Posted on 02/20/2003 2:30:45 PM PST by Junior
IT STARTED with a biologist sitting on a grassy river bank in York, eating a sandwich. It ended in the discovery of a scruffy little weed with no distinguishing features that is the first new species to have been naturally created in Britain for more than 50 years.
The discovery of the York groundsel shows that species are created as well as made extinct, and that Charles Darwin was right and the Creationists are wrong. But the fragile existence of the species could soon be ended by the weedkillers of York City Councils gardeners.
Richard Abbott, a plant evolutionary biologist from St Andrews University, has discovered evolution in action after noticing the lone, strange-looking and uncatalogued plant in wasteland next to the York railway station car park in 1979. He did not realise its significance and paid little attention. But in 1991 he returned to York, ate his sandwich and noticed that the plant had spread.
Yesterday, Dr Abbott published extensive research proving with DNA analysis that it is the first new species to have evolved naturally in Britain in the past 50 years.
Ive been a plant evolutionary biologist all my life, but you dont think youll come across the origin of a new species in your lifetime. Weve caught the species as it has originated it is very satisfying, he told the Times. At a time in Earths history when animal and plant species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, the discovery of the origin of a new plant species in Britain calls for a celebration.
The creation of new species can takes thousands of years, making it too slow for science to detect. But the York groundsel is a natural hybrid between the common groundsel and the Oxford ragwort, which was introduced to Britain from Sicily 300 years ago. Hybrids are normally sterile, and cannot breed and die out.
But Dr Abbotts research, published in the journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, shows that the York Groundsel is a genetic mutant that can breed, but not with any other species, including its parent species. It thus fits the scientific definition of a separate species.
It is a very rare event it is only known to have happened five times in the last hundred years Dr Abbott said. It has happened twice before in the UK the Spartina anglica was discovered in Southampton 100 years ago, and the Welsh groundsel, discovered in 1948.
The weed sets seed three months after germinating and has little yellow flowers. The species, which came into existance about 30 years ago, has been called Senecio eboracensis, after Eboracum, the Roman name for York. According to the research, it has now spread to spread to several sites around York, but only ever as a weed on disturbed ground.
However, more than 90 per cent of species that have lived subsequently become extinct, and its future is by no means certain.
It is important for it to build up its numbers rapidly, or it could get rubbed out which would be sad. The biggest threat to the new species is the weedkillers from the council, Dr Abbott said.
However, he does not plan to start a planting programme to ensure his discovery lives on. The next few years will be critical as to whether it becomes an established part of the British flora or a temporary curiosity. But we will let nature take its course, he said.
Creationists will switch from "Speciation has NEVER been observed" to "Speciation doesn't PROVE evolution."
They've already done ya one better: They say creationism depends on speciation!
Fair enough, but isn't it quite possible that an Almighty God capable of creating a Universe, was capable of compressing time, space, and matter to appear as a 4 billion year old Earth as well?
Afterall, if one believes an a God/Creator, material and physical "law" are selectively in force anyway.
The only mad dogs here are evolutionists and you seem to be about the worst of the lot.
As usual you are violating the rules of FR in abusing a poster and using dirty words by abbreviation. Seems you never have much to contribute here except vileness.
I have tried to point out to WT that it is impossible to define a non-function or partial function. Is an osterich's wing non-functional or partly functional? The terms have no meaning. Besides, we have contemporary evidence that a single mutation can change a body plan from two-legged to six legged. This has been done in the laboratory.
There is no theory to describe or quantify the kind of DNA change required to make a given structural change. Until such a theory exists, there is no honest way to argue what kinds of changes are probable or improbable.
However, if evolution, as taught by mainstream evolutionists, is true, they would exist and make up the vast percentage of fossils uncovered.
Well, anything is possible. And I do believe in God the Creator. I have a hard time believeing that He was engaged then in playing a epoch-class practical joke on what would become evolutionists now.
In defense of the Almighty, He did afterall tell us the Universe was created in six days -- He just didn't explain exactly how He did it, nor was the scientific community's sensitivities a consideration. As it says in Scripture -- His "ways are not [our] ways."
And anyway, I believe THE one Divine "practical joke" has to be the ascension of Bill Clinton as President...
That's pretty much where I was headed as well. Such comparisons of functionality are completely useless unless you assume, a priori, that there's an eventual goal, a progression of development that must be followed. But since evolution isn't telelogical, the comparison is meaningless, and strictly dependent on holding the current structure as being the most highly-developed structure possible.
Which is sort of absurd - does it really make sense to think of the fins of early lobe-finned fish as being "partly functional" when compared to the ray-finned fish of today? Does it really make sense to think of the Type-III secretory system as being "partly functional" when compared to the flagellum? Hardly - all of those are functional in some manner, and comparing the set and declaring some to be "partly functional" is to inherently assume teleology, which is a faulty premise.
But that's exactly what I'm telling you is wrong - evolution doesn't say any such thing, doesn't require any such thing, doesn't predict any such thing. I don't know how many other ways to say this, but in this respect, your understanding of the theory is wrong. The theory can be completely true without such things existing at all, at least partly because this notion of "partial functionality" is not a meaningful construct.
Certainly. If one accepts the notion of an omnipotent God, one has little choice but to accept that He could have easily done such a thing.
However, there are two issues that come up with this idea. One, we are essentially presented with a young universe that, in all possible respects, appears to be old. As far as we can tell, if it is an illusion, it is a perfect illusion, indistinguishable from a universe that actually is billions of years old. And we might well expect such a seamless, foolproof illusion from a perfect Creator. But if the illusion is completely foolproof, such that we cannot possibly tell if it is really billions of years old, or only appears to be billions of years old, what choice do we really have but to treat it as though it were billions of years old? At worst, what does it hurt to believe our eyes, as God pretty clearly wants us to in this case...
But the second problem may be more serious - the idea that God would perpetrate such a practical joke doesn't really comport with what most people think of God as being likely to do. Think of it like this - if I'm selling you a car, and I roll back the odometer to make the car appear to be a different age than it really is, I am deceiving you, which is very much a sinful act, not to mention criminal. But we're suggesting that God has quite literally done exactly the same thing - perpetrated a fraud by making the universe appear to be a different age than it really is. And if God is A) perfect, and; B) good - perfectly good, in fact - then it's sort of hard to conceive of God committing a wrong and sinful act. Generally, it is proposed by Christian theologists that God is incapable of sin, or at least never does sin, even if He might be capable of it.
So, because it seems to be what He expects us to do - believe our eyes, and trust in the gift of reason that He has given us - and because it lets us avoid the sticky mess of a sinful God, perhaps it's best to accept that the universe and Earth really are billions of years old...
LOL. That was my first thought, too. I wonder what hyrids humans came from?
Watching the evo folks constantly over-reaching is SO entertaining! ...(yes, yes, I know the creos do a good bit of over-reaching as well, but it's the MIRRORED IMAGES of the antagonists that makes these threads so much fun).
I take it this comes from your personal experience? At what stage are you? Does it ever involve the gall bladder?
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