Evolution Can't Explain Biotic Diversity (vainity)

self ^ | from a prior thread | Ahban

[general_re]

Proving, I suppose, that sea otters evolved from cats whilst cheetas did not.

Not at all, but it is an excellent illustration of the point Phsyicist was making - the structures you happen to consider important will affect how you classify a particular animal.

[general_re]

...you know, that guy - Phsyicist Physicist...

[Poser]

I'm sick to death of this argument. Nobody is convincing anyone. Let it go. (I know... If you don't want to read about it, don't read the thread)


Sorry.

[edsheppa]

Special creation does not rule out speciation, ... "Related species" can mean just the same thing as it does to an evo.

So related means shared ancestry, right? Do you think humans are related to the great apes, or to all primates? How does one test for relatedness between species? If two species shared the a pseudogene, is that strong or weak evidence that they are related?

[Junior]

A recipricol placemarker

[PatrickHenry]

Done.

[Physicist]

Special creation does not rule out speciation, especially through loss of information through specialization or isolation. "Related species" can mean just the same thing as it does to an evo.

That's fine. Let's agree that "related" means "descended from a common ancestor". But how do you establish that two species are related?

The methods available to evolutionists are genetic cladograms and the fossil record. But pay attention to this: both of these techniques do a better job of supporting a hypothesis of common descent, the larger the difference between two types of organism.

The fossil record can't establish the relationship between the races of humans, or between humans, chimps and gorillas. There are gaps, as we all know. But the larger the scale, the less of the overall structure is obscured by those gaps. It is usually easier for fossils to establish how families are related to each other, than to establish how species within a family are interrelated.

This is also true of genetic cladograms. Nebullis is fond of maintaining [though I'd still like a source where I can read up on it, Neb] that because different species of plant can exchange genes via plasmids, it isn't always possible to come up with a strict evolutionary "ordering" at the level of species. At the level of families, however, the ordering becomes clearer, and at larger divisions, clearer still.

[xdem]

> Hell on earth as was the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

There's an unwritten rule that discussion is pointless as soon as somebody makes a comparison to Nazis.

But at the strong risk of wasting my time, I ask you again...

Were evolution "proven" tomorrow, would you give up your belief in the Lord? No?

Then since many (all?) believers would continue believing, how would the validity of evolution change America one way or another?

[tacticalogic]

God creating life with the ability to evolve? He did. But how much? How fast? Not enough to explain the fossil record. So why hold on to evolution as a total answer? It is just part of a bigger picture painted by God.

I don't advocate holding onto evolution as the total answer. In fact, I don't advocate declaring that we have any answers one way or the other. To do so would require the assumption that our current knowlege and understanding of how it all works is sufficient to make that determination, and as brief as it has been, our history in the field of scientific research indicates that this is never a safe assumption.

[Nebullis]

Nebullis is fond of maintaining [though I'd still like a source where I can read up on it, Neb] that because different species of plant can exchange genes via plasmids, it isn't always possible to come up with a strict evolutionary "ordering" at the level of species.

I can do a literature search, Physicist, but I'm not sure what it is you are looking for. Plasmids, unlike viruses or transposable elements, don't play a considerable role in lateral gene transfer in plants. However, cross-species hybridization is a broad phenomena in plants and accounts for the most of the gene introgression that is confounding to phylogenetics. Further, classic incongruencies exist between chloroplast and nuclear DNA phylogenies. I'll be happy to find something for you, even if just some keywords, if you have a detailed interest.

[Youngblood]

A family grouping, as you realize, has to be fairly different from other genera in the order before it will be recognized as such. This involves a number of speciation events, which each require isolation or environmental change, as well as the disappearance or sufficient divergence of related genera. You maintain that we are in a period of such opportunity for rapid evolution at the moment, if evolution does occur. However, much of this change is not suited to the vast majority of species, involving as it does, across the board, a massive decrease in biodiversity due to agriculturalization, habitat destruction and fragmentation, pollution and invasive species, the most destructive of which has occurred within the past couple of hundred years. If evolution is occurring due to these changes, I doubt whether several hundred years is enough time for family-level divergence, especially since people have only really been looking for the past two or three centuries, and until recently, not in any great detail worldwide. Biologists have only begun to even scratch the surface of insect and plant life in the tropics. However, I do agree that we may be at the start of an experiment at the moment, especially with habitat fragmentation and biological invaders both providing tests of the effects of halted gene flow, founder effects and isolation, as well as the vacating of niches due to extinction. However, its early in the day and the environmental degradation is continuing, so I don’t forsee new families resulting for a very long time as related genera will either have to die out or diverge themselves,. The most successful species now are those commensal with man, such as rats, mice, cockroaches and so forth, and these animals are not meeting with any great environmental stresses, except pesticides, with which they seem to be coping admirably. Perhaps microorganisms or small invertebrates would be a fruitful area to look at given their short generation times, although even here the entire field of bacterial taxonomy was totally revised within the past thirty years, with often poor type and strain records kept prior to that.

[Ahban]

The methods available to evolutionists are genetic cladograms and the fossil record. But pay attention to this: both of these techniques do a better job of supporting a hypothesis of common descent, the larger the difference between two types of organism.

I can't agree with your conclusion. It is true only when the alternative- common designer, is ruled out in advance. It may not even be true then. Both those items can be interpreted as support for common Designer. DNA analysis of different proteins produces different family trees. That to me is evidence that a common Designer was at work. Taking most code from one family while free to take snippets of code from other families when making a new one.

DNA is no good for spotting distant relationships between groups, but is good for closely related groups. I think it is because there is no relationship between the distant groups. They only look alike genetically because they have the same structures and functions.

No member of the mammal group for example, is any closer to any member of the reptile class than any other. Reptile DNA looks more like mammal DNA than does jellyfish DNA, but no member of the group has genes that connect it to any member of the other.

I don't know as much about plants, and I have less problem with plant evolution, so I'd like to stick with animals.

The "overall structure" business just allows you to use the human tendency to make connections to get people to jump to conclusions that are not supported by other evidence. Any graduated series has power, even a bogus one, because humans are wired to make sense and pattern out of the world around them.

Sorry, its the details you have to explain, not the "big picture" that allows you to retreat from the technical details of how evolution suppossedly happened.

[Youngblood]

"I don't know as much about plants, and I have less problem with plant evolution, so I'd like to stick with animals."

That's interesting. Plant evolution comes up much less frequently in popular discussion. Why do you have less of a problem with plant evolution than animal evolution?

[VadeRetro]

... but that is not the same as the families we know of changing enough so that so members of it are reclassed as new families within written history.

The original Linnaean baseline dates from 1757. Not long ago, really.

[VadeRetro]

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.

Hmmm? What's a genus? What would a group of genera be?

[Nebullis]

DNA is no good for spotting distant relationships between groups, but is good for closely related groups.

DNA can be used for both near and distant relationships plus everything in between. Just as with radioisotope dating, the resolution depends on the rate of change of the particular gene used.

I think it is because there is no relationship between the distant groups.

This is why you don't want it to be good for distant relationships.

They only look alike genetically because they have the same structures and functions.

Read this sentence slowly. Think.

No member of the mammal group for example, is any closer to any member of the reptile class than any other.

No member of my family is any closer to members of your family. Does this mean our ancesters are not related? Think.

[gore3000]

That's not surprising when you consider that humans only live about 70-80 years while evolution can take millions, and in some cases BILLIONS of years.

IF(big if) evolution is true. However evolutionists constantly claim that it is a proven fact. If no one has seen such a transformation then the statement that evolution is a proven fact is a humongous lie.

In addition evolution is supposedly a continuous process. We should be able to see indications of it somewhere somehow. We cannot see any such indications. And no the bones do not give such an indication, as even many evolutionists have said, notably Gould and Eldredge the expected continuity of species is not to be found in the fossil record and the Cambrian explosion absolutely shatters the claims of Darwinian evolution.