What i can't understand about evolution....

Wrong. There is no fish family Fish can be a superclass: pisces containing Hagfish, Lampreys, Cartiligeous fishes (sharks & ray) & bony Fish (Teleosts, Lungfish,Lobefins & ganoids) or a class (any of the above groups in the superclass. Each contains a number of orders which contain a number of families.Edited by bluescat48, : missing letter

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969

Kind = ability to breedif they can breed, they are of the same kind

So, if they can't breed they're of a different kind? Glad you cleared that up.So, as we have here a very precise definition of kind, macroevolution without any doubt happened.

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I hunt for the truth

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Kind = ability to breed
if they can breed, they are of the same kind

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In that case if they can't breed then they are of different kinds.But how, then, do you account for ring species ? All the populations within the "ring" can be connected by interbreeding (so they must be the same kind) but not all the populations can breed with all of the other populations (so they must be different kinds).It seems then that you must either accept that the ability to interbreed is not an adequate definition or accept that macroevolution can and does occur.

Off topic material hidden. Use peek to read.
Edited by whaler777, : punctuationEdited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.Edited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.

The topic of this thread is evolution. Off topic material hidden.Edited by AdminNosy, : No reason given.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

This is consistent with the definition of species for sexual organisms (different species definitions are necessary for the various types of asexual organisms like bacteria). And yet Wardog25 tells us in Message 44 that kind most closely aligns with family: This lack of any consensus among creationists on a definition of kind is why the term is not useful, and it allows creationists to use it to mean whatever they need it to mean at the time. That's why evolutionists dismiss use of the term. You can define it, Wardog25 can define it, other creationists can define it, but never in the same way. Until there's some consistency you can't use the term.--Percy

You forgot one. Here is a one who states that "kind" translates to the biological category genus: So now we have kind=species=genus=family!

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Is the definition of "kind" really the issue here?I asked for biological evidence that something the size of a virus evolved into what we have today (i.e. an elephant, a whale, etc.)Crossing the boundary of "kinds" is just one small step in that entire process. If biology can demonstrate that a bacterium can evolve into an elephant, you should certainly have no trouble demonstrating evolution beyond "kinds", whether I define it at genus, family, or even higher.If you cannot show this, than just admit to the OP that biology can only demonstrate tiny changes. You are then ASSUMING that those tiny changes will eventually cause organisms to change in much larger ways, but you cannot demonstrate it biologically.Edited by wardog25, : clarified wording

No one is claiming that "kind" is the issue. It was only pointed out that arguments involving the term "kind" cannot be considered because it has no formal definition, and that therefore it cannot be argued that large-scale evolution evolution isn't possible because evolution beyond the "kind" level isn't possible. No one has ever demonstrated that evolution beyond the "kind" level cannot happen, because no one has ever bothered to give the term a formal definition.Here's an example. I claim lesnerizing is impossible but I'm not going to define it. What kind of sense would it make to even discuss this if I won't define it?This is the point that is being made concerning arguments involving the term "kind". It makes no sense to discuss them if the term is not defined. Claims involving undefined terms are nothing more than inarticulate propositions, because without definitions it can't even be known what is being claimed.There are no possible negative repercussions if you choose to reject the possibility of large-scale evolution. You could also reject that erosion and weathering reduce mountain ranges to plains with no fear of any ill effects. After all, they're both things that take place on scales far longer than human lifetimes. Neither is something we can actually watch happen as we live and breath. Knowledge of very slow but persistent processes like these is gained by gathering evidence of what has happened in the pastBut the important requirement for scientific theories is that they provide accurate models of real world evidence that make it comprehensible by putting it in an interpretational framework, and that permits predictions to be made of what future evidence might be discovered. The theory of evolution, like all other accepted scientific theories, satisfies these requirements, in spades. Rejection of the theory of evolution is in fact just rejection of scientific approaches to gaining knowledge of the natural world, as is made clear by creationist rejection of much of modern science.This is why your posts are full of excuses for why we couldn't possibly know things, such as claiming that we can only know what we see happen before our very eyes. But most of what we can directly see and sense has already been studied by science, leaving most of what we don't know today outside the realm of direct detection by our senses. If you want to reject what we can't directly sense then you'll have to start ignoring things like thermometers, odometers and all the rest of modern scientific sensing devices. And you'll have to reject forensics, too, just like the OJ jury (the 1st one, not the 2nd).Almost all reproductive events are imperfect. Mutations accumulate from one generation to the next, and there is no known mechanism limiting these accumulations. The only known constraint is the environment which provides the selective pressures that determine the degree to which each offspring contributes to the next generation.So we see mountains eroding a few centimeters per year and we know that mountains eventually erode to nubs. We know that rivers erode their beds a little every year and eventually produce deep canyons. We know that the sun burns a little more hydrogen every year and will eventually use up the supply and go nova. And we know that imperfect reproduction causes every generation to be different from the previous and eventually causes significant evolutionary changes. And that none of these macro-level events will ever be witnessed over the course of a single human lifetime does not affect their reality.--Percy

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I asked for biological evidence that something the size of a virus evolved into what we have today (i.e. an elephant, a whale, etc.)

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Crossing the boundary of "kinds" is just one small step in that entire process. If biology can demonstrate that a bacterium can evolve into an elephant, you should certainly have no trouble demonstrating evolution beyond "kinds", whether I define it at genus, family, or even higher.

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If you cannot show this, than just admit to the OP that biology can only demonstrate tiny changes.

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You're presenting a false dilemma. While I doubt that science will ever be able to present a detailed history of the exact sequence from bacterium to elephant, that doesn't mean all that it can show is "tiny changes." Of course, whether science can ever show more than "tiny changes" depends entirely on what you mean by that.While you seem to be objecting that the definition of "kind" isn't at issue, at bottom your objection is much the same as the argument over evolution beyond "kinds." There are many, many posts in this forum discussing the evidence of evolution beyond species, so presumably you would consider such changes "tiny." The question you need to answer before we can respond to your challenge is what you mean by "tiny changes." If you would accept nothing less than a clear, step by step showing of the evolutionary path from bacterium to elephant, I think most here would concede that no such showing is possible now, nor likely at any time in the future. But then, you would be demonstrating to us quite clearly that you are rejecting all of science. Reliable conclusions from every field of science are based on evidence considerably less compelling than what you are asking evolution to provide.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

This thread is in the biology discussion area, correct? So that is what we are asking for, correct? BIOLOGY evidence. If you want to say that we can observe smaller changes and then assume that macroevolution happens because of what we see in other areas of study (i.e. geology, paleontology, etc), you are welcome to do it. But that is not what we are discussing here. We are looking for biological evidence only.Note: Please be aware that I'm not saying that this method of deduction is useless. I just don't think it applies here. I've noticed when you nail down a geologist or a paleontologist on the evolutionary assumptions in their area of study, they love to say "Oh, well we can assume this because there is a HOST of evidence in biology and genetics for evolutionary theory."So that's all I want to know. What is this "host" of evidence.So far I've only received answers such as bacteria gaining resistance, and ring species. When I ask why we don't see more than that, I get answers like "we don't have enough time" and "we don't have the right conditions". "But we know it happens."The Logical conclusion from those statements is: We are ASSUMING it happens because of other areas of study.So this "host" of evidence from biology and genetics is only microevolution, which is affirmed by creationists?Is what i'm asking for clear yet? I want BIOLOGICAL evidence. For example: the statement "we know macroevolution happens because of what we see in geology" is all well and good, but it's not evidence from BIOLOGY. It is an ASSUMPTION in biology because of EVIDENCE from geology. (assuming the evidence from geology is actually there, which is a topic for a different area)Edited by wardog25, : spelling

Science is an integrated whole. Why would you want to try to pull one tiny segment out and expect to see the whole?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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Is what i'm asking for clear yet?

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No. If anything, you've made things less clear.My point was that you haven't defined what you mean by "tiny" changes. Your response said absolutely nothing about that issue.What you appear to try to address is the evidence of evolution that is found in the fossil record. You seem to be trying to draw a circle around that evidence and exclude it from the field of biology. Since it gives us a vast amount of information about the biology of organisms that exist in the past, you'll have to explain why that information isn't "biology" evidence. That, of course, would be in addition to explaining what you mean by "tiny" changes.BTW, I'm not saying for a moment that fossil evidence is the only evidence that supports the ToE. Some additional evidence would include geographic distribution of organisms, the nested hierarchy classification of all organisms, comparative anatomy, all of which are squarely within the field of biology. There is some discussion of this at Wiki, and a much more thorough discussion at 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.Good luck.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Hey wardog25, still having that small denial thing going eh? The diversity of life as we know it, from the world around us, from history, from prehistory and the archeological record, from the fossil record and from genetics. Nope, not really, for the critical point is that there is not one piece of scientific evidence from any field that contradicts it, not one piece of evidence that says that evolution is wrong, that there are no other contenders that explain all the evidence as well, as thoroughly, as completely and as consistently as evolution. That is NOT an assumption. You haven't demonstrated any reason for seeing more. When you have a process that takes a long time, you must admit that it is unreasonable to expect to see the same process occur in a short time. People don't watch mountains grow, heck they rarely sit around and watch grass grow. We don't need to watch grass grow to know that it does eh?Now you could claim that we just ASSUME that grass grows, we don't know for sure. You can even measure it at different times, but then you are still ASSUMING that it is growing by tiny bits between measurements .... It's not an assumption. Every way you slice the evidence, whether it is from life as we know it today, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record and from the genetic record, you see a consistent, objective, palpable pattern of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. You can take a hundred year period, or a thousand year period, and if you look at the same time frame for any of the evidence we have you will see the same pattern of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. But paleontology is the record of past life - how is the study of plant and animal fossils and their habitats and predator prey relationships, behavior in parent child relationships, relationships by common ancestry, etc, etc, etc, NOT biology? People keep asking you to define small change, and so far you have dodged, ducked, and avoided this rather simple request - simple if someone REALLY wants to know the truth, one to be avoided at all costs if one wants to be in denial of the truth.Let me help you out: I'll provide three definitions.

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This covers the different ways of looking at evolution, from visible traits, used by field naturalists and paleontologists, to genetic traits, used by geneticists and molecular biologists, and it demonstrates an easy metric that can be used on any set of evidence, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record. You will note that each of these definitions is BIOLOGICAL. Your task is to show that there is any evidence of change that exceeds these small change definitions at any time in any record from generation to generation.If you cannot do that, then you will need to concede that change by these definitions is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, not just in BIOLOGY, but in its TOTALITY, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record.If you cannot do this, then you ought to, in honesty, concede that the diversity of life as we know it, from the world we know around us, from history, from prehistory and archeology, from the fossil record, and from the genetic record, IS the "host" of evidence you have asked for.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : totwotooEdited by RAZD, : smalllEdited by RAZD, : tiny bitsEdited by RAZD, : format for clarity

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