Replies

PE does not require anything except an atheist turn of mind.-me-

Ad hominem attack.

No, a fact. Both Gould and Eldredge are /were virulent atheists and there is absolutely no evidence required for Punctuated Equilibrium. In fact it is based on lack of evidence.

Nonsense. Horse manure, in fact. Genetic studies, for example, can easily trace ancestry trees, and are further confirmed by fossil evidence.

False. Not with PE. The central theme of PE is that we cannot find the fossils. It also does not even postulate how the changes may have taken place so there is no way to determine if a change was PE or not. It is thus pure charlatanism.

It just 'happens'.-me-

Straw man misrepresentation -- there's far more to evolutionary biology than such empty statements.

Here comes the doubletalk. Mixing PE with Darwinism. PE says that we cannot find the fossils which transformed because they changed suddenly and were in a small out of the way place. It postulates therefore that lack of evidence is evidence. It is pure charlatanism.

It is therefore not science, but absolute garbage.-me- Unsupported conclusion from false premises.

Nope. Science requires evidence, PE is just an attempt at ignoring the lack of evidence.

The problem of a whole species, or a large portion of it evolving at once is a difficulty which evolutionists have not explained very well.-me-

"Whole species" do not evolve -- straw man misrepresentation.

More evolutionist doubletalk. On one side evolutionists claim that random change can create complex new organs and functions because there are numerous individuals in a species acting as a testing laboratory for these new changes. That these new changes get bit by bit added on to and from those the new fucntions are gradually built up. So yes it takes a large number of individuals in a species to make it work. And yes it takes a large number of individuals in a species to change together to make the evolution model work. This is especially so in sexual species where if a large group does not change together there will be no one to mate with along the way because the organism will become too far different to reproduce with anyone. In fact, it is a necessity of evolution for a group to change together in sexual species because evolution postulates that eventually a new species which can no longer mate with the original species will arise.

It should be noted that you have not provided a single bit of explanation for your statements. All you have done is say 'it is not so'. This is not evidence, it is not even decent discussion. It is just arrogant blather.

gore 3000: "It should be noted that you have not provided a single bit of explanation for your statements. All you have done is say 'it is not so'. This is not evidence, it is not even decent discussion. It is just arrogant blather."

Time for a trip down memory lane. Shall we?

Maybe Ichnaumon's replies are getting terser due to the fact that he has already refuted these points in detail over and over again, and each time you attempt to revive your position, you come back armed without any evidence or rebuttal to his points.

For example, in your most recent post, you try to resurrect the argument that sexual reproduction inhibits evolution because whole species cannot evolve together.

His most recent reply "Whole species" do not evolve -- straw man misrepresentation" was terse because you have yet to submit any evidence since his previous reply on the subject in #1599:

Ich: "Oh, for pete's sake. The mechanism of the evolution of sexual dimophism has been explained to you over and over again. How many more times are you going to pretend not to have learned anything about it? Hint to jog your failing memory: Sexual dimorphism does *not* need to develop as in your ludicrous scenario above. There are many more "easy" routes for evolution to take.

That was in reply to the previous time when you brought up the argument on sexual reproduction without new evidence, to which he had replied in #447:

Ich: "...in evolution the debate isn't over which mechanism (e.g. natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, punctuated equilibrium, etc.) are true, because they all have been factually demonstrated, the real debate is only over which mechanism(s) contribute most heavily and which are more minor factors, and/or which one was in play to drive a particular historical evolutionary change."

and:

Ich: ""The theory of universal gravitation is also independent of the specific explanatory mechanism for gravity, and in fact Newton never gave a mechanism for gravity. Why does the force between two masses follow the inverse square law and not another law (perhaps an inverse cube law)? It took nearly 300 years before any plausible mechanisms for gravity were proposed (by quantum field theorists). None of these proposed mechanisms currently have any experimental support."

and:

Ich: "This only shows that you really haven't a clue as to what science is or how it works. Science most certainly *does* deal in the tug-of-war among competing theories. See: Evolution and Philosophy: Is Evolution Science, and What Does 'Science' Mean? and 29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Proof?"

not mention post 1322:

G3K: "Indeed because a new trait or mutation is not in the gene pool of other individuals, it has an almost impossible chance of survival."

Ich: "Troll Challenge #7: Document, please. And since I remember your failures in our earlier discussion of genetic drift, I must remind you that 1-in-a-thousand, or even 1-in-a-million, is *NOT* "almost impossible". Nor do your misconceptions bother to address the selection of favorable new traits, which have a far higher success rate."

There may be more, but I digress. G3K, you've been challenged over and over with counter arguments and calls for evidence. So I don't think it's fair or productive to recycle the same old, unsubstantiated arguments, unarmed with any new evidence, and demand that he reword his standing counter arguments or provide new ways to defeat them.