Imported weed diversification supports macro-evolution

Well, to me it looks like "speciation" as usual, which is really just ordinary variation according to Mendelian principles of inheritance, the way we all differ from our parents: if a few of us started an isolated colony (which has happened unnumerable times in the history of the human race), we'd become an identifiable race, but still be humans.You see it all the time in breeding programs. That's how you get new breeds of anything. In the wild it just takes something in the environment's favoring the proliferation of a new type.Certainly nothing "macro" about it -- that would require it at the very least to stop being goatsbeard and become something else.

It aint that I don't understand, kuresu, it's that I don't accept the standard definitions, which are in the business of defining everything in evolutionist terms. I don't believe that inability to breed is any kind of definition of a new species in the macro sense, that's just an arbitrary meaningless marker of a variation that has deviated far from the parent population.All that has occurred in this weed is everyday variation. And yes, it may be true that I don't understand how this particular weed does it, but Mendel worked with plants and nothing he said implies macro E.Certainly you've got "a different goatsbeard," certainly, but it is still a goatsbeard, the same way a Great Dane is a different dog from a chihuahua and yet both are dogs.I use "race" in the ordinary sense of the term. There are recognizable groups of people just as there are recognizable individuals, with peculiar traits that differentiate them from other groups, because they blend the traits of their limited group of ancestors. It's a perfectly useful concept.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 05:03 PM

Um. There's a lot more difference in the races than just melatonin, all kinds of genetic differences, and why not, there are differences between parents and children, so how much more between groups that have been isolated for centuries and developed their own gene pool. It's exactly the same as between Great Danes and chihuahuas, that is, as you put it, "which genes are expressed." But it's more than that, because in any breed or race very often many genes of the species are simply no longer present at all. Nice straw man there. Definitional differences are the sign of a paradigm clash. Not accepting the definitions means trying to explain one's different viewpoint but in the end it often does mean that the evo-creo debate simply founders on that issue. Can't be helped.

I don't care what you call them, call them tribes or families or whatever you want, it's no different from what happens in any population isolation phenomenon. Sheesh all this pickiness over the term "race." Call it a "species" then. The same degree of genetic specificity would be called that by the evos for any animal.

You also need to pay attention to the "reply" button at the bottom right of the message you are answering instead of hitting the "general reply" button which makes it hard to know whom you are addressing.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 08:57 PM

Just how much genetic difference qualifies? Discussions about population genetics here tend to be pretty sloppy about specifying degree of change -- if a population of chipmunks gets isolated from another population completely enough and long enough to display recognizably different characteristics from the first (or in fact both develop differences due to a change in the frequency of alleles in both populations), that usually gets called "speciation." {abe: In fact, this is what happens with "ring species" -- just a bunch of them separating and changing into a number of identifiably different populations in one general geographical area}.Isn't that what happens when human populations separate and isolate themselves? Over a few generations of inbreeding they develop recognizable characteristics as a group in exactly the same way.Actually it's kind of amusing how everybody shies away from this obvious normal fact of population genetics when it comes to human beings.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 10:07 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 10:18 PM

In the discussion about chipmunks that happened here, nothing was said about inability to crossbreed, but I believe something was mentioned about a lack of INTEREST in breeding with the other population.But again, here I simply dispute the classification of species in terms of inability to breed. I think that's artificial. Inability to crossbreed is the natural result of enough reduction in genetic potential from a lot of selection pressure or population splits to make for genetic mismatches that prevent successful interbreeding. The result is an overall loss of genetic diversity rather than anything that looks like it could lead to further speciation. And sometimes it can't. Sometimes it gets so far out genetically that further genetic adaptation is impossible. Hence extinctions. And they are pretty common. Speciation ultimately tends to lead to extinction in a fallen world. Not to evolution.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 10:23 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 10:24 PM

Yes. Sad. They'd understand SO much if they just took the evidence all around them seriously, the death and disease they think are normal, that are really evidence of the fallen state of the world. Sometimes they do. There is special concern about extinction in the case of those species that have such depleted genetic capacity, because of their inability to adapt. That is true, there wouldn't be. Evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old. Yes, and this is either because the circumstances would be lethal no matter what, or because they haven't the genetic diversity to adapt. So goes the story. But the dinos are often found all jumbled up in fossil beds in a way that suggests they were washed there by a massive amount of water. So goes the interpretation. A likely story.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 11:52 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-25-2006 11:54 PM

I think the view of fallen nature that we understand now is not what they were working with in the early days of science. From what I've seen they had some very strange ideas about how Biblical truth played out in the world, and we are a lot clearer about it now for some reason.

This is just too preciously politically correct, and missing the whole point. Is or is it not the very same process of population genetics that has produced the human "races," no matter what you think of the term, and no matter how much genetic diversity still exists within them, that leads to speciation in animals, produces "ring species" for instance? I'm talking about something OBSERVABLE. One can usually tell a Norwegian from an Italian, an Arab from a Mongolian. Sheesh. And there are even recognizable differences in general appearance between members of isolated tribes who are nevertheless related.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-26-2006 11:38 AM

Unfortunately I forget where this subtopic started, but the DNA picture is not the point. I'm talking about the OBSERVABLE differences from one isolated population to another based on the principles of population genetics. That is, there are lots n lots of different groups of human beings that have developed their own genetic picture that differentiates them from the others, mostly because of migration.Moose, this IS on the topic of the weed. It's about the normal processes of variation, how you get a different type of something.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-26-2006 01:03 PM

Well, gee, thanks for acknowledging that simple point finally. Just the usual political correctness. Who cares. You're getting all hung up on a term. Gotta get all that political baggage into it.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-26-2006 01:47 PM

Irrelevant. Where did I say I personally could recognize all the different races and tribes of humanity any more than I could recognize the five different races and tribes of goatsbeard?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-26-2006 08:08 PM

Where did I say I could recognize all the tribes of humanity?And where did I say I could recognize if a tribe recombined with another tribe?

Tribes in their tribal territory are usually recognizable. If I wasn't clear, sorry, but how could I have meant anything else? Just as any genetic population may recombine and change its racial character, so can humans.