I think you guys are playing semantics here. I told metmom earlier that the term species is a man made term. It is just used to classify. Wolves, dogs and foxes are all different species of dogs. Just because a scientist LABELED them as different species, that doesn’t make them different animals. So speciation HAS occurred.
What they need to prove evolution is something like “genusiation” (made up term). IOW, they need an example of an animal jumping it’s genus not it’s species. In fact they claim that animals have even jumped their class.
Of course to this evolutionist all this is “proven” by the fact that a wolf can be domesticated and bred into a different “species” of dog.
ping to 123
As I think you mentioned on an earlier post, Evolution is now defined as any genetic change at all. Well, we can easily see genetic change (red-haired children, blue eyes, etc.). Therefore, from the standpoint of an Evolutionist, Evolution has been proven right before your very eyes.
As you say, the required proof must be shown on a much broader level. I maintain that evolutionists cannot show meaningful speciation even within canines -- wolf-dog hybrids are not uncommon. We can say we're dealing with different species, but they can still breed.
I agree with the notion that demonstrating reptiles turning into mammals is the level at which Evolution needs to be demonstrated. It works in "theory", but rather than evidence, all we have are assumptions and guesswork.
Evolutionists have a lot of faith, but they come up short on proof.
Define any change as *evolution* and any difference as a *species* and you can prove anything.
The kind of change evos propose must have occurred to produce the variety of life on this planet has only been deduced from their interpretation of the spotty fossil record.
Extrapolation is a philosophical consideration, not a fact established by the use of the scientific method.
It’s interesting that for all the attempts by scientists to produce change in creatures, they still can’t produce by intent the kind of change that they claim must have happened by accident to support the ToE.
What they need to prove evolution is something like “genusiation” (made up term). IOW, they need an example of an animal jumping it’s genus not it’s species. In fact they claim that animals have even jumped their class.
Two things: evolution does not claim that animals "jump" their genera or classes. No single animal went from being a lizard to a dog. More to the point (because I don't think you really believe single animals made a jump like that), there was no dog to jump to until there were dogs. I know that sounds circular, but that simple idea is a stumbling block for a lot of anti-evolutionists. They seem to think that there was this "dog" slot out there waiting to be filled when the lizards got around to it. It's like expecting a leaf on one branch of a tree to jump to a new twig. Nothing has to "jump" for a new twig to grow new leaves.
Also, you say species is just a man-made category, but then you start talking about "kinds" of animals. This again seems to me a failure of imagination on the part of anti-evolutionists--I'm not sure someone who didn't grow up "knowing" that chihuahuas, mastiffs, and tanukis were all dogs would immediately realize they were the same kind of animal. Are sharks and carp the same kind of animal? Are ostriches and hummingbirds the same kind? How do you decide?
And what I've asked often, and never gotten an answer to: how much would an existing kind of animal have to change before you acknowledged it was a new kind? (Bearing in mind that it's not going to turn into something that already exists, as I said before.) How much would a zebra have to change before you said it wasn't a zebra, or even a horse, any more?