[PatrickHenry]

Everybody be nice.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping The List-O-Links

A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 390 names. See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped. To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit, and How to argue against a scientific theory.

[Coyoteman]

===> Placemarker <===

[Ol' Sparky]

What laughable, horse manure. More grasping straws in an attempt to prop a theory that is a total failure. Nevermind, how many times evolutionists have made fools out of themselves promoting "evidence" that has ended up being debunked.

Evolution happened so fast it didn't leave any fossil evidence. In fact, the fossil record matches the CREATIONIST MODEL OF THE EARTH -- species appear suddenly and fully formed in the fossil record. Evolution is a religion, accepted on blind faith alone so evolutionists don't need any credible physical evidence.

Of course, there has to be a genetic mechanism by which evolution is possible. There needs to be mechanism by which information can be added to the genetic codes of lower organism in order for the lower organisms to develop into higher forms of life. Mutations are the only means by which that is possible. Yet, mutations are 99% detrimental and not ONE has ever been solely beneficial.

Take all this secular, atheistic propaganda to liberal websites and stopped wasting our time here. Become a liberal if you must, just keep such lies off FR.

[RoadTest]

Syncopated Prevarication

[VadeRetro]

You can bet certain people will grab that Futuyma quote on molecular clocks without ever processing the rest of the article into their heads.

[samtheman]

Some creationists and IDers like to see themselves as rebels taking on the Scientific Establishment of Evolution. In fact, scientific success often does breed a kind of institutional resistance to change and that did happen in Biology and the Theory of Evolution when the philosophical inclination to believe that "all change is both gradual and adaptive" became the established creed.

And the true revolutionaries, fighting the hardening of the arteries of the Biological Sciences Establishment, were not the creationists and IDers (who are merely hottentots enraged) but Eldridge and Gould. They took on the establishment with punk-eke and the establishment came down on them hard. But like all scientific revolutions, victory follows the evidence.

It gratifies me to see the evidence accumulating for punk-eke. It's a great addition to the Theory of Evolution and I liked it the minute I first read about it.

Punk eke takes on the establishment of The Gradual. Gould also took on the establisment of The Adaptive, although less formally, with his example of The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme, which also appeared in The Third Culture.

As for you, Patrick Henry, you are the greatist.

[G Larry]

"punctuated equilibrium" = pitiful excuse for lack of solid scientific evidence of evolution.

[grey_whiskers]

"These kinds of events could really undo any notion of a molecular clock -- or at least one would have to be very careful about it," Futuyma told The Scientist.

No sh*t, sherlock.

The problem is, -- how to put this delicately?

Try it like this: there are a number of components to what we call "evolution" including sudden changes in environment, sudden fortuitous changes propagating in a more stable environment or to spread into an environmental niche, and drift.

Without knowing "enough" details about both a species and its environmental niche, how much confidence can one have in the molecular clock--not "see, it's all nonsense" but "what *are* the error bars on that estimate?"

Eagerly reading the rest of the piece...

Cheers!

[azhenfud]

The researchers also found that rapid bursts of evolution appear to have occurred in many more plants and fungi than animals. Genetic alterations such as hybridization or changes in ploidy could allow rapid speciation, Pagel said, and these mechanisms are much more common in plants and fungi than in animals.

"Their result is pretty interesting, particularly the fact that they got so much more from plants and fungi than they did from animals, which I don't think most people would expect," Erwin told The Scientist.

---

Reckon pollination is mostly to blame?

[Jorge]

Everybody be nice.

You post these controversial articles that YOU KNOW will get Freepers at each other's throats...and then you cutely say "Everybody be nice".

What a trouble maker!

[caffe]

"While most studies of punctuated equilibrium have come from analyses of the fossil record, Mark Pagel and his colleagues at the University of Reading, UK, instead examined phylogenetic trees generated from genetic sequences of closely related organisms."


Too funny, reminds me of those monkeys on a typewriter experiment. Evolutionary "scientists" are regressing!

[SirLinksalot]

After reading the article, my initial impression is that there is an underlying assumption built-in that MACRO-EVOLUTION has indeed happened.

Given this assumption, of course they are bound to find some data that can be used as evidence for this theory.

The question of course is this -- WHAT IF MACRO-EVOLUTION (speciation) DID NOT HAPPEN ? How would this result then be interpreted ?

My second thought is that there is STILL no credible mechanism for driving punctuated equilibrium. In the end, this theory maintains, in the face of all OTHER observations, that one sort of animal will rapidly change into another sort of animal ( or apes to men ), for no apparent reason and by means that are completely obscure.

It's bad enough trying to find a mechanism to drive
conventional evolution by microsteps; As of today, the fossil record completely contradicts evolution by microsteps. The myriads of transitional forms that there
ought to be according to the Darwinian theory simply do not exist. Hence Punctuated equilibrium was conceived ( foremost proponent being Stephen Jay Gould) to "explain" the evidence of STASIS in our fossil records.

I am at this point in time, not sure if punctuated equilibriun is an even more impossible theory that is used to replace it.

Now, regarding this :

---

Based on the number of speciation events and the nucleotide differences between species in each tree, the researchers used a statistical test to measure the amount of nucleotide divergence likely due to gradual evolution and the amount likely due to rapid changes around the time of speciation.

They found statistically significant evidence of punctuated evolution in 30% to 35% of the phylogenetic trees they examined. The remaining trees showed only evidence of gradual evolution.

---

Of course these trees are CURRENT MODELS used to describe a theory. Some people would call it a nice idea or invention. This was constructed to show that life higher up the tree really did evolve from life further down it.
The theory was conceived, and then the tree built to support the theory. These trees are constructed on the assumption that macroevolution has happened.

Here is another assumption :

---

According to Pagel, the results suggest that other studies may have misdated some evolutionary events. Dates derived from molecular clocks assumed to have a slow, even tempo will place species divergences too far in the past, he said, since genetic change assumed to take place gradually may have happened very quickly.

---

So, we go to the crux of the matter --- ASSUMPTIONS AGAIN.
It's ALL assumption and maybe. This a very similar to the scholastic disputes about how many angels could dance on a pin head.

FINALLY, THIS STATEMENT

---

change at speciation, Pagel said. Speciation often takes place when a population of organisms is isolated, which means that genetic drift in a small population or fast adaptation to a new niche could induce rapid evolutionary change.

---

Well what can I say ?

Here he has probably switched to talking about observable natural selection, which of course isn't the same thing as evolution of one kind of creature from another.

The nature of such changes IS NOT SPECIATION AT ALL but restriction of the gene pool, leading to a loss of genetic
information. This leads, for example, to cretinism in isolated human populations, or to the many different breeds of dog. In fact in all such cases observed, greater specialisation leads to a decreased overall ability to survive.

I'm not sure of this is as earth-shaking a discovery as some would want it to be.

[DungeonMaster]

the researchers used a statistical test to measure the amount of nucleotide divergence likely due to gradual evolution and the amount likely due to rapid changes around the time of speciation.

Oh please! Does anyone know what this really means. Please don't say I'm just too dumb to get. It takes understanding of a subject to be able to explain it.

[FreedomProtector]

"the researchers used a statistical test to measure the amount of nucleotide divergence likely due to gradual evolution and the amount likely due to rapid changes around the time of speciation."


bookmarking mysterious statistical test on designed trees provides supposed genetic evidence for randomly changing into a distinctly different designed trees...rapidly, not gradually....


"However, it's possible that the analysis could be flawed, because the authors didn't take into account extinction rates in different phylogenetic trees when they determined the total number of speciation events"


It's possible that the analysis could be flawed because the entire presupposition that the research is built on is flawed. The presupposition that "evolution is a fact" is flawed, and is unscientific.


Perhaps this article should be titled: "Scientists aggressively look for evidence of trees randomly changing into something besides the same kind of tree and find none."

[RobRoy]

How punctuated do you have to believe it was before you become an evil Creationist.

[RightWingNilla]

Bookmarked

[caffe]

IT should be obvious to most people that punctuated equilibria is NOT science. All this theory does is try and explain that ancestry should not be discernible in the fossil record (why? Because it's not in the fossil record so they have to come up with some explanation) Some scientists think punctuated equilibria and neo-Darwinism are nearly the same. That view is mistaken. The two theories are totally different. They share only their commitment to common descent. New darwinists believed in gradual evolution through phyletic lineages. they expected to see gradual intergradations and identifiable phylogeny. But the fossil record did not display either. So what do they do? They claim the fossil record is incomplete
The punctuationists are convinced the fossil record is not that incomplete and must be taken more literally. So, they invented a theory that expects neither gradual intergradations nor identifiable phlogeny.
These two theories could hardly be more different and still be common descent. They cut straight to the center of the origins controversy.
The funny thing about this is that punctuationists say their idea is testable. They feel that gradual fossil series would refute their theory. Gould said, if morphological adaptations usually accumulate with no tendency to any rapid initial setting and stabilization, then punctuated equilibrium is wrong.

Get it?

One can refute punctuated equilibria only by providing convincing evidence that evolution has occurred. What does this say? Evolutionary descent with modification has at last descended, modified, and adapted itself right out of science.

Who are these punctuated equilibria guys? not biologists but generally paleontologists - like Stephen Gould.

In short, the whole towering theoretical enterprise of punctuated equilibria was driven by problems with the fossil record. It does not predict genetics or any other well-understood biological process. It simply constructs a theory to adapt evolutionary theory in explaining the observed fossil record.

What's really funny is that punctuated equilibria is what creationists have always said. So evolutionists are trying to steal the creationists prediction

Weinbert, an evolutionists even said "So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction."

But .........hmmmmmmm........who knew this even before information was accumulated about the fossil record? The fossil record broke Darwin's heart and it's still a problem for for the evolutionary illusionists today.