Your reasoned and correct replies on this thread are appreciated. Sorry i didn’t join in, but too many years of the creationist echo chamber have dulled my vigor.
allmen - You know I’ve been asking for that magic button that tells DNA to stop imperfectly replicating for almost 10 years here. I’ve yet to get an answer on that one. Especially from the “micro-evolution happens” crowd. It’s such a simple, straight-forward question too.
I keep hearing of this “all powerful god” on this thread and then I read that mere mortal men like me can “deny” him? I’m not understanding that.
Anyway, good job to you all.
A language changes over time, all the “Romance” languages were once Latin. We can tell that these languages shared a “more recent common ancestor” than any of them have with a “Germanic” language; and yet they all changed so that today a group of formerly Latin speaking people in Italy can no longer freely converse with formerly Latin speaking people in Spain.
Now when, exactly, did Latin become Italian in Italy and Spanish in Spain? Depends upon how you want to define it, because there is no clear line, and neither does every single change have to be documented and reproduced for us to know that Italian was once Latin.
What is going to stop the inevitable change in language over time such that two populations that formerly could freely converse, when kept separated for long enough accumulate enough changes in the language that they can no longer understand each other?
Similarly, what is going to stop the inevitable change in DNA over time such that two populations that formerly could freely reproduce, when kept separated for long enough accumulate enough changes in their DNA that they can no longer reproduce fertile offspring?