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Author Topic:   "Best" evidence for evolution.
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 283 of 830 (869967)
01-09-2020 8:54 PM
Reply to: Message 200 by Faith
12-30-2019 9:55 PM


Re: Message 107 continued: basic statements about evolution
quote:
Why weren't whales created at the same time as fish?
quote:
They were. They merely ended up in different sedimentary rocks.

But doesn't the location in the sedimentary layers determine that different fossils were laid down in different eras, sometimes millions or even billions of years apart?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 200 by Faith, posted 12-30-2019 9:55 PM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 284 of 830 (869968)
01-09-2020 9:04 PM
Reply to: Message 201 by Faith
12-30-2019 10:08 PM


Re: Message 107, topic No.3; distribution, adaptation
quote:
My own view is that we don't know what the original created Kinds looked like but they contained all the genetic possibilities for all the variations we see today
This is, of course, a statement that the "originals" evolved into the creatures now living. Unless you're saying that at some time in the far past ALL the life forms we see today and that we also have fossil evidence for in the past were ALL existing at the same time (except for your brown bear/polar bear variations and such).

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Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 285 of 830 (869969)
01-09-2020 9:33 PM
Reply to: Message 202 by Faith
12-30-2019 10:27 PM


Re: Message 107, topic No.4 "Leftovers?"
quote:
What we have today have "microevolved" down the centuries from whatever their original Kind looked like, or even from whatever version of the Kind was on the ark or in the case of marine creatures, survived in the Flood water.
If your "microevolution" extends to things like whales descending from land creatures with limbs (vestigial leg bones) then it's something rather more than "micro" evolution, isn't it?
By the way, how did all those fish that require salt water survive when the rain during the "Flood" reduced the salinity of the oceans (or if the rains were salty, how did the freshwater fish survive?)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 202 by Faith, posted 12-30-2019 10:27 PM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 286 of 830 (869970)
01-09-2020 9:44 PM
Reply to: Message 203 by Faith
12-30-2019 10:53 PM


Re: Message 107, topic No. 5: DNA evidence, pseudogenes
quote:
quote:
The same pseudogene is present in humans and primates, but the guinea pig has a different pseudogene. "Intelligent Design" might argue for similarities in the active DNA code between humans and chimps, and dissimilarities between human and guinea pigs, but the inactive part of the DNA indicates the branching of the evolutionary tree.
Well, no. First of all these things are not part of the original Creation but reflect the disease processes brought about by the Fall. And yes they most likely DO show the effects of similarity versus differences in the body structures. This doesn't necessarily "indicate the branching of the evolutionary tree" but simply the differential effects of the Fall on different creatures.
The "differential effects" seems to be an attempt to explain away any evidence by special pleading. You can't simply say something supernatural happened (the "Fall") and then leave it at that!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 203 by Faith, posted 12-30-2019 10:53 PM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 287 of 830 (869973)
01-09-2020 10:11 PM
Reply to: Message 278 by Faith
01-09-2020 5:30 PM


Re: Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
In general complexity does increase, but that's only because the early forms weren't complex. Also, complexity can increase greatly but it cannot decrease below a certain amount (otherwise we're talking an insufficient number of molecules to have a life form).
Think of it this way: a crowd of people stand by a wall (representing the lower bound on complexity) and move about at random, both away from and towards the wall (evolution of greater or lesser complexity). As time goes by the average distance from the wall will increase, but not because of any deliberate plan to move away from the wall, just through random motions. I hope this dispels any misapprehensions you may have got from reading the posts of "one of you people".

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 Message 278 by Faith, posted 01-09-2020 5:30 PM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 288 of 830 (869974)
01-09-2020 10:17 PM
Reply to: Message 204 by Faith
12-31-2019 12:02 AM


Re: Message 107, topic 6: Retroviruses
I certainly haven't studied retroviruses either, so I can only quote the sources that describe the research of those who have. I can't independently verify the statement "it is statistically impossible for any two individuals to have the same exact endogenous retrovirus in the same exact spot on the genome unless they both inherited it from a common ancestor who had the original infection" but the article appears reasonable to this layperson, providing evidence that humans and chimps share a common ancestry. Why does it appear unreasonable to you?

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 Message 204 by Faith, posted 12-31-2019 12:02 AM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 292 of 830 (870007)
01-10-2020 6:15 PM
Reply to: Message 291 by Faith
01-10-2020 5:08 PM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
Here are some examples of "pathways":
1. A population of worms separated into two populations (one in a lab) diverged until they could no longer interbreed.
quote:
THE EVOLUTION LIST: Macroevolution: Examples and Evidence
In 1964 five or six individuals of the polychaete worm, Nereis acuminata, were collected in Long Beach Harbor, California. These were allowed to grow into a population of thousands of individuals. Four pairs from this population were transferred to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. For over 20 years these worms were used as test organisms in environmental toxicology. From 1986 to 1991 the Long Beach area was searched for populations of the worm. Two populations, P1 and P2, were found. Weinberg, et al. (1992) performed tests on these two populations and the Woods Hole population (WH) for both postmating and premating isolation. To test for postmating isolation, they looked at whether broods from crosses were successfully reared. The results below give the percentage of successful rearings for each group of crosses.
WH WH = 75%
P1 P1 = 95%
P2 P2 = 80%
P1 P2 = 77%
WH P1 = 0%
WH P2 = 0%
They also found statistically significant premating isolation between the WH population and the field populations. Finally, the Woods Hole population showed slightly different karyotypes from the field populations.
2. A new species of grass evolved that can tolerate soil contaminated with mine tailings.
quote:
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/...opedia/speciation
Parapatric speciation sometimes happens when part of an environment has been polluted. Mining activities leave waste with high amounts of metals like lead and zinc. These metals are absorbed into the soil, preventing most plants from growing. Some grasses, such as buffalo grass, can tolerate the metals. Buffalo grass, also known as vanilla grass, is native to Europe and Asia, but is now found throughout North and South America, too. Buffalo grass has become a unique species from the grasses that grow in areas not polluted by metals. Long distances can make it impractical to travel to reproduce with other members of the species. Buffalo grass seeds pass on the characteristics of the members in that region to offspring. Sometimes a species that is formed by parapatric speciation is especially suited to survive in a different kind of environment than the original species.
3. Mice brought from Europe to Madeira islands diverge into new species.
quote:
Are new species still evolving? › Ask an Expert (ABC Science))
A small handful of European mice deposited on the island of Madeira some 600 years ago have now evolved into at least six different species. The island is very rocky and the mice became isolated into different niches. The original species had 40 chromosomes, but the new populations have anywhere between 22-30 chromosomes. They haven't lost DNA, but rather, some chromosomes have fused together over time and so the mice can now only breed with others with the same number of chromosomes, making each group a separate species.
4. Flowers introduced into a new environment produce new species.
quote:
Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations - Scientific American Blog Network
In the early 1900s, three species of these wildflowers - the western salsify (T. dubius), the meadow salsify (T. pratensis), and the oyster plant (T. porrifolius) - were introduced to the United States from Europe. As their populations expanded, the species interacted, often producing sterile hybrids. But by the 1950s, scientists realized that there were two new variations of goatsbeard growing. While they looked like hybrids, they weren't sterile. They were perfectly capable of reproducing with their own kind but not with any of the original three species - the classic definition of a new species.
Here is an example of humans breeding new species.
quote:
Just a moment...
Varieties of wheat that have forty-two chromosomes are the most recently evolved and most used types of wheat. All of these varieties have been cultivated by humans (as opposed to growing wild). They are hybrids of twenty-eight-chromosome wheats and wild fourteen-chromosome wheats or grasses. Early bread wheat was the result of the crossing of goat grass (Aegilops tauschii ) with Triticum turgidum. Modern bread wheat varieties have forty-two chromosomes and evolved from crosses between emmer and goat grass, which is the source of the unique glutenin genes that give bread dough the ability to form gluten. Goat grass grows abundantly in the region stretching from Greece to Afghanistan. Descriptions of the fourteen species of wheat that yield the thousands of wheat varieties grown today are provided here.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 291 by Faith, posted 01-10-2020 5:08 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 294 by Faith, posted 01-10-2020 11:19 PM Sarah Bellum has replied
 Message 296 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 5:18 AM Sarah Bellum has replied
 Message 297 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 5:52 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 293 of 830 (870008)
01-10-2020 6:22 PM
Reply to: Message 290 by caffeine
01-10-2020 7:16 AM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
It is a remarkable idea that natural variation can result in changes over many generations, which is why some people are reluctant to accept the idea. But many things that science has discovered over the years (air has weight, matter can be transmuted into energy, organisms so small you can't see them can make you sick, the Earth is round, white light is made up of many different colors, the Earth is billions of years old, ...) were considered remarkable discoveries at the time.

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Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 305 of 830 (870050)
01-11-2020 8:05 AM
Reply to: Message 294 by Faith
01-10-2020 11:19 PM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
When you say evolution "comes to an end" do you mean it only goes so far (the examples of new species evolving that I gave you, for instance) and then just . . . stops?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 294 by Faith, posted 01-10-2020 11:19 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 310 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 9:08 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 307 of 830 (870052)
01-11-2020 8:11 AM
Reply to: Message 296 by Faith
01-11-2020 5:18 AM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
How does one define a different species? For organisms that do not reproduce sexually that's not an easy question. But for two sets of living creatures that do reproduce sexually but cannot interbreed it does seem reasonable to say they belong to different species. That's why we consider horses and donkeys different species, for example.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 296 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 5:18 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 311 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 9:15 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 309 of 830 (870055)
01-11-2020 8:46 AM
Reply to: Message 297 by Faith
01-11-2020 5:52 AM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
Of course it's breeding ("artificial" selection rather than "natural" selection). But it is the breeding OF A NEW SPECIES, by any reasonable definition of "species". And all the other examples I gave are of "natural" selection.
One of the main arguments creationists repeat is, "Nobody's ever seen a new species evolve." This is attacking a straw man because evolution is a slow process: when Darwin and Wallace and others developed the idea in the 19th century they talked about the evidence for common ancestry of different living creatures, they didn't say single-toed modern horses descended from multi-toed ancestors in their lifetimes! Saying you haven't seen a new species evolve so it doesn't happen is like claiming the tectonic plates do not shift the continents around because you haven't seen Australia move (much) since last year.
But it turns out new species have been observed to evolve. What's your response?
quote:
Using the term "species" creates this illusion for one thing. It's just semantic manipulation, word magic. Call them "subspecies" perhaps, but "species" implies something false.
Creationists make their straw-man argument and when it blows up in their faces they want to change the meaning of the word "species"!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 297 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 5:52 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 312 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 9:21 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 313 of 830 (870060)
01-11-2020 10:23 AM
Reply to: Message 310 by Faith
01-11-2020 9:08 AM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
quote:
this idea that speciation is macroevolution is a big delusion
If you define "macroevolution" as something that only takes place over millions of years and then say that it doesn't happen because human scientists haven't observed it you are not arguing logically.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 310 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 9:08 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 315 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 2:39 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 574 of 830 (873528)
03-16-2020 3:10 PM
Reply to: Message 315 by Faith
01-11-2020 2:39 PM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
If a population changes so that it comprises two (or more) groups that cannot interbreed, how could that not be called speciation?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 315 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 2:39 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 575 by Faith, posted 03-16-2020 10:57 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 653 of 830 (874823)
04-10-2020 8:38 PM
Reply to: Message 575 by Faith
03-16-2020 10:57 PM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
If a population diverges into two different species that is something that creationists say doesn't happen, isn't it? If you're now saying a population diverging into two species is "microevolution" then what do you really mean by "micro" and "macro" evolution?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 575 by Faith, posted 03-16-2020 10:57 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
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Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 595 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 655 of 830 (874828)
04-10-2020 9:04 PM
Reply to: Message 312 by Faith
01-11-2020 9:21 AM


Re: Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
Do you consider that two populations that cannot interbreed (like the horse and the donkey producing sterile offspring, for example) could still be the same species?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 312 by Faith, posted 01-11-2020 9:21 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 656 by Faith, posted 04-10-2020 9:06 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
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