Increases in Genetic Information

No, you can't just hand-wave away the evidence presented by many scientists, from many different fields, over many years. It takes more than a hand-wave from an amateur to disprove a scientific theory. It takes evidence!Further, genetic information is not required to document macro-evolution, nor is science about "proof."Here is a link to a nice presentation of the evidence for macro-evolution: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.In the example I cited, the differences between Australopithecus, the species in between, and modern human constitute macro-evolution.Do you have any evidence that this is not the case?

When I said they cannot reproduce I didn't mean physically, I meant physiologically and genetically.For example you cannot cross people with apes even though physically they can mate. Human DNA cannot remix with ape DNA. If you tried to artificially inseminate them, the egg could not grow. The sperm and eggs are incompatible.

Coyote, didn't you know I was a Jedi? There is not sufficient data to suggest that they are different species. It is arbitrary to suggest that they are different species than any living today. It is pointless to try an use this to prove macro-evolution.

Sure. You've already acknowledged that your statement about horses and mules was erroneous and that you meant to talk about the offspring of horses and donkeys.But more importantly, your central error in this thread is this one: The point you are trying to impose as fact is clearly erroneous. The majority of the posts here are intended to argue that it is an error.It is enough to establish new species that groups are isolated from mating so that they evolve into two sufficiently morphologically distinct groups of animals. One way for that to happen is through cross fertility becoming absolutely impossible. But it is enough that the two population groups occupy separate habitats and then develop differently. That is the case for lions and tigers.In support, here is a definition of species from wikipedia. Emphasis added by me.

quote:

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In biology, a species (plural: species) is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, the difficulty of defining species is known as the species problem. Differing measures are often used, such as similarity of DNA, morphology or ecological niche. Presence of specific locally adapted traits may further subdivide species into "infraspecific taxa" such as subspecies (and in botany other taxa are used, such as varieties, subvarieties, and formae)

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So what is the error I am charging you with? The error is cherry picking a definition of species, and then blaming the rest of us for not agreeing on your definition of macro-evolution when your definition is based on the definition of species.Consider this to be my answer as to why lions and tigers are a separate species.For completeness, I suppose I should cite an example of a lie. I won't use the statement that I don't support my broad statements. That's for another time. But here is a lie: Nonsense. You specified no such thing. You hadn't even cited any numbers for comparing genes for either bacteria or humans; you cited base pairs numbers only. You also claimed that an amoeba "doesn't have nearly as many genes" as did humans when in fact, the amoeba had 2/3 as many as genes as humans. I'll qualify the latter as mere hyperbola rather than a lie.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Can you support the statement that all apes are incompatible with humans in this way? I have no reason to believe that they humans can breed with apes, but I don't see any reason to argue either way.That said, the theory of evolution does not require that every step on the evolutionary path consist on offspring which cannot interbreed with any of their ancestors. It is enough that such things do not happen too frequently to prevent development and change.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Are you trying to suggest that Taq was actually trying to argue that life evolved from a potato, and that is not far more likely that he was simply trying to suggest that neither base pair count nor coding gene count (as you later said you actually intended) is an appropriate measure of complexity.The fact is, nobody is claiming that common descent means that all multi-cell life evolved from a bacteria even if a prokaryote was the first life form. In support of that I cited the same wikipedia article you cited for the proposition that a prokaryote was the first life form, which shows that eukaryotes may have developed separately.

You have cited no evidence, but just tried to hand-wave the findings of science away because you don't like the results.And because you don't like the results of scientific research, you are forced to make unsupportable statements such as the above.There is indeed sufficient evidence showing that Australopithecus, Homo erectus and modern humans are not the same species. Between Australopithecus and modern humans they aren't even the same genus!That evidence is found in the technical journals, such as the following:American Journal of Human Biology
American Journal of Human Genetics
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
The Anatomical Record Part A
Annals of Human Biology
Annals of Human Genetics
Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics
Anthropological Science
Anthropologie
L' Anthropologie
Archaeometry
Behavior Genetics
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Biological Psychology
Biology and Philosophy
BMC Evolutionary Biology
Current Anthropology
Current Biology
Economics and Human Biology
Ethnic and Racial Studies
European Journal of Human Genetics
Evolution and Human Behavior
Evolutionary Anthropology
Forensic Science International
Gene
Genetical Research
Genetics
Genome Research
Heredity
Homo
Human Biology
Human Heredity
Human Genetics
Human Genomics
Human Molecular Genetics
Human Mutation
International Journal of Osteoarchaeology
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Journal of Archaeological Science
Journal of Biosocial Science
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Journal of Human Evolution
Journal of Human Genetics
Journal of Molecular Evolution
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
Nature
Nature Genetics
Nature Reviews Genetics
PLoS Biology
PLoS Genetics
Proceedings of The Royal Society: Biological Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Russian Journal of Genetics
Science
Trends in GeneticsThese journals fill floors of major libraries.You can hand-wave, or even twitch your nose, all you want but this evidence is not going away no matter how much you wish it to.What do you have to counter this evidence?

Coyote, if this this thing is no longer alive and we don't have it's DNA. Tell me how in the world would we know that it is a different species?

NoNukes, I can draw 1 of three conclusions from what you just said.
1. You are confused about my original point
2. You are purposefully lying to make me look bad
3. Both 1 and 2.I haven't decided which one yet....

Who ever said that a potatoe was more or less complex than a human? I didn't.
You might want to go back and re-read what I said without your personal slant. I will quote myself exactly. I said: I never said a human was more complex than a potato. I said everything that evolved from the first single microorganism would have to have more genetic information.Secondly, I did specify that they would have to have new base pairs that are genes when I said: Base pairs that code for enzymes and proteins are genes....Edited by jbozz21, : added stuff

Fine I will grant you that, I did mistakenly say bacteria but I later on corrected myself in later posts. Nevertheless bacteria and Prokaryotes have about the same amount of base pairs as far as I know. Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

Morphology, the same way things were done before the advent of DNA.Isn't it about time you started presenting some evidence, instead of trying to hand-wave things away?

I did not misquote you, nor did I add a slant. The only numerical values you quoted was of base pair counts. Do you agree that this comparison is of no relevance, emphasis mine? So yes, you did directly use base pair count as a measure of genetic information. Neither of the numbers above is restricted to coding genes. And no coding gene comparison is presented in your post.

Then I'll tell you what I am doing. I am purposefully trying to present your arguments in the light that I see them. I understand you to be making the following bad arguments.1. People who disagree with you are disagreeing with your definition of the term 'species' for the purpose of avoiding your arguments.2a. Speciation requires that inter-fertility be genetically impossible.
2b. Speciation requires a loss of diversity compared to ancestor species.3. Common descent requires that the most recent common ancestor is bacteria-like.Your welcome to point out a single lie that I have told. I've already noted one or two of yours.

Hi, Bozz. This is what I was talking about right here: As far as I'm aware, it has never been shown that humans and chimpanzees cannot have fertile offspring (research ethics make it impossible). Yet, you seem to have accepted that humans and chimpanzees are not the same species.So, although you told Dr Adequate that you won't accept scientific ideas that haven't been demonstrated by multiple, independent studies, you did accept one scientific idea that had not been demonstrated in any studies. This is a double standard: you can't demand scientific rigor from your opponents, then throw around untested ideas yourself.In reality, very few (if any) species are described based on reproductive isolation: it's just not practical. Most of the time, we describe things as new species if we think they are distinct enough to be considered different species. It's not a perfect system, but nobody has claimed that it is, and it isn't particularly important for the system to be perfect: it just needs to be good enough that we can use it for our purposes. Let's be a little more cautious here. Nobody "proves" anything in science, because we are always, of necessity, working with imperfect and incomplete information. What we do is show that evolution is a better explanation than anything else we can think of.So, if we see two populations that are very distinct from one another, a likely explanation is that they are distinct species. But, when we look at the diversity of life, we don't always see such clear distinctions. Sometimes, reproductive barriers are complete; but, sometimes, they're "leaky" (hybrid offspring are not fertile, or are sometimes fertile and sometimes not). The Theory of Evolution isn't based on the definition of "species." It doesn't strictly matter what the word "species" means: the idea of a "species" is just a convenient way to sort information so we can use it for research or other purposes.If life evolves, we actually expect our classification system to be messy, because we expect to see that things are still in the process of evolving and speciating. So, our inability to confidently classify species, and the lack of a solid definition for "species" are actually very much in line with our expectations.