Criticizing neo-Darwinism

That's fine, but it is just a semantic shell game, and the question at hand is how much faith is involved in science. Thus changing the terms is not addressing the question.Or are you saying that there is absolutely no faith (definition #2) involved?ABE: Message 1This is actually far from the original topic and should be moved to another thread. Perhaps one called "Faith in Darwinism"?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ABE

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Taken to Message 72, you can cut to the end where I reply to your message (the first quote box is a recap of this thread discussion for others).Enjoy.

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This discussion can now continue on topic.

Actually there is, EVOLUTION AT SEA COMPLETE FOSSIL RECORD FROM THE OCEAN UPHOLDS DARWIN'S GRADUALISM THEORIES

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"The forams may not be representative of all organisms but, at least in this group, we can actually see how evolution happened," says Parker. "We can see transitions from one species to another. And that's a very rare observation."

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We've literally seen hundreds of speciation events," syas Arnold. "This allows us to check for patterns, to determine what exactly is going on. We can quickly tell whether something is a recurring phenomenon--a pattern--or whether it's just an anomally. This way, we cannot only look for the same things that have been observed in living organisms, but we can see just how often these things really happen in the environment over an enormous period of time.

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This is evidence for microevolution speciation events

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It may be in what the foram record suggests about how life copes with mass annihilation that eventually draws the most attention to the FSU paleontologists' work. The geologic record has been prominently scarred by a series of global cataclysims of unknown, yet hotly debated, origin. Each event, whether rapid or slow, wreaked wholesale carnage on Earth's ecology, wiping out countless species that had taken millions of years to produce. Biologists have always wondered how life bounces back after such sweeping devastation.

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One of the last great extinctions occurred roughly 66 million years ago and, according to one popular theory, it resulted from Earth's receiving a direct hit from a large asteroid. Whatever the cause, the event proved to be the dinosaurs' coup de grace, and so wiped out a good portion of the marine life--including almost all species of planktonic forams.

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The ancient record of foram evolution reveals that the story of recovery after extinction is indeed busy and colorful. "What we've found suggests that the rate of speciation increases dramatically in a biological vacuum," says Parker. "After the Cretaceous extinction, the few surviving foram species rapidly evolved into new species, and for the first time we're able to see just how this happens, and how fast."

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Vacuum formed by extinction event, the highest rate of speciation in the foram record ... because "empty niches" were being filled.Enjoy.Edited by AdminAsgara, : fixed tags

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There is a major difference between one or two fossils being out of place and the whole structure being incorrect. The history of paleontology is rife with examples of fossils being move from one lineage to another, but it is ALSO rife with lineages that have NOT changed: one error does not falsify the whole concept. {abe} They are discovered when additional information uncovers the error and then the errors are corrected. That is how the classical toxonomy tree of life has been constructed. The match between that and one developed by genetic comparisons is incredibly coincidental for there to be a lack of relationship. {/abe} There are several problems with this statement that have to do with scale of change and scale of time. To deal with this we will need to deal with definitions of what we each mean.See MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it? -- I started that thread to deal specifically with that question. Read down through it and then we can pick this discussion up (either here or there). Pay particular attention to Message 15 and Message 18 and note that I insist on the definitions as used in science, as otherwise you are not arguing against what the science is talking about.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : {abe}

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WHOA BOY!!!First, I never said it was complete progression just one of the most complete ones, and in fact I expect intermediate species to be found between the ones shown. Any such fossil tree is a validation of common descent as long as there are no anomalies. Predictions are that new fossils will fill in the spaces with an intermediate form.Second, size has nothing to do with placement in a lineage: species get larger and smaller through time due to changing selective pressure. There are many instances of smaller species evolving from large ones.Third, the "Neohipparion, still had three toes" doesn't mean they are not correctly placed in the lineage -- vestigial toes in ancestor horse species could revert under appropriate conditions to three toes (such as living in marshy areas where they needed more support area than one toe could provide), BUT this was not necessary in this case: Neohipparion is a new world only member of the Hipparion group that ALL had three toes and is (according to the chart) descended from the Merychippus which is ALSO three toed, AND it is a side branch from the evolution of the modern horse. The modern horse evolved from a common ancestor to the Neohipparion before losing the use of the outer two of the three toes.It seems you are making\made the classic error of thinking of evolution as "progress" from (A) to (B) when that is not the case. Adaptation to fit the environment is the critical element, and the environment may fluctuate, oscillate over long time periods, so organisms would also be expected to fluctuate\oscillate in their adaptations. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htmNot really by size (although that is the general trend), it is a picture of just the lineage, size just happens. One just needs to look at the size of all current varieties of horses to see that a link between evolution 'progress' and increased size is false.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : abeEdited by RAZD, : polishEdited by RAZD, : am I tired or what?Edited by RAZD, : rewrote for clarity

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Keeping with horses for now. The question is how much change you are talking about, as the horse lineage goes from a 3 front + 4 rear toed herbivorous, predominantly swamp dweller the size of a small forest deer to a single toe on each leg grass grazing, predominantly plains dweller the size of, well, a modern horse. Formosan Reeve's muntjac, Endemic animals of Taiwan. compared to "eohippus" skeletonWhen is the amount of change accumulated over time sufficient for classification as Macroevolution? Where do you draw the line?From: Eohippus
(The coloration of course, is pure speculation.)To the modern horse with different diet and arrangement of teath, different structure to the toes, many different sizes, with the modern horse being one of the larger species (not the largest).During that time the toe of that horse has also evolved from just a soft padded toe with a nail, typical of many non-hooved animals to something distinctive even for hooved animals. From Functional Anatomy of the Horse Foot (click): This is much more difference in a feature than "just an increase in length" (as in an elephants trunk), it is a totally different structure to stand on (eohippus stood on his toes pads, equus stands on a hoof which not only is not a toe pad, but a feature that wasn't present in the eohippus) and it incorporates a new {added\changed} structure to increase blood flow by acting as a secondary pump. There are also significant changes to the skull, jaw, teeth and spine: From http://horsecare.stablemade.com/articles2/horse_origins.htmThis is what macroevolution is within evolutionary science: sufficient change accumulated over time in the evolution of a lineage of evolving species, such that the result is additive over time until it is significant enough to us to classify it at a different level of change. The change is ALL accomplised by microevolution within species, and it is only the linkage of species to species to species via common ancestor lineages that the change become noticeably different over longer periods of time to be declared significant at a taxonometric level.This is essentially the amount of evolution needed for a small forest deer to evolve into something similar to a horse. If this is not enough evidence of "where one thing becomes a completely different thing," then I suggest you are equivocating on what you mean by completely different. Picture from http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htmNote that the skulls shown do not represent the total number of genus (Hipparion is not shown) nor species or specimens, just representative ones of the different stages.This distinctive and significant change was shown with the current fossils known. Prediction: future finds will include species intermediate between the ones shown in the tree of horse fossils. Such finds will further validate this process. Fossils that do not fit the time-development structure could invalidate it.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added horse chart imageEdited by RAZD, : corrected "Note that the skulls shown do not represent the total number of species nor specimens, just representative ones of the different stages." paragraph

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What you have is a theoretical reconstruction of lineage and each lineage and branching structure is essentialy a theory that can be falsified by new evidence that shows a different relationship. This has occurred many times in the past, but all that is changed is the relationship, not evolution.To challenge evolution such fossil evidence would have to show either that descent with modification could not have occurred or that some chimera spontaneous creation occurred. That has not happened.ie - that we descended from australopithicus can be falsified by new evidence of a different descent from a different anscestor population. That will not invalidate evolution, just change the structure of the tree. This would be similar to the change in the ancestral status of neanderthals when the evidence came to show that they were cousins instead.The first thing you do with the jig saw puzzle is arrange the specimens vertically by age, then you start looking for features that show lineage and descent to sort them horizontally by such features, and then you start drawing lines between them to make the most logical structure based on the information available. Then you go look for more evidence.Enjoy.

New "orders" always started as new species with little to remark them from sibling species. That is the way branching structures grow -- at the ends of the existing branches.What you don't seem to get (among several aspects of evolution and biology, etc.) is that "orders" are really a figment of human thinking and nothing more. They are a product of a dated way of thinking of the world. Lineaus pre-dates Darwin's theory after all.Enjoy.

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You mean it mutated with a copy error? Enjoy.

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The problem with this is that there is no evidence of such changes. There are no "intentional and systematic, teleological changes in genetic information."To refute this, all you need to do is provide evidence of such change.Any discussion of this without evidence will be taken as tacit admission that there is no evidence for "intentional and systematic, teleological changes in genetic information." Information that is changed so that it is different from what it was before, but which is still does something not done by any other part of the total before would be .... ? (Hint: N _ _ , rhymes with you) No, he means naturally, naturally. Which is completely irrelevant to what really happens, what reality and truth are, and how naturally accumulating changes lead to extremely well adapted, very complex structures.So the Elmer Theory of Neo-Lamarckism is ... ? Well that is one way to avoid reality: everybody who disagrees with you is insulting you and you can then ignore them. Is that why you stopped responding on Message 158 and started posting here, rather than a total inability to refute the points made?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : link

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But you don't like it when people criticize your posts. You call it insults and the pretend that because you have been (somehow) insulted you don't need to respond to the criticisms of your arguments.Enjoy.

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