Replies

This is news?

Dr. Clegg said: "The result is exciting because this is the first time the theory has been tested using natural populations. Previous tests have used artificially introduced ones, which don't tell you much about how real biodiversity evolves.

Now the anti-Es cannot claim that the theory has never been tested.

No, the anti-Es will simply ignore it like they do everything else that utterly obliterates their arguments. They'll either read it and never acknowledge it, read it and point out "flaws" in the study that make it incomplete or inconclusive (flaws, mind you, that don't really exist) or they'll refuse to seek it out and thus will be able to honestly claim that they never heard of it.

The gradual nature of speciation is what I personally would expect given the nature of mutation. Now "what I expect" is certainly not a proper basis for a theory but I'd consider evidence pointing to the contrary to be a bit more newsworthy.

Now the anti-Es cannot claim that the theory has never been tested.

Well, first off one has to wonder whether even a 3000-year baseline can truly be written off as "gradual," given the time scales involved. To be perfectly honest, the article really doesn't answer the question of whether the theory of evolution has been tested, especially in the Macro sense.

All we see is a story about how they've observed "genetic changes," but we are not told their extent. We are not told if the observed changes are equivalent to the formation of races, or to the formation of entirely new, island-specific species of bird. The article's silence on the matter leads me to conclude that the differences are racial at best.

Also, what I read here tells us only about the effects of natural genetic drift and mutation for birds residing in places where conditions are probably pretty nearly identical from one island to the next. In other words, if this is evidence, it's evidence of micro-evolution.

It is not a test of the macro side of the theory, whereby entirely different kinds of animals are supposed to evolve in response to environmental pressures of one kind or another.

Now the anti-Es cannot claim that the theory has never been tested.

WRONG! The article (like most evolutionist writings) is pretty underhanded. It only claims to disprove punctuated equilibrium, no research at all from it shows that gradual evolution occurred either. This is an assumption made by the "scientists".

In fact, I would say that this study disproves gradual evolution also! They are saying that the changes between the separated population and the original one have been shown to be quite small through DNA sampling. Since they are testing two present species, the one that is the "control" (the original one) obviously changed very little itself thus it is not proof of gradual evolution either. In fact, if anything it should be called a disproof of gradual evolution too.