neat" definition of "species" that humans might care to try to formulate, for example. Nature is nowhere near that tidy.

But even leaving that aside, your idea about how a population can split into two distinct species (even by your definition) is a wildly incorrect misconception about how it actually works.

You have two major misconceptions and wrapped them around each other.

The first is that species formation involves a sudden "freak" with a massive mutation that occurs in a single individual in one generation. Nope, wrong. This is widely snickered at in the biological community as the "hopeful monster" scenario. But it's not how evolution proceeds.

Your second misconception is that having a different number of chromosomes would prevent successful mating. It doesn't. Or at least it needn't, depending on the nature of the difference, and there are many known cases where it doesn't. For example, the Przewalski horse, which has 33 chromosomes, and the domestic horse, with 32 chromosomes (due to a fusion), are able to mate and produce fertile offspring.

A third misconception, a combination of your first two, is that speciation requires anything like an "extra" chromosome. It doesn't.

What actually happens (or at least in most cases -- as in my earlier discussion of the definition of "species", nature is flexible and abounds with variations, and refuses to follow any one "script" in every single case) is that accumulated small changes in a population diverge if from a parent population.

Note for example that there is no one "big mutation" separating humans from our nearest extant cousins, the chimps. There are *thousands* of genetic differences, as one would expect after five million years of divergent evolution between the two groups. Heck, there are hundreds of genetic differences between *human* groups, and we share common ancestors a lot more recently.

[Sidebar: However, the nature of any one specific difference considered by itself is minor and of the type one would expect to be produced by evolution. There are no portions of the human -- or chimp -- genome which are so different that they seem "completely rewritten", or "written fresh on the drawing table" when compared with the other group. Both the human genome and the chimp genome have been completely sequenced and are available on several online databases. I challenge any creationist to compare any portions of the two and look for any difference between them which are "unique", or are major minor variations from the other to be of the sort -- in both amount and kind -- which one would not statistically expect to result merely from five million years of evolutionary "drift". Good luck! None have been found so far by anyone, but hey, maybe you could be the first.]

One genetic mutation does not a new species make (again, usually). Often *hundreds* are not enough, as proven by the many genetic differences occurring even within human populations.

Instead, it takes *many*, *many* accumulated mutational differences to separate one population from another to a degree large enough to warrant describing the two as different species, and/or to interfere significantly with their ability/willingness to reliably interbreed.

So the answer to your question is simple: Speciation does not occur in a single generation by one mother suddently giving birth, *poof*, to an offspring so mutated that it's a "new species" from its mother, and unable to interbreed with the rest of its (sort of) kind. Instead, subpopulations of a larger population (often separated by distance, geography, or other barriers) each accumulate genetic differences apart from each other as new mutations accumulate separately in each subpopulation, each mutationoccurring originally in a single individual then spreading through the subpopulation in succeeding generations (while detrimental mutations get constantly weeded out by natural select, and beneficial mutations get "amplifed" by it), until eventually the two populations are different enough from each other in their overall genetic makeup so that morphologically they are obviously different "subtypes" of creatures even to the unaided eye, and no longer reliably interbreed with each other.

And yes, there are countless field studies and genetic studies and all sorts of other studies which have established the reality of this, it's not just a hypothetical scenario.

And:

I'm no expert (this will become obvious momentarily) so I've always been puzzled about one thing. At a certain point a mother gives birth to a child with a different genetic code, right? Fine, but let's say the child is a female. My question is; where does the male come from with the same genetic code to propagate this new species? Or is it a horse + donkey = mule type of thing where the species are similar enough to carry on. My ignorance on this is great so I would appreciate any answers you could provide?

You're asking the wrong person, allow me...

The answer is that it's not a matter of having "same" or "different" genetic code. Every human being has a different, unique genetic code (that's why DNA matching works in criminal cases). But obviously we can still interbreed.

No "exact match" of DNA is required to interbreed, just "close enough".

And the short answer to your question (there are all sorts of fascinating complicating details) is that when a population (usually, an isolated *subpopulation*) of species X is evolving towards becoming species Y, the amount of genetic change per generation is small enough that each member of the population can continue to interbreed with the rest of the population, even if it has a mutation that hasn't yet spread to the rest of the population.

Over several generations its novel mutation does spread through the population and becomes ubiquitous in the population, and thus when the next novel mutation pops up in the population, everyone's already on the same "page" with respect to the last one, and the new mutation is no more hindrance to interbreeding than the last one originally was.

Rinse, repeat, etc.

Eventually number of novel mutations in the population becomes so large that even though the population itself can still interbreed (because they all "evolved together" into species Y through genetic exchange), the population is "enough different" DNA-wise that it will no longer be able to interbreed with members of the *original* population of species X it split off from (which itself may be relatively unchanged, or evolved off in a different direction itself).

This is how one species splits into two (or more), each "daughter" species unable to mate with its "sister" species, yet always able to breed with itself at every stage along the way.

Look back a few posts for a discussion of "ring species", whereby each subgroup along a "ring" around a mountain or whatever is still able to interbreed with its "neighbor" subgroups on the ring, but when the far "arms" of the ring meet each arm has changed enough genetically that they are unable to mate at the point where they "meet up" on the other side of the geographic obstacle. This works in a way similar to my description above -- each subgroup is "not too different" from its neighbors to interbreed, but over the whole extent of the line/ring, the far "ends" have diverged enough from each other to be unable to mate. Same thing, basically.

[Right Wing Professor]

Yeah, that representative republican form of government can be a real bitch, especially if you don't have the majority.

That's why we have the Constitution, to protect us from the tyranny of the mob.

[claptrap]

You are so right in fact you are evidence yourself
no feeling thinking entity could have created such a
faithful creature following the edicts of select
group of humanoids blest with knowledge far superior
to any bible thumping pew warmer. You must have congealed from primordial ooze gathering cells and various parts until you now are ,all just chance, sort of tornado in
a junkyardish.

[claptrap]

Why does anyone who is mainstream bother coming here?
Why not postulate your junk science to mind numbed
robots of the leftist communists who desire not God
but are determined to be gods to themselves.
Face it the earth and sky cry out the existence of
God, you and the evo-fools just seek to deny God
the honor and worship only he deserves.
Besides fossil evidence is tripe stalagtites can form in as little time as fourteen years and petrify. So literally
anything could be a fossil.