Dogs will be Dogs will be ???

The horse fossils disagree with you. Care to continue?

On topic of off-topic? Horses are not the same as dogs and cats....?

The only difference between natural selection and human selection is that the traits selected are beneficial to us rather than to the wolf, or fox, or cat, or cow ... etc etc etc. The process that develops the traits selected is natural

But aren't dog breeds, pur-breds, less able to evolve further? Seems that evolution is limited since the more evolution, the less genetic variation within a species and so this is evidence for creationism, not Darwinism. Btw, this is answering and discussing your points that you brought up.

Additionally, you do realize that some foxes can and do mate with some wolves. Considering that fact, it's hard to see how someone can use foxes and wolves as somehow evidence against creationism, evolution prescribed within a kind or baramin. Once again, I don't see how your points advance any valid criticism of creationism.

Can foxes mate with cats or something?

The experimental investigation of these hypotheses involved forty years of inbreeding for tameness in thirty or so generations of silver foxes. The results are impressive. On the one hand, foxes that were bred for tameness also tended to share a number of other phenotypic traits. Unlike their feral cousins, they tend to evolve floppy ears, brown moulting, grey hairs, short curly tails, short legs and piebald coloration (in particular, white flashes). Inbreeding for tameness also had characteristic effects on the reproductive cycles of the foxes and on the average size of their litters. And these are all traits that other domestic animals (dogs, cats, goats, cows) also tend to have. An adaptationist might well wonder what it is about dogs, cats etc that makes curly tails good for their fitness in an ecology of domestication. The answer, apparently, is ‘nothing’. Curly tails aren’t fitness enhancing, they just happen to be linked to tameness, so selection for the second willy-nilly selects the first. This case is much like that of spandrels, but much worse from an adaptationist’s point of view. You can explain the linkage between domes, arches and spandrels; the geometry and mechanics of the situation demands it. But the ancillary phenotypic effects of selection for tameness seem to be perfectly arbitrary. In particular, they apparently aren’t adaptations; there isn’t any teleological explanation – any explanation in terms of fitness – as to why domesticated animals tend to have floppy ears. They just do. It’s possible, of course, that channelling and free-riding are just flukes and that most or all of the other evolutionary determinants of phenotypic structure are exogenous. It’s also possible that palaeontologists will someday dig up fossilised pigs with wings. But don’t bet on it. So what’s the moral of all this? Most immediately, it’s that the classical Darwinist account of evolution as primarily driven by natural selection is in trouble on both conceptual and empirical grounds. Darwin was too much an environmentalist. He seems to have been seduced by an analogy to selective breeding, with natural selection operating in place of the breeder. But this analogy is patently flawed; selective breeding is performed only by creatures with minds, and natural selection doesn’t have one of those. The alternative possibility to Darwin’s is that the direction of phenotypic change is very largely determined by endogenous variables. The current literature suggests that alterations in the timing of genetically controlled developmental processes is often the endogenous variable of choice; hence the ‘devo’ in ‘evo-devo’.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/fodo01_.html

Apparently, some see this as fairly strong evidence for the need of a reinterpretation of evo theory away from adaptionism and raises questions about the origin of specific traits. Specificaly, this experiment shows dog traits arising not due to conferred selective advantage but simply because such traits are associated with or arise with, incident to, a specific behaviour. In other words, a whole host of traits come when a specific behaviour is selected for, but the traits themselves are not tied to any selective advantage. They just get expressed with tamer canines.

Now applying this to your OP, the similar traits between cats and foxes are likely nothing but the fact similarities are expressed per different behaviour. Somehow the genetics that enable specific behaviour also tend to produce similar traits, but that doesn't mean the traits themselves confer a selective advantage.

So considering genes for specific morphological and behavioural similarities may well likely be similar, there really is no reason to assume these traits are the result of common ancestry at all. In fact, you admit similar traits can arise without them being conferred via common ancestry, correct?

So where is the beef on the fox being similar to cats claim? I just don't see it yet.

So considering genes for specific morphological and behavioural similarities may well likely be similar

So you are using the massive assumption that these genes are 'likely' to be similar, with no apparent substantiation, to deny common ancestry? You don't think that is the sort of assertion that might merit evidence to support it? Do you mean the specific genetic basis of the novel traits? In that case the assumption is even larger.

The idea that similar phenotypic traits do not imply common ancestry is clearly established, which is why convergent morphological evolution is recognised. But what evidence is there that there is an indistinguishable genetic basis? I can readily believed that the same genes or pathways may be involved but I doubt that the same mutations are.

It seems eminently possible that selection for tameness could be effectively select for a reduced level of something like testosterone which could affect behaviour, fertility and hair development. But there are many possible mutations that could produce such a reduction either in the many proteins involve in the testosterone biosynthesis pathway, the androgen receptor molecule which mediates testosterone signalling or proteins interacting with the androgen receptor. Would similar effects from disrupting the same developmental pathway, albeit as a side effect of selecting for a behavioural trait, not be the result of common ancestry? labeit at a deeper level, i.e. not the inheritance of the trait from the common ancestor but of the gene regulatory network which leads to the expression of a cluster of similar traits when it is disrupted in a similar way.

Fodor seems to be arguing against a strawman ultra-adaptationist form of Darwinian theory, in which every trait must be adaptive, that you would be hard pressed to find anyone subscribing to.

TTFN,

WK

Hi Randman,

I understand you don't believe you started this off-topic digression, but I've read almost all your posts since your return, and you seem to be introducing topic drift everywhere you go. This is consistent with your history here, which also includes making discussion personal, and there's another factor where your goal seems to be chaos rather than understanding.

Moderators here no longer attempt to coax and cajole members into being good citizens, and certainly in your time here if anything was going to work with you we would already have found it. You're last suspension was for four weeks, your next will be permanent. Since the January reorganization there has not been a single reversal of any permanent suspension. I usually send people requesting reinstatement to Jar's new discussion board, but I can't recall the name or URL at the moment.

I'm sure you think this is biased and unfair and all the rest, but I can't help that. There are some people who can have civil on-topic constructive conversations at any discussion board, and there are some who can't. This board no longer permits participation by those in the latter category.

Please, no replies.

Added by Edit: Jar's website is Dreamcatcher.

Edited by Admin, : Provide URL.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hello, Beretta, I thought I would add to my previous response.

Breeding experiments are organized with intelligence and cannot be compared to what would happen in the wild. Tame foxes if they were to arise naturally would most likely not survive. In the absence of intelligent input and protection of the tame ones, this variability is unlikely to occur.

Let's test this hypothesis. From European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, eNature article by Brian E. Small, eNature.com:

quote:

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Conditioned by centuries of living in settled areas in Europe, this species easily adapted to American cities after 100 birds were liberated in Central Park, New York City, in 1890. Since then it has spread over most of the continent. Its large roosts, often located on buildings, may contain tens of thousands of birds. Hordes of these birds create much noise, damage vegetable or fruit crops, and do considerable damage around feedlots, consuming and fouling the feed of domestic cattle, and have proved difficult to drive away. Starlings compete with native hole-nesters for woodpecker holes and natural cavities. There has been much debate regarding their economic value, but their consumption of insects, such as locusts and ground beetles, seems to tip the balance in their favor.

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In other words, the starlings adapted themselves to live around humans, rather than have the humans select them for tameness, and this adaptation has been advantageous for the starlings. Thus it is possible for natural selection alone to make the same selection for tameness that was done with the fox experiment (and the experiment article talks about the possibility that dogs originally selected themselves to take advantage of humans, rather than being domesticated by humans). Tame foxes if they were to arise naturally could find the same advantage to living around humans as have starlings and a number of other animals.

I am not aware of anybody that thinks starlings are desirable to have around, rather it seems that humans have spent considerable energy trying to discourage starlings from living around humans.

We have also discussed the metric of using the variations within the dogs to judge whether other fossil species can evolve one from the other. Randman (Message 72) suggested that this was a new idea, but in this he is ignorant of the kinds of measurements biologists use. Biologists involved in taxonomy spend their lives measuring and comparing fossils and skeletons to document how much alike and how different they are. What I have done is taken this kind of detailed in depth measuring process and made a rather simplistic approach more suited to the layperson than the scientist.

One example of using such a metric by biologists is the pelycodus diagram:

Click to enlarge

Here you can see layer by layer of fossils, with the variation in size shown as horizontal bars and thicker bars to show the rough distribution of numbers with the different sizes. This diagram shows how each subsequent layer shows change in the average size of the individuals, but in every case the sizes from descendant layers overlap the sizes in previous layers, and the difference from layer to layer is less than the amount of variation in the population as a whole.

The approach suggested here using the amount of variation known to exist in one species, dogs, and applying that degree of variation is similar, but it is still less than the degree of comparison that taxonomists do.

Enjoy.

Edited by RAZD, : .

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Hi Razd –back after a forced absence – Africa has it all, no power, no telephones and no internet –or all of the above intermittently and with no apparent plan. South Africa has returned somewhat to the dark ages and we miss what we used to take for granted.
To continue -

Razd writes: Beretta writes: you are assuming that the only possibility for the common genome …is evolution. When the fossil lineage shows trees of lineage in time and space…[and].the genetic evidence shows trees of descent from common ancestors

The fossil evidence shows sudden appearance of fully formed kinds and sudden extinction of same –no tree. Perhaps a lawn would better describe what is actually seen when the evolutionists wonderful distorting glasses are removed.
It is only the desire to believe in evolution that can turn the hard facts of the so-called fossil record into positive evidence for gradualism.
In Gould’s own words;
“The history of most fossil species includes 2 features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Stasis –most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on the earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2) Sudden appearance –in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed.”
And thus the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution.
Phillip Johnson had this to say:
If Darwinism enjoys the status of an a priori truth, then the problem presented by the fossil record is how Darwinist evolution always happened in such a manner as to escape detection. If, on the other hand, Darwinism is a scientific hypothesis which can be confirmed or falsified by fossil evidence, then the really important thing about the [punctuated equilibrium] controversy is not the solution Gould, Eldredge and Stanley proposed but the problem to which they drew attention.

No doubt a certain amount of evolution could have occurred in such a way as to escape detection, but at some point we need more than ingenious excuses to fill the gaps.

As for the molecular evidence:
The growing gap between molecular analyses and the fossil record, concluded one researcher, ‘is astounding.’ Instead of a single evolutionary tree emerging from the data there are a wealth of competing evolutionary trees.
Incongruities are found everywhere in the evolutionary tree.
Darwinist David Penny computed 5 different evolutionary trees for the same set of species by using 5 different molecular data sets. Different data sets indicated very different evolutionary trees.
So the molecular ‘evidence’ for evolution contradicts the morphological ‘evidence’ and the fossil ‘evidence’ contradicts the entire gradualism story but that is what faith is all about – people prefer to believe that either there is no God or that whatever God there may be is outside the material system having nothing to do with it so that the only useful thing this God has ever done is exist quietly far away from a place of influence or accountability in our lives.

How does ‘intelligence outside of matter’ explain the horse geneology and why it looks exactly like evolution?

The horse geneology looks exactly like evolution because it has been arranged to look exactly like evolution. The horse series has been pulled from museums and textbooks (the ones that are at all interested in accuracy). The only ones that still ‘believe’ in the horse series are the ones that have not been updated as to the facts.
The various ‘horses’ in the series were not found in any one place in the world –the series starts in North America, travels to Europe and goes back to North America –that’s some evolving. They are arranged according to what the faithful want to believe.
According to GG Simpson:
“The uniform continuous transformation of hydracotherium to equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.” He said that the exhibit the American museum of natural history is ‘flatly fictitious’.

Dr David Raup said that the horse series ‘has to be discarded or modified.’
He also said that “we have to abandon belief in the evolution of the horse.”

Saiff and Macbeth said that the seven stages do not represent ancestors and descendants. They are fossils taken from different times and places and were strung together, perhaps innocently, to show how evolution might have handled the matter.
Good Darwinists have apparently tried to expunge it from the record but it persists, despite their efforts, to appear in one textbook or another.

“The early classic evolutionary tree of the horse ….was all wrong.” (Science Newsletter Aug 25, 1951 p118)

“Other examples, such as the much repeated ‘gradual’ evolution of the modern horse, have not held up under close examination.” (Starr and Taggart 1992, p304)

We have a very good idea of what mutation and natural selection is capable of producing

The only thing is that the logic is backward – we believe it happened therefore mutation and natural selection must be capable of it, one way or the other.

The evidence includes a dearth of humans in ages when only bacteria lived

The evidence also shows, according to evolutionary geologic age assumptions, that the coelocanth lived in the age when dinosaurs lived and then disappeared from the record and became supposedly extinct. They never lived with whales or humans according to the fossil record and yet evidentially (according to real repeatable observable facts), they exist alongside both whales and humans in the present.
And bacteria remain bacteria hundreds of millions of hypothetical years later while their more favored cousins apparently turned into philosophers in the same time period. According to the fossil record, bacteria shouldn’t even be here now if you go according to what appears where.

There is a difference between going to the empirical evidence to test a doubtful theory against some plausible alternative and going to the evidence to look for confirmation for the only theory that one is willing to tolerate.

The difference between science and faith is that science is sceptical of all ideas equally.

Except when it comes to Darwinian evolution where faith in the supposed ‘fact’ that evolution has occurred overrides all other possibilities and thus ‘facts’ are forced into the framework of the overriding belief system.

There are at least 3 (1) it happened (2) it didn’t happen (3) We can’t tell whether or not it happened. Then there is (4) It is possible that it happened and (5) it is not possible that it happened.

Which brings me back to what I said before –either it happened or it didn’t happen and to draw conclusions we need conclusive proof. Science is supposed to be based on hard evidence showing that something did happen and can be proven based on repeated experimental evidence. All the rest is philosophy.

Beretta writes: Except when it comes to Darwinian evolution where faith in the supposed ‘fact’ that evolution has occurred overrides all other possibilities and thus ‘facts’ are forced into the framework of the overriding belief system.

What other possibilities? What other testable hypotheses have been presented that attempt to account for the full range of diversity on this planet? You've been asked to point towards a design hypothesis repeatedly but always dodge the issue.

Without a counter hypothesis you have nothing to argue for. You rely solely on the criticism of a ToE "framework" to define your position!

Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

There is a counterhypothesis on the table in "Proposed New Topics" under the heading, RAISING STANDARDS. Perhaps you have a preference about where a debate on that information could best serve us.

Do not attempt to bypass the approval process.

If you have anything substantive that is on topic you may add it here. A quick look at the website suggests that you have a lot of stuff that is in no way whatsoever supported by any evidence of any kind.

If you have evidence that is appropriate here, fine. If not, do not attempt to circumvent the proposal process.

What other possibilities?

Intelligence. We are on EVC forum . Evolution and creation are the two options - I can't personally think of anything else. Since when in life do random mistakes and selection of the best mistakes manage to design anything good, brilliantly clever, integrated and so very very complex? Small is not simple. Even unicellular bacteria are too complex for us to create. They make man's creations look like toys in comparison.
The assumption that random errors called mutations and selection of the best, most beneficial errors makes absolutely no sense. Can you turn a story or a computer programme into a better story or programme by random spelling mistakes and selection of the best ones. Mistakes make nonsense not specified complexity of the kind seen in the living world.
'In the beginning, God' or 'In the beginning, nothing (hydrogen? dirt?)created everything by random processes and no plan.I don't think so. You only have to look at the complexity to know that there has to be a designer - just like looking at a painting and knowing that there has to be a painter even if you don't know who the painter is.
The problem with mankind is that they don't want God, they want no rules and no guilt and no accountability. You only have to look at the creation to know that God exists and that this can't all have come about by mistake. You have to clear your head, I know, I used to be blind to design, now its too obvious why I didn't want to see it. The Bible calls is "willful blindness" meaning blind on purpose and says we are without excuse if we can't work out the obvious fact of a creator from the creation. It is completely against the laws of nature that complex organs like the eye or the liver could have been put together piece by random pieces into an integrated whole, not only integrated within itself but within the whole organism to which it belongs, by no plan only typing errors randomly occurring.
If any human being ever manages to make life in a lab. it will only show how much time and intelligence is required even to copy a small simple part of what our intelligent designer has made.
Time is not a magician.

What other testable hypotheses have been presented

Macroevolution is not testable, it is an historical concept and it is assumed; so to ask what 'other testable hypothesis' is out there is to imagine that macroevolution has somehow been proven by repeatable experimentation.You can prove neither and only one can be correct.The truth is out there...

Can you turn a story or a computer programme into a better story or programme by random spelling mistakes and selection of the best ones.

Yes, you can. In the case of programs this was demonstrated in the Lenski et al. paper in Nature (1999).

TTFN,

WK

Beretta writes: In the beginning, God...

Which "God"?
How?
When?
How can we test for him/her/it?

Without working hypotheses for these questions you have no useful answers.

Beretta writes: or "In the beginning, nothing (hydrogen? dirt?)created everything by random processes and no plan.

The universe is underpinned by various forces. Knowledge of these forces enables us to better understand the Universe's workings. Gravity, for example, isn't a random process.

Beretta writes: Macroevolution is not testable.

Evolution is testable in many ways and your attempt to hide behind the "macro" canard indicates that you concede this.

So called "macroevolution" is just "microevolution" over a long period of time. Until you are able to produce a working hypothesis to explain why evolution is limited to "microevolution" then you are just hand waving.

ID has no answers beyond "Goddidit".

Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

All the issues you raise have ready answers, but a thread on when morphologically a species has evolved sufficient change to be a different species is not the place.

--Percy

Topic drift partly my fault too! I'll leave it there..

Which "God"? How? When?

How about who cares which God, how or when. The fact remains that we have design, very clever, very intricate, very organized -so that tells me that there has to be a designer. Random mistakes over I don't care how long isn't going to produce carefully integrated design. Genetic mistakes only produce our genetic load and very occasionally something that may be considered to be an advantage though, in those few cases, the advantage comes about by loss of pre-existing genetic information.

How can we test for him/her/it?

By conceding that specified complexity and the genetic code needs a cause that is far from random. By realizing that a painting needs a painter, a bridge needs a designer and anything as intricately put together as the simplest of bacteria needs a designer.We don't need to see the painter to know that there is one.

Gravity, for example, isn't a random process.

No, it's a law that can be repeatedly experimentally tested for and thus can be proven to exist, that is what science is supposed to be about -unlike the big evolution story, our modern creation myth.

So called "macroevolution" is just "microevolution" over a long period of time.

Or so you would like to believe. Microevolution or variation is a fact. Macroevolution is far from it -it is a supposition at best. It was hypothesised to do away with the need for a creator as an explanation for the creation.

Until you are able to produce a working hypothesis to explain why evolution is limited to "microevolution" then you are just hand waving.

Until evolutionists can prove a mechanism for macroevolutionary change and tell us where the original genetic code came from, they are the ones doing the hand waving.

ID has no answers beyond "Goddidit".

ID proposes that an intelligence did it. Evolution proposes that nothing but random chance did it. I'll go with intelligence.