Evolution Can't Explain Biotic Diversity (vainity)

Here I present a statistical argument against Macro-evolution. Several evolutionists attempt to refute it. I put their comments in color. This was BEFORE gore3000 started posting in blue, so I don't mean anything by using that color. Mine are in black..I stick with this even when we are quoting each other in our posts. I invite all concerned Freepers to evaluate the arguments presented.....

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And that brings Ahban to his main point..... If there have indeed been 1.25 million groups of critters diverse enough from all other groups of critters to be classified as their own FAMILY, then......

Since all or almost all of the METAZOANS (animals) first came on the scene at the Cambrian some 543 million years ago, there has been on average, a new FAMILY appear every 435 years. (543 million/1.25 million)

The advent of Man and our recent (since man appeared) climate swings constitute a situation where MORE EVOLUTION than the norm should occur. Man has initiated a large number of extinctions. There have been a lot of extinctions during this epoch. That should open the door for larger than normal amounts of evolution as various niches are left unoccupied or new ones created by man's activities.

Note that by a reasonable set of numbers, NEW FAMILIES should be appearing every 435 years. Yet we have never even witnessed a new animal SPECIES except by SUBTRACTION of information. By this I mean species splitting due to geography or loss of an intermediate subpopulation or some such thing as that.

WHY O WHY don't we see NEW FAMILES? Have we even seen any new FAMILES in the last 30,000 years? I don't mean newly discovered ones that have been around a long time, I mean the NEW FAMILIES that we should expect to find if evolution is still doing what its proponents claim it has been doing throughout biotic history. Where are they?

It is far more reasonable to conclude that the ID people are right. There are only so many ways you can shuffle the genes of a fly or an ape or whatever. There are only so many allowable gene combinations that work and there are only so many mutations that will produce viable offspring under any natural cirmcustances.

ID Proposes this: Living creatures live on islands of genetic possiblity. The gaps between family groups are too big to be crossed the once every 434 years the evidence suggests it would have to be, should evolution be responsible.

I hope that even if not all of you can agree that ID is the best explanation, that at least we are not unreasonable to question the evolutionary hypothesis. I for one just don't see how it can do what folks have claimed that it has done. And if it did, why has it stopped? Where are the new families that should be popping up every few centuries? We have not seen that kind of change. We are still piddling over whether the populations we see separating are even truly new SPECIES.

To: VadeRetro[vade]
I think you don't realize that the divergence which ultimately results in a new family doesn't make a new family right away. At first the difference is just variety level, then species, etc. You have to get way down the road before you can appreciate the importance of that fork in the road back there in time.[/vade]

I am allowing for that Vade. I am not asking you to show it to me in one animal generation. I am saying that within an OBSERVABLE time it should have happened. If evolution proceeds at the rate which biotic diversity suggests, it should happen at the FAMILY level at an observable rate (once every 435 years on average).

I realize that to some degree it is a matter of opinion where family lines are drawn, but the borders are still real. The line can be fuzzy, but any competent scientist can tell any member of the CANINE family from any member of the FELINE family, or any other mammal family. Please, you simply must concede that this is so.

Yes, the proposed difference must work its way through the VARIETY level, then the SPECIES level, and then the GENUS level before branching off into a new family. I am allowing for all that, but I am also trying to put some numbers to the problem to determine how long this progession, on average, takes.

Those numbers tell me the VAREITY-SPECIES-GENUS-NEW FAMILY progression should occur at least once every 435 years. This has not been observed, even though conditions have been more favorable than average since the advent of man for it to occur. Hence I conclude that even though evolution is at work producing new SPECIES via subtraction of info, SOMETHING ELSE must have also contributed to biotic diversty.

[vade]
Putting it another way, your model of the process smears the appearance of new taxons out evenly in time regardless of taxonomic level. You shouldn't do it that way. We know it's a tree structure. You don't see new big branches on a tree, only new little ones. You might as well ask why we don't see a new Kingdom every so often. In other words, you've found a sneaky way back to that creationist standby of "When have you ever seen a snake turn into a bird?"
[/vade]

Negative my virtual friend. I am calculating how often we should see a new MIDDLE SIZED BRANCH. It turns out it is about once every 435 years. Yet all we see are more tiny twigs. Why is that?

I did not ask about Kingdoms because they are rare events that could not be expected to occur within human history. We cannot glean any truth by my asking you for something that we could not reasonably-by the numbers, expect to occur anyway. I am trying to find the truth here, I think you may be too.

I am not asking you to explain why we don't see a snake turn into a bird- that is silly. The numbers don't suggest that can happen in any reasonable amount of time. But they do suggest that we should be seeing numerous new families appear. Where are they?

62 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:14:33 PDT by Ahban
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To: gore3000
This shows very clearly that different people have different genes in them while they are still human beings.

Yes. A species is a rather fuzzy thing with every member divergent from the species average. Hold that thought!

Take a small subgroup from that species and isolate it. It doesn't have nearly the gene pool of the parent population. Its average characteristics are already by random luck different from the species average at the time of separation.

Mutations in the small group will have a disproportionate effect compared to what they would have had in the big group. After all, if your population has twenty million members, a mutation affects only one twenty millionth of the population at first. If all you have is a breeding pair, a mutation in one affects half the population as soon as it happens.

In other words, the stage is set for the small group to diverge like crazy from the big group, especially if the environmental pressures on it are new and different in its new home.

64 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:19:43 PDT by VadeRetro
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To: Ahban
I am allowing for that Vade. I am not asking you to show it to me in one animal generation. I am saying that within an OBSERVABLE time is should have happened. If evolution proceeds at the rate which biotic diversity suggests, it should happen at the FAMILY level at an observable rate (once every 435 years on average).

You're simply repeating yourself and it's still wrong. You don't get a new family every 435 years. No new divergence is a family right away, ever. Your average is only correct in some strict statistical sense, as a man with his feet in the oven and his head in the freezer should feel comfortable on the average.

Interestingly, Vercingetorix gave you a different rebuttal than I did. Who's right? We both are. His point is that there are periods of explosive adaptive radiation in the punctuated equilibrium model, usually following an big extinction event. Various ecological niches get discovered or rediscovered in a hurry, then things settle down again for a long time. That's true, too, but so is my point.

Negative my virtual friend. I am calculating how often we should see a new MIDDLE SIZED BRANCH.

You never see a middle sized branch newly budding out. The new ones are all little. Some later become big ones, some never do. Some get to middle size and no bigger. Some die a-budding.

66 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:30:15 PDT by VadeRetro
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You have computed an average over time while ignoring the possibility of simultaneous development of multiple new families. Mass extinctions have been common throughout the 3.5 billion year history of life on this planet. The explosion of new life forms that adaptively radiate from the survivors produces new Families at a higher rate than would be expected during stable periods in climax ecosystems.

Not at all. First of all, the METAZOAN period is almost exclusively in the last 543 million years, not 3.5 billion. We don't not have as much time to work with as one might think, especially when confronted with the scale of diversity seen.

I do take that into account, but please observe from my posts and from the fossil and historical record that NOW SHOULD BE SUCH A TIME. That is, if new families originate due to mass extinctions and environmental stress, then we should be in the middle of a mini-BOOM of new families. The time since the advent of man (let's say 40K ago) has been one of HIGHER than AVERAGE EXTINCTION RATES. Why don't new families show up to fill these unoccupied niches?

WE are NOT in a stable period. Mankind is stressing the rest of the animal kingdom, and we left an ICE AGE only 15K ago. Where are the expected NEW FAMILIES?

What am I getting at with these stats? Evolution alone is not responsible. SOMEONE gave it a helping hand.

67 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:33:22 PDT by Ahban
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To: Ahban
From the last thread, to gore3k (and was it ever wasted on him . . .), a divergence that created a new genus BUT NOT RIGHT AWAY!(link to lemur fossils)

68 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:36:31 PDT by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
(VADE)
You're simply repeating yourself and it's still wrong. You don't get a new family every 435 years. No new divergence is a family right away, ever. Your average is only correct in some strict statistical sense, as a man with his feet in the oven and his head in the freezer should feel comfortable on the average.(/VADE)

OK, I am going to try again. "No divergence is a family right away" you said. I agree. But 435 years is not "right away". Instead, it is how long, ON AVERAGE, it SHOULD take for a new family to appear. How did all of those families get here? Sure it happened slowly, but not SUPER SLOW. There are far too many families for that. Did it happen at a rate that we should be able to observe? If you crunch the numbers, YES! Has it been observed? NO!

The numbers don't add up Vade. You may complain it is only statistics, but statistics are very useful. I don't know a branch of science that does not use them. I find it disturbing that proponents of evolution are so resistant to the idea of subjecting the theory to numerical analysis. There has been a certain amount of change and it has happened within a certain amount of time. We can use that to get an expected RATE of CHANGE. Which brings me to...

If you look at my reply to him, you will see that I covered that. Heck, I even covered it in the orignal post #38. WE ARE NOT IN A STABLE PERIOD. We are in a period where EXTINCTION occurs at a much higher rate than the historical average. Mankind and the last ice age ending have put more stress than average on the animal kingdom in the last 12K. This should be one of those "explosive radiative" periods to which you refer. Perhaps not the biggest ever, but substantial. Where are the NEW FAMILIES?

You never see a middle sized branch newly budding out. The new ones are all little. Some later become big ones, some never do. Some get to middle size and no bigger. Some die a-budding.

And we are back to square one. I am not calculating how long it takes to begin budding, I am talking about how long it takes to go from BUD TO MIDDLE SIZED BRANCH. It turns out that it should happen once every 435 years. So this is a process we should be able to observe. It should not take millions of years, it should happen on average once every 435 years, yet we have never come close to seeing it.

If that average is meaningless because during some periods it can be longer between new families, remember that means there must be other times when it happens in a SHORTER period of time. We may not have had a WORLDWIDE cataclysim like that in recorded secular history, but there have been LOCAL or REGIONAL events that have produced conditions where new families should appear.

69 Posted on 05/14/2001 19:56:01 PDT by Ahban
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To: VadeRetro
You are proving my point. I show the biohistoric average of one new family every 435 years. I provide ample evidence that we are NOW in a time where radiative adaptation should be HIGHER than average- and even if it is not planet-wide, such conditions have occured in certain regions.

Your response is to show me a possible - based mostly on teeth - fossil example of two types of lemur who took 1 million years to diverge into a different GENUS!

Look at those data points! Except for a couple of questionable teeth, the new genus pops up suddenly on its own. But even if I concede that I am only conceding that you have given me an example of where evolution has produced a closely related genus over a period of 1 million years. If that is the best you can do, you might as well accept ID illumination right now.

You have got to show me EVOLUTION producing NEW FAMILIES in a matter of HUNDREDS of years. However it happened, evo or ID, it happended at such a rate that we should have expected mankind to produce new families of animals out of the domesticated wild ones thousands of years ago.

If making a new family was as trivial a matter as the numbers suggest, you should be able to give me MANY examples in recorded history where human domestication has done so.

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How many "new" niches are there today that weren't there at the extinction of the dinosaurs? Think about it.

19 Posted on 05/25/2001 23:04:32 PDT by wattsmag2
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To: Ahban

The alternative is that the evolutionary mechanisms that produced new types are no longer operating.

That's close to the right answer, IMHO. I would say that the evolutionary pressures that drive most diversification are not currently in play. (But they will be.)

There's another effect that's harder to quantify, even if we assume (as you do) that new species and families arise uniformly over time. Families are artificial, human-made categories that don't necessarily reflect any evolutionary principles. Of course taxonomists put the divisions between families where they found the most convenient morphological differences. Those kinds of differences each take a long time to occur in nature. In order for new families to arise within the taxonomic system we have saddled ourselves with, we will have to wait until a long enough time arises for a current family to bifurcate, which will take a new gross morphological difference, which will take a long time.

In order to test your "family counting" scheme, we'd have to wait for a significantly long time and then reassign the whole taxonomic scheme, starting with a blank slate. We'd choose entirely new families, based upon sets of morphological distinctions that are marginally more convenient than the set we chose before. What we'd likely see is that there would be more families (correcting for know extinctions, of course) than existed in the previous scheme, but that species we formerly pigeonholed into the same family would end up in different families (even without any changes to the species themselves). That sort of realignment is not going to happen, I'm sure. We have chosen our families, and we'll wait for them to bifurcate. The lack of new families tells us much more about human psychology than about evolution.

22 Posted on 05/26/2001 06:41:29 PDT by Physicist (sterner@sterner.hep.upenn.edu <mailto:sterner@sterner.hep.upenn.edu>)
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To: Physicist
Then why do the scientists in this article have no trouble assingning their find to a NEW FAMILY?

I can't agree with your assertion that the taxonomic system is an artificial construct. I mean, it is in the sense that humans invented it, but they did so to describe reality. Nature IS discontinueous. Organisms DO fall into groups that can be separated from all other groups by a set of common features.

Dogs and cats are in different families, but the same order. Still, people would have no trouble telling any dog from any cat. There are traits that apply to every member of the one, and none of the other. Nature is not a smooth continuim of one type into another. To me the fact that the taxonomic system DOES describe nature so well is a major challenge to the evolutionary paradigm.

What force of nature so efficiently eliminated all transitionals between families? The reason evolutionists hate the taxonomic system is that if evolution is true it should not work. The fact that it is still used today is a testament to how well it DOES describe nature.

23 Posted on 05/26/2001 07:11:55 PDT by Ahban
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To: Physicist All
and another thing....

Your idea states the common refrain that evolution DOES produce new families, but in spurts. Then you say we are not in a spurt but will be at some unspecified future time.

These are statements of faith on your part. They are not supported by current observation. To me, victory in this debate is not proving evolution false. As I have said, that is impossible to do via the scientific method with historical events. Evolution always seems to be happening somewhere else!

I will settle for a common realization that ID is just as rational an interpretation of the evidence as punk-eck. It all depends on your base assumptions (whether you are willing or unwilling to consider the possibility of a Divine Hand). Given that, no one will have an "intellectual" excuse to deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They can then decide whether they will accept or reject His claims on other grounds.

24 Posted on 05/26/2001 07:22:05 PDT by Ahban
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To: wattsmag2
How many "new" niches are there today that weren't there at the extinction of the dinosaurs? Think about it.

1) There was no such thing as DOMESTICATION back then. That is a great way for some members of a family to be separated from all others, then subjected to huge selection pressures for different traits. No domestic or potential domestic niches existed at the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Do you remember the "EDEN" series of SCIFI books by Harry Harrison? The premise was there was no asteroid strike to kill off the dinosaurs, and that an intelligent race of dinosaurs co-existed with early man. The whole series was super pro-evolution. The brain-dinos used breeding instead of tool technology. They had critters that were bred to be living dart guns (from monitor lizards). They had critters that were "living ships". They had warm blooded flat creatures that were "living cloaks" for warmth. They even had one whose eye lenses were made into a microscope! This kind of pablum ought to be possible if evolution alone produced all of the variety we see on Earth. Instead, domestic breeders will tell you that there is only so far you can go with certain traits.

2) There were no scientists trying to win a Nobel prize by using radiation to mutate new critters back then. That is a protected niche that was never filled.

3) Mankind is such an effective hunter that he makes massive changes to ecosystems in a short period of time. That opens up new niches that were not available back then. The way we break up natural areas for example, discriminates agaisnt large animals in favor of small ones.

4) There have been large scale natural disasters and climate shifts since 65mya. Some quite recently, at least in regions. That was not the last major natural disaster to strike Earth, just one of the largeset.

Since you seem to think all of the new familes were formed only after HUMONGEOUS disasters, I guess you believe that at such times a new family is created every 4.35 years. Maybe even .435 years. I mean, once every 435 years is the average.

If the average is misleading because it all happens at once after a big disaster, then does it happen 100 times as fast at those points? 1,00 times? More? How would such an event in the fossil record be distinguishable from a miracle?

We are back to taking Evolution on pure faith again. This proves my point that ID is just as rational. The only diference is whether one is willing to acknowledge the possiblity that God had an active role after" the beginning".

You can't have it both ways. Either humans changing the environment opens up new niches so new families will pop up faster, or new niches appearing does not effect the rate of new families.

The fossil record does show bursts of new families appearing- and the advent of man is just such an event that should cause a burst.

Changing the world too fast for animals to evolve? Come now, do we change the world any faster than the asteroid strike that extincted Barney and friends?

Also, the math may be simple, but that does not mean it is wrong. If its wrong, show where, but saying its simple is not proving that it is wrong. Lots of complicated factors go into how many yards a halfback may run for over the course of the season, but one can still find an average yards per carry using simple math, and the number found means something.

I agree, and I'd like to expand a little bit. There will be exponential growth for a while, until biodiversity reaches an equilibrium, where they won't be any room for new creatures. There's no niches to be occupied, no room for improvement via evolution. Species are already so efficient that any changes are a detriment.

That argument does not wash. According to the theory of evolution (and the Malthusian basis of it) all the niches would have been filled a billion years ago due to the exponential growth of organisms. In addition, according to evolutionary theory all the niches are constantly changing due to environment and the struggle of species with one another - a sort of biological arms race.

So after using these arguments to support evoltuion, it seems to me that evolutionists cannot state that 'evolution stopped' recently. It's just plain double talk and an excuse for not being able to find what the theory says we should be finding - namely intermediate species, species transforming themselves into new more complex species.

My training and most of my work career has been in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering. The theory of evolution kind of looks okay at the macro level, but at the level of chemistry it sure seems to fall apart.

Not just at the chemical level. At the biological level it falls apart, specifically at the development of a 100 trillion cell organism from a single cell and all that implies. It also breaks down at the logical level. Let's consider this - there are many ways in which organisms reproduce - sexually, asexually, eggs, livebearing, seeds, pollen, fruits, etc. How is it possible for a species to transform the way it reproduces and still be able to continue to exist while this change goes on. Specifically let's consider the change from (as evolutionists claim) egg laying reptiles to live bearing mammals? How did this transformation occur while the species kept reproducing? This is a transformation which required numerous changes in the organism, not just one little change. It is a transformation which would have required millions and millions of years at the least. How could the species have kept reproducing while such a change went on when we know that even fairly small differences in the genetic makeup make it impossible for different species to reproduce with each other? How could such a thing have happened? Not a single evolutionist will say.

Oh, and one more thing:

NO, THERE ARE NO BONES SHOWING THIS HAPPENING

For slow birth rates with the larger animals, I would expect a new family to emerge in about 100,000 years

A reasonable evolutionary assumption, It HAS to happen at at least that rate to explain the fossil record. Much shorter times with smaller animals, as you point out. But the best VadeRetro can do is to show a small (rat-cat sized) animal POSSIBLY (based mostly on teeth alone) diverging into a new species or maybe genus over the course of 5 million years.

OK, let's say that happend. Throw in 1,000 events like it that he can't find. That still does not come close to explaining what we know, and that is his self declared best card.

my family definition: A family is a group of related species, morphologically similiar, who share a set of physical characteristics, which are not posessed in total by any other group.

What sounds easy in theory often turns out to rather difficult to do in practice. As an example, this definition...

For the felines for example, they would be placental carnivore mammals that have retractable claws.

...is broken right off the bat. Your definition of "felines" excludes cheetahs but includes sea otters. Keep trying ;)

A family is a group of related species,

Very thin ice. How do you establish whether they're related or not? What does "related" mean in the context of special creation?

morphologically similiar, who share a set of physical characteristics, which are not posessed in total by any other group.

That's a highly subjective definition; traits that are crucial to one taxonomist may be totally discounted by another. Biblical taxonomy lumps bats in with the birds, presumably because wings are a more important trait than hair or lactation. The term "pachyderm" used to comprise such disparate animals as elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotami and tapirs.

Proving, I suppose, that sea otters evolved from cats whilst cheetas did not. I have a sneaking suspecion that the technical details of the sea otters claws are disimilar in structure to that of the cats, and that the cheetah retains the similiar structure, in fact cheetah claws can partially retract.

OK, how many of THESE cat traits does an otter have...

The structure of the felid eye shows various adaptations for increased visual acuity. The pupil and the lens, in the eye of an animal capable of seeing in very dim light, are much enlarged relative to the size of the retina, the layer of light sensitive cells at the back of the eye. The high proportion of extremely light sensative cells in the retina (rods), compared to the cells optimized for vision in high intensity lighting (cones), allows the felids to be well suited for low light conditions. The retina in nocturnal animals, including the cats, are rendered even more effective by the addition of a reflective layer behind the retina, the tapetum lucidum. Light that has passed through the retina without being absorbed, and therefore not sensed by the cells of the retina, is reflected by the tapetum, passes back through the retina, and thus has another chanse of being registered by a detector cell. The light that is not detected by the retina, during both passes through the eye, is reflected out of the eye through the pupil and creates the distinctive yellow-green eyeshine when observing cats at night. The eye structure of the felids greatly improves the light gathering ability of the eyes and results in night vision about six times better than that of humans.

The tongue of the cat is peculiar among the carnivores. Although it is primairly a body cleaning tool, it is also an important part of the feeding apparatus. The upper surface of the tongue is covered with short pointed projections called papillae, giving it the apperance of a wood rasp. Although small and somewhat insignificant in the house cats, the papillae of large cats are fromidable instruments. Scraps of meat and other food items are easily separated from the surface of bone by passing the tongue over the area to be cleaned. Hand feeding captive cubs is often aided by the insertion of a finger into the mouth, initiating the succling instinct, and quickly replacing it with the nipple of the bottle. This sucking on fingers and thumbs is apparently enjoyable for the felids, as it is for the humans, and the process is often observed with adult cats and their handlers. Thumb sucking by adult felids often results in bleeding thumbs and fingers, actually scraped raw by the rasping action of the papillae on the skin.

Dentition is reduced in felids; shortening the jaw results in increased force at the bite point. The dental formula is 3/3, 1/1, 2-3/2, 1/1 = 28-30. The incisors are small and chisel-like. The canines vary from medium-sized to enormous in the extinct sabertooth cats. The upper canine is larger than the lower. The first premolar is absent; the second, when present, is atrophied. The molar is small and simple in structure. Carnassials are very well developed and cheek teeth are exclusively of the shearing type; cats do not crush or grind their food.

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