Peter & Rosemary Grant, Darwin's Finches and Evolution

I see somebody has already complained about an opinion given by ICR of this couple's work as not about evolution at all, but of course it isn't about evolution. Their work could have been done under the banner of Creationism just as well because it contributes absolutely zip to the ToE except the usual buttressing of the strange misconceptions people have.

Watching Evolution in action. Oh give us a break. You CAN'T observe evolution in the macro sense, all you can observe is the ordinary known variations of microevolution. There isn't even anything particularly special about the case of Big Bird, he's just a particularly hardy hybrid for pete's sake. Big Bird is an interesting fellow but he proves nothing about the ToE.

This is of course all about microevolution, known ways that animals change over time within their own genome. Adaptation, natural selection, are all occurrences within the built in range of the genetic potentials of the Species. There is absolutely nothing in any of this that supports the ToE. This kind of variation accomplishes the same thing in Nature as is accomplished domestically in breeding.

This ordinary fact of genetic variation is ALL Darwin observed, he mentally added macroevolution and claimed all these naturally occurring processes for his theory, but not one thing he ever observed supported anything more than microevolution. His different finches express only the various possibilities built into the finch genome and brought out under different circumstances. Sometimes this is the result of natural selection no doubt, by which a certain kind of food in the environment forces an appropriate new sort of beak to be selected in the population -- out of the built in range of possibilities in the genome. But really all it would usually take is the geographic isolation of small numbers from the overall population. This alone can bring about a change in a feature such as beak type over a few generations of inbreeding, and that change makes them gravitate to the sort of food that suits their beak type; there may also be selection factors involved but they don't have to be to any great extent. But it doesn't matter, whether selection is involved or not this is all about normal microevolution and says nothing about macroevolution.

This couple's work sounds quite heroic and meticulous in many ways, however, and should not be denigrated in itself, but it should be clearly criticized for claiming to be any kind of support for the ToE.

ABE: Oh yes, and since the usual inane question will surely come up, "What keeps microevolution from going on to be macroevolution?" and even "What is a Kind?" First I'd say just stick to the observed facts, there is no evidence for anything beyond ordinary known microevolution. But second I HAVE argued at great length that wherever you have genetic changes occurring and creating new breeds or races you also have a reduction in genetic potential to keep on changing. This is intuitively obvious if you just think about it.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But that distinction that you make to divorce small changes over short times from big changes over long times? You make that distinction to preserve your belief in magic.

Actually I make it on the basis of hard-thought-out observation and reasoning. It will of course always be the refuge of choice for my opponents to accuse me of magical thinking, but clearly you don't know what the term means. It is far more accurately applied to the ToE which is pure imagination.

Without a young earth, the very notion of which flies in the face of everything we see;

It' flies in the face of your PREJUDICE and your assumptions, not what you "see." I too once believed in billions of years. It was a shock to consider that could be wrong. When I saw that the young earth was probably right I had a really good laugh.

without invisible barriers to the accumulation of change, barriers found nowhere else, your beliefs would flounder.

"Invisible barriers?" Think again. What I said was that the only evidence is for the normal variations within a Species, and there is no evidence whatever for any variation beyond that. That's an actual fact. You start piling on the imaginative castlebuilding when you go beyond that actual observed fact,. HOWEVER, those "invisible barriers" are something even you with your hardened prejudice MIGHT be able to recognize IF you'd just stop for half a second and consider it honestly. When you create a new breed by limiting the numbers of individuals what you are doing is limiting their genetic potentials; that's how you keep unwanted features from getting in to your breed. This is a process of elijminating genetic potentials and reducing genetic diversity. This HAS to happen for new breeds to develop, or for new races in the wild to develop; it's a law of genetics if you will. So every new race or breed has a new limited collection of genetic possibilities by comparison with the Species at large. This is what microevolution IS at the genetic level. If you give it a little thought you might recognize that this means that wherever this microevolution develops a new breed or race, whether it's one of Darwin's finches or one of his specialized pigeons or his famous Galapagos turtles, they all possess their own necessarily limited genetic potentials. They HAVE to because "gene flow" or the reintroduction of genes for OTHER characteristics than those of the breed or race would mean you don't have that breed or race. It doesn't have to be a very large reduction but there must be a reduction. Getting a breed or race requires this limitation. The very reasonable conclusion I draw from this observation is that evolution itself is a process of limiting genetic diversity, and that being the case, if a particular race or breed keeps splitting further and further it MUST ultimately reach a point where there is no more genetic variability possible. THAT is the end of the line for evolution, and I propose that it is the functional definition of the boundary of the Kind beyond which no further vsariation is possible. Just THINK about this for a while. I've been thinking about it for years so you are at a disadvantage but I'm sure your superior mental abilities can overcome the handicap with a little work.

Within the realm of your own beliefs, you have (quite logically) deduced what science you must deny; that, and nothing else, determines what science you do deny.

I'd really appreciate it if you would cease and desist from making up stuff about how my mind works. You are wrong and it only serves to muddy the discussion, giving you a childish excuse to dismiss anything I have to say. If I take my beliefs as my starting point I nevertheless find that I am led to true observations and facts. You on the other hand with your prejudice against any sort of belief as any kind of starting point, are blind to the actual observations that support what I argue here. Try removing the log from YOUR eye first, you might see better.

But the entire body of science, not just evolutionary biology and geology, contradicts your beliefs: the age of the universe, the sufficiency of natural explanations wherever we look...the science that gave us flight and long lives is exactly the same science that determined evolution is a fact. If you were to examine other areas of research in any depth, you'd soon find more, much more, that you needed to deny.

Just another declaration of the Creed. I have disputed this generalization adequately many times and won't mess up this thread with more of it until it becomes necessary due to the ingrained blindness of my opponents.

The Grants set out to see what is really happening, just wanting to know the truth.

And I'm sure because they are assiduous workers that they found a lot of truth, but it has nothing to do with the ToE. It could just as easily, as I said, have been done in support of Creationism.

Perhaps you set out that way once. They succeeded.

Perhaps you need to be slapped upside the face.

To wake you up to reality if nothing else.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Hey, Faith, you remember how you were proved completely wrong about genetics? I hardly see any point in you making the same mistakes again. Not in front of the same audience. It was funny the first time, now it's just boring.

If it's boring then don't read it. And nothing's been proved against this argument, that's just your typical fallacious tactic of "poisoning the well," which is really quite underhanded of you. Basically it's lying.

You have nothing to say anyway, and should be given another twelve hours for a contentless post like this one, one of that 98% of your worthless productions that are against the rules of EvC, or indeed of reasonable discourse at all.

The reasoning I laid out in that post holds up and perhaps others will be able to follow it although you are unable to. To that end I will copy that paragraph here. I urge you to ignore it.

ABE: OR, if you are going to answer, then please give a very very brief statement of what you think proves me wrong. A sentence or two. Or link the particular post where this argument was supposedly defeated. Because there have been all sorts of strange winding paths this argument has been dragged down, all sorts of misreadings and the like, but I remember nothing that could be called proving it wrong. /ABE

What I said was that the only evidence is for the normal variations within a Species, and there is no evidence whatever for any variation beyond that. That's an actual fact. You start piling on the imaginative castlebuilding when you go beyond that actual observed fact,. HOWEVER, those "invisible barriers" are something even you with your hardened prejudice MIGHT be able to recognize IF you'd just stop for half a second and consider it honestly. When you create a new breed by limiting the numbers of individuals what you are doing is limiting their genetic potentials; that's how you keep unwanted features from getting in to your breed. This is a process of elijminating genetic potentials and reducing genetic diversity. This HAS to happen for new breeds to develop, or for new races in the wild to develop; it's a law of genetics if you will. So every new race or breed has a new limited collection of genetic possibilities by comparison with the Species at large. This is what microevolution IS at the genetic level. If you give it a little thought you might recognize that this means that wherever this microevolution develops a new breed or race, whether it's one of Darwin's finches or one of his specialized pigeons or his famous Galapagos turtles, they all possess their own necessarily limited genetic potentials. They HAVE to because "gene flow" or the reintroduction of genes for OTHER characteristics than those of the breed or race would mean you don't have that breed or race. It doesn't have to be a very large reduction but there must be a reduction. Getting a breed or race requires this limitation. The very reasonable conclusion I draw from this observation is that evolution itself is a process of limiting genetic diversity, and that being the case, if a particular race or breed keeps splitting further and further it MUST ultimately reach a point where there is no more genetic variability possible. THAT is the end of the line for evolution, and I propose that it is the functional definition of the boundary of the Kind beyond which no further vsariation is possible. Just THINK about this for a while. I've been thinking about it for years so you are at a disadvantage but I'm sure your superior mental abilities can overcome the handicap with a little work.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is a process of elijminating genetic potentials and reducing genetic diversity. All the while ignoring the fact that random mutation produces new genetic potentials and increases genetic diversity.

As what I wrote makes extremely clear, you do not get new races or breeds EXCEPT by reducing genetic diversity, meaning you do not get evolution at all; so if you DO have some process that increases it you are not getting evolution. The point is that you MUST have a loss of genetic diversity to get the kind of change that is called evolution. You keep wanting to add diversity into the formula for evolution, which only destroys the process of evolution. Obviously there is no increase in genetic diversity wherever you are getting new varieties or races. You wouldn't want it in domestic breeding and evolution won't happen if it occurs in nature either.

We've already seen your little song and dance.

And never understood it.

Just THINK about this for a while. I've been thinking about it for years so you are at a disadvantage but I'm sure your superior mental abilities can overcome the handicap with a little work. Just think about how each new offspring is born with mutations that increase genetic diversity. Just think about how a lack of interbreeding between populations will cause different mutations to accumulate in each population, resulting in divergence over time.

It doesn't happen that way. Mutations or any kind of increase in genetic diversity, any kind of gene flow, interferes with the processes that bring about evolution. These require a reduction in genetic diversity to happen at all, as I very clearly explained in that little paragraph. I don't know what is happening with the mutations that do occur, but they cannot add diversity where there is evolution going on or evolution will simply not go on. As I clearly explained. To get a new race with its own phenotypic portrait as it were you have to eliminate the genetic material that interferes with the traits for that phenotypic portrait. Nature didn't produce the clearcut species we see today by mutation or anything that adds genetic diversity, but only by reduction of genetic diversity, that's the way it happens.

ABE: what you would get by the processes you describe would not be evolution of a new species but simply an increase in phenotypic variety within a population. But evolution is the selection of particular traits to get a recognizably new species, that's what microevolution is, that's what breeding is, and it has to be what the formation of new species in the wild is also. If by increasing genetic diversity you get your variegated population, if evolution is going to happen in that Species there will have to be an isolation of just part of that population, and that part will have a reduced genetic diversity all its own so that its own characteristic traits can emerge.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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If mutations really did produce the fur color variations in the pocket mouse, which I dispute anyway, in order to get a POPULATION of one color of the mouse REQUIRES that the alleles for the other color be ELIMINATED from the population. This is what selection does, this is what evolution is. I believe genetic diversity is built in to all Species and that mutation adds nothing useful at all, but for the sake of argument, assuming that mutation does contribute useful change once in a while, the same situation applies: in order to get actual evolution, that is, a new race or breed or species, you HAVE to eliminate genetic material that does not contribute to the traits of that race, breed or species. It always comes back to having to reduce genetic diversity for evolution to occur.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If mutations really did produce the fur color variations in the pocket mouse, which I dispute anyway, in order to get a POPULATION of one color of the mouse REQUIRES that the alleles for the other color be ELIMINATED from the population. False on two counts. If all evolution does is eliminate variation then you wouldn't have the new fur color to begin with.

You are having a problem with the word "evolution" and the word "variation" and also the word "eliminate." Evolution as I've been using it refers to the development of new races or breeds, period. Change. Variation. This is what requires the reduction in GENETIC VARIABILITY OR GENETIC DIVERSITY. The word "variation" suggests a confusion between this and variation in the phenotype, I'm talking about the reduction of the GENETIC stuff, the alleles, for other traits than those expressed in the phenotype of the new race or breed or subspecies.

Complete ELIMINATION is not required for a new race or breed or subspecies to develop, only reduction, ABE: And only reduction of the particular alleles that compete with those for the favored traits./ABE

All you have to do is recognize what happens in breeding. It's the same thing that happens in the development of new races or subspecies in the wild. It's a process of eliminating competing alleles for the trait selected. The black fur gets selected in the case of the pocket mouse and the light allele becomes extremely rare in that population, and vice versa, same with the famous moth example. It's standard evolution (microevolution), It's a very simple point about what actually happens in reality which the talk about mutation only serves to obscure.

Second, the light allele still exists in the population with black fur since the black fur allele is dominant.

Yes.

I believe genetic diversity is built in to all Species and that mutation adds nothing useful at all, That is what you believe, but the evidence contradicts your beliefs. When you are ready to talk about the real world instead of your beliefs, then we can have a discussion on science.

The real world IS that the genetic material is already there, but I said that as a side note, it is not under debate. The topic is that however the genetic material is produced some of it has to be severely reduced or eliminated to get a new race or breed or subspecies.

ABE: Of course the reason you keep arguing with this is either your theory-bound blindness or simply the recognition that if I'm right there is no such thing as macroevolution. /ABE

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As always, you neglect the effects of genetic drift and mutation prior to and after speciation and come up with the wrong answer. Left alone, and without speciation, the diversity of any population can increase over time through those processes. It is also the case that mutation can add alleles and not simply modify them. Those facts applies equally well to populations before and after speciation. You are of course free to deny that those processes happen, but in that case your reduced diversity argument does not address the theory of evolution actually embraced by scientists.

I'm going to ignore all this stuff because it's irrelevant. None of it changes the fact that to GET VARIATION, NEW RACES, BREEDS, SUBSPECIES, requires the reduction of genetic diversity. Doesn't matter how much you add or where it comes from or when, the formation of new races or subspecies requires reduced genetic diversity as I very clearly argued in my very first post on this subject here.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh all right *sigh*

Here is a simple example. Imagine a mouse that undergoes a mutation that improves its ability to detect air currents with its whiskers to the extent that it can detect cats before the cats have a chance to detect the mice. Mice with that defect can survive despite having mutations that would wipe out their fellow, relatively poor hearing ancestors. That means that they have the capability of surviving despite new mutations that make them strong but slow, or with brighter colors that don't allow them to haid, or a sense of smell that detects cheese but not cats, or a more active mind that may occasionally get distracted. Mice with those same characteristics in he original population get eaten by cats. So those changes cannot drift through the population.

Right, that genetic stuff is lost to the population.

Now the new mice take up residence in places where there are lots of cats and people because that is also where the easy food is. The result is speciation because the sensitive whiskered mice no longer mate with their cousins.

Uh huh, and the sensitive ones have formed through the LOSS of the alleles for the dull whiskers. That's how you GET a new subspecies as I am saying. Reduced genetic diversity, LESS genetic stuff so that a new trait can become the characteristic of this population.

Those mice can continue to mutate in ways other than developing dull whiskers. Mice need not be identical to be considered a species.

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm only talking about WHERE YOU ARE GETTING A NEW BREED OR RACE OR SUBSPECIES. If all you get is different traits here and there in the population you are not getting this microevolution of a whole population with its own trait picture, but whenever that happens it is due to the reduction and sometimes elimination of the alleles for the traits that are NOT part of the new trait picture.

So the new species is more diverse than its ancestor species. In fact it can be more diverse than the original population despite having no option to have poorly adapted whiskers. No that does not sound much like mere breeding, but that's because human breeders would cull out the diversity of the new population. Nature does not do that. Only the newly sensitive whiskers are vital to the new species. Other characteristics can change as long as they don't get the new mice eaten.

Yes of course, but I am NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DIVERSITY OF PHENOTYPES, I am ONLY talking about GENETIC DIVERSITY, what happens when you get an identifiable new subspecies. I am only talking about the development of new traits. However, since this happens in a small population you are also going to get other traits being favored while other versions of those traits disappear from the population. I am talking ONLY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN ORDER TO GET A NEW SUBSPECIES WITH ITS OWN RANGE OF TRAITS PECULIAR TO ITSELF -- THAT COMES ABOUT ONLY THROUGH THE REDUCTION OR LOSS OF THE ALLELES FOR COMPETING VERSIONS OF THOSE SAME TRAITS. So to get a population of sensitive whiskered mice you eliminate the alleles for the dull whiskered ones; same with all the other traits that dominate in any new population and there will no doubt be a range of them in any new population based on a small number of founders -- the competing versions are eliminated from the population or at least suppressed, (but when you do get an actual "true breed" either in nature or in the wild it will be where the characteristic traits are homozygous throughout the population.).

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You have to THINK ABOUT what I'm saying which you are NOT doing. You are raising a whole bunch of issues that have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying. Look, this is NOT an easy concept to grasp, stop treating it as if it is. You confuse phenotype with genotype, you forget the context of microevolution and bring in mutation which is irrelevant to how microevolution comes about and so on.

Go back to the original paragraph and THINK for a change. Stop claiming victory on the basis of your straw man.

Oh well, you have no MOTIVE to understand this but certainly a motive not to. That's what it comes down to in the end.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then they need to be shown that this IS how it works whatever they think otherwise. This IS how you get new breeds or subspecies, period. It's all in that paragraph.

understand exactly what you are claiming. But what you describe is not how scientist believe evolution works. So it is not an argument against the theory of evolution, but is instead an argument against something else.

Second Answer to this: Of COURSE it is not how they believe evolution works, they haven't NOTICED that there is a genetic cost to evolution, I AM TRYING TO POINT THIS OUT. Dawkins makes his little model of "evolution" in which these little figures just keep changing and changing and changing as if there were no end to it. The language in which evolution is described pictures an ever-upward process of change. NOBODY IS THINKING ABOUT HOW THIS REQUIRES A GENETIC COST. "Oh but there is nothing to keep microevolution from becoming macroevolution." OH BUT THERE IS! You have to become aware of it. It is absolutely inevitable that phenotypic change is accompanied by genetic reduction -- evolution, that is, the formation of new races or subspecies, depends on it.

Since they don't take this into account their versions of evolution are severely flawed.

So this certainly IS an argument against the Theory of Evolution, the TRUE evolution, what REALLY happens in evolution, which ought to be recognizable with a little work. Not to mention honesty.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Your thoughts on genetic reduction as the engine of evolution are bizarre. The development of new breeds of dog (since you chose the breeding analogy) increases that species genetic variability: the mating of two dogs could produce anything from a pocket rocket pooch to a man-killing mastiff.

No it couldn't, it can only produce whatever is in the combined genetics of the two animals. There is not that much genetic diversity in any species to produce that much of a range of possibilities in the offspring any more, though I think it was originally a possibility.

How do you explain that with a reducing mechanism?

First I explain it as a fiction, as above. Then I point out that a breeding program would have selected the two dogs to mate, exactly for the traits that they want to breed. They KNOW they aren't going to get "anything from a pocket rocket pooch [whatever that is] to a man-killing mastiff. They KNOW they are going to get offspring that are some sort of combination of the parents' traits, and hopefully with the particularly desired traits in evidence.

ABE: And the very SELECTION of breeding mates is a selection of very limited genetic potentials leaving all the OTHER genetic potentials in the greater population. The new breed builds on the new limited genetic possibilities, without the interference of competing genetic possibilities. And this is the same whether the breeding pair were consciously selected or randomly paired in the wild.

Even once the species boundary is crossed, and the two species can no longer interbreed, the parent species remains. How does 1 + 1 = less than 1?

You are confusing the genetic level with the phenotypic level. I am always talking only about the newly forming subspecies, THAT is what requires the reduction of genetic diversity. There will most often always be a remaining parent species that can also vary in many other ways. The point I'm making is that WHEN you get a subspecies, usually formed from a reproductively isolated smaller population, (which includes the acceptable population of animals from which breeding animals are chosen in that case) THAT SUBSPECIES is formed from a reduced genetic diversity FOR ITS CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS, and this MUST happen or you will not GET a new subspecies. You must eliminate the "unwanted" traits. In nature since this is often a random matter the new subspecies is simply eliminating whatever doesn't contribute to its particular randomly "selected" trait picture. The randomly eliminated traits stay behind in the parent population.

Also note that animal (and plant) breeders watch closely for new valuable traits and try to preserve them. Mutation--another demonstrable phenomenon you must deny--provides them.

Of course but that has nothing to do with what happens when a trait is SELECTED AND BRED FOR. As that particular trait is favored, all competing versions of it must be eliminated from the new subspecies. (Usually this is going inadvertently to involve other traits as well just because you are limiting the numbers of individuals you are breeding, so there are more traits losing more diversity along with the chosen trait or traits. I'm focusing ONLY on the creation of a subspecies and ONLY on the traits that characterize it. )

You claim to have approached the data with open eyes, but your ideas fail to cohere at even the commonsense level. You turn your back on matters firmly established; you spin unevidenced could-bes to fill gaps in your own position and call it thinking.

If you had the slightest grasp of what I'm talking about you might make more sense.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I can't deal with your extremely lengthy post right now. All I want to say here is that of COURSE they are observing microevolution, what they CAN'T observe is macroevolution, but when their work is presented as an actual experience of "evolution" with all that Wow stuff attached to it, it is properly understood to mean that it validates the ToE, which required me to say it does NOT.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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And yet you cannot identify a single flaw in my description of the process by which the population of mutated mice end up more diverse than the original population.

I don't think I understand the situation you think you are describing. What does this have to do with the reduction in genetic diversity that is necessary to the formation of a new supspecies?

What you appear to believe is that there is at the beginning some kind of super genome capable of all traits that gets pared down to make sub species. Instead of noting that we disagree about that issue, you pretend that scientist just have not 'noticed' your view.

They haven't noticed it because they assume the processes of evolution are open-ended because that's what the ToE requires.

I don't believe in a super genome but I do believe that there is a general genetic deterioration, BUT this is completely independent of my observation of the necessity of reduced genetic diversity to create a new subspecies, which is microevolution. It is simply what happens and ought to be easily seen to be what happens if you just follow what I said in my original paragraph.

Here, I'll repeat it:

What I said was that the only evidence is for the normal variations within a Species (microevolution), and there is no evidence whatever for any variation beyond that. That's an actual fact. You start piling on the imaginative castlebuilding when you go beyond that actual observed fact. HOWEVER, those "invisible barriers" are something even you with your hardened prejudice MIGHT be able to recognize IF you'd just stop for half a second and consider it honestly. When you create a new breed by limiting the numbers of individuals what you are doing is limiting their genetic potentials; that's how you keep unwanted features from getting in to your breed. This is a process of elijminating genetic potentials and reducing genetic diversity. This HAS to happen for new breeds to develop, or for new races in the wild to develop; it's a law of genetics if you will. So every new race or breed has a new limited collection of genetic possibilities by comparison with the Species at large. This is what microevolution IS at the genetic level. If you give it a little thought you might recognize that this means that wherever this microevolution develops a new breed or race, whether it's one of Darwin's finches or one of his specialized pigeons or his famous Galapagos turtles, they all possess their own necessarily limited genetic potentials. They HAVE to because "gene flow" or the reintroduction of genes for OTHER characteristics than those of the breed or race would mean you don't have that breed or race. It doesn't have to be a very large reduction but there must be a reduction. Getting a breed or race requires this limitation. The very reasonable conclusion I draw from this observation is that evolution itself is a process of limiting genetic diversity, and that being the case, if a particular race or breed keeps splitting further and further it MUST ultimately reach a point where there is no more genetic variability possible. THAT is the end of the line for evolution, and I propose that it is the functional definition of the boundary of the Kind beyond which no further variation is possible. Just THINK about this for a while. I've been thinking about it for years so you are at a disadvantage but I'm sure your superior mental abilities can overcome the handicap with a little work.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It is a simple FACT that ought to be clear to anyone willing to think about it, that you HAVE to get reduced genetic diversity in order to get a new subspecies. This is NOT easy to grasp, it takes some thought but it IS simple and it IS factual. Your objections are not apropos.