"Best" evidence for evolution.

My 2 sense on a quick review ... It isn't ......except that this is accumulated microevolution over several generations, while the standard definition of microevolution is that it is change from one generation to the next (ie - one generation at a time).Likewise the standard definition of macroevolution is that it is microevolution over several generations.Speciation is generally considered the mark of macroevolution because it takes several generations for genetic isolation to develop. Another case of microevolution occurring over several generations ("thirty years") ... ie macroevolution. And yet here are two indisputable cases of genetic isolation developing between their daughter populations ... what are they if not different species, where a species is defined (by science not creationists) as a population capable of interbreeding?Enjoy

Give me the genome of specific animals you want compared.Then find all the genetic differences.Then show that specific mutations from one to the next could not occur.You are the one making the claim that evolution cannot account for these differences.Please show how this is possible. The development of the mammalian ear from the reptilian ear is well documented in the fossil record.Enjoy

They could not occur in the right sequence and the right combination and stay in place for hundreds of millions of years while the whole transformation of the whole creature gets put together mutation by mutation. I believe this is simply intuitively obvious. But you guys are the scientists, you should already have made the case for getting from one to the other genetically. Obviously it's impossible. What's "documented" in the fossil record is lots of different kinds of animals that lived before the Flood, including different varieties of animals with different organ designs. You are kidding yourself that there is any evidence of evolution there. And not having a clue how you'd get from one to the other genetically pretty much seals the case.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How come they didn't get on to the ark and survive then ? I thought that two of every form of animal made it on.

How come they didn't get on to the ark and survive then ? I thought that two of every form of animal made it on.

Yes two of every kind were preserved. So?

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They could not occur in the right sequence and the right combination and stay in place for hundreds of millions of years while the whole transformation of the whole creature gets put together mutation by mutation.

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This is pure assertion. It didn't even take hundreds of millions of years. And it isn’t a planned transformation either - it’s just the changes that did happen.

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I believe this is simply intuitively obvious. But you guys are the scientists, you should already have made the case for getting from one to the other genetically

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Most of us aren’t scientists, the genomes for the creatures are not available. Even working out what a known genome does is very, very difficult and the real scientists have a long way to go there. So, in short what you are asking is completely unreasonable.So again, we have evidence that it happened. If you want to claim otherwise you need more than an uninformed opinion or demands that would be insanely unreasonable even if you were talking to real experts.

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What's "documented" in the fossil record is lots of different kinds of animals that lived before the Flood, including different varieties of animals with different organ designs.

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The evidence does not support your opinions here. And the fact is that we do have anatomical intermediates turning up at the right place in the fossil record. Why do such things even exist - let alone get sorted into the right strata - if your ideas are correct ?Your attempt at dismissing the evidence out of hand is just another evasion.

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You are kidding yourself that there is any evidence of evolution there

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And yet you won’t even consider it.

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And not having a clue how you'd get from one to the other genetically pretty much seals the case.

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Explain why we should be able to do it with current knowledge of the genome. When you won’t even consider a simpler case where we do have better evidence for the genomes? Surely your refusal to touch an argument which is at least conceivably possible tells far more than the fact that we cannot do something that is not currently possible.

Annotated in orange ... epic failure to support your claim. All you have done is assert something without any evidence that it is correct. I could have predicted your response, so it does not surprise me that you avoided answering the questions ... because you don't have those answers.In fact most of your assertion is known falsehoods.We know from the spatial/temporal matrix of fossils in time and space that each step of the process occurred nearby (ie - stayed in place) while changing bit by bit (reptile jaw and ear, double hinged jaw, mammal jaw and ear where the hearing bones get disassociated from the jaw, bones changing size and shape along the way -- ie while the whole transformation of the whole creature gets put together). We also see that each intermediate is a living breathing species, perfectly capable of surviving, reproducing and evolving further. Which ignores completely the arrangement of all known the fossils in their specific locations within the spatial/temporal matrix.Each intermediate fossil shows up within the spatial/temporal matrix of fossils at an intermediate time and in an intermediate location between parent and offspring fossils. Not one of them shows up out of place -- which should be the case if your claim was even partly true.For instance you don't find intermediate fossils for kangaroos in Greenland. According to your assertions there is nothing to prevent that random location - for this and every other instance of intermediate fossils. According to evolution it isn't possible because of descent, parent and offspring have to be close in time and space.You can't explain the sorting of the fossils along paths that show intermediate steps in that location of the world and nowhere else. Evolution does. But we do have a clue, we have many. They are called the genetic clues for the relationships between species, living today and living in the past. That you don't accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.You have no idea how compelling that evidence is, because you are so ignorant of the actual evidence and choose to remain so. You have no idea of the reality you are up against in trying to invent a workable creationist explanation for all the evidence.In science we don't need to prove what happened, we just need to derive the best explanation of the evidence from the evidence. The ToE does that. Creation fails, over and over and over and over.Enjoy

Which is only because you assume evolution from one to the other. Which means you don't have to try to explain how it happened genetically, you just "know" from the fossil record that it did. Which I believe is the fallacy called Begging the Question. As a result, of course, you will never have to face the fact that genetically it is impossible.

No assumption needed. Just look at the evidence. Go to practically any public university library and read the scientific journals which describe actual fossils in great detail. Even an honest (very important requirement) creationist can plainly observe how the mammalian jaw and ear would have evolved from the reptilian. It's all laid out in great detail.

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Reptiles and mammals today are quite distinct from each other. Mammalian features include differentiated teeth (incisors, canines, premolars, molars), double rooted teeth, a distinct jaw joint, three bones in the ear (stapes, incus, malleus), the diaphragm, limbs under the body, a different arrangement of toe bones, and a braincase that is firmly attached to the skull. No reptile has these features. But when we look at fossils, we find a strange series of animals with features in the middle. They begin 300 Ma (million years ago) in the Pennsylvanian. It was a different world. There were no mammals, flowering plants, or even dinosaurs. According to the fossil record, these would all come later. The world belonged to amphibians and reptiles. Early Synapsids such as Haptodus appeared. Their dentary jaw bones rose in the place where later animals would have a new jaw joint--the mammalian joint. Then advanced pelycosaurs (270 Ma) like the Dimetrodon--those familiar sail-winged animals from your childhood dinosaur set--had signs of a bony prong for the eardrum. Later, cynodonts like the Procynosuchus (236 Ma) had jawbones more similar to mammals, but they still had the reptile's jaw hinge. The Probainognathus (238 Ma) and the Thrinaxodons (227 Ma) have signs of two distinct jaw joints, the reptilian and the mammalian. This allowed some of the bones that had been part of the reptile's jaw to transmit vibrations to the ear. This was the beginning of the special mammalian ear bones. By the time the Sinoconodon appears (208 Ma) the mammalian jaw joint predominates, and the reptilian jaw joint is small. The Morganucodon (205 Ma) has teeth like a mammal, a distinct mammalian jaw joint, and only a tiny remnant of the reptile's jaw. It's malleus and incus ear bones remain attached to the jaw. By the late Cretaceous period (80 Ma) early placental mammals like the Asioryctes had jaws and ears that were transformed to the mammalian type. Two of the reptile's jaw bones, the quadrate and the articular were no longer part of the jaw. Instead they had become the malleus and incus, and are functioning as parts of the mammal's ear.

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An honest creationist did go to his local state university library and did that research. His next questions were why God would have created all those intermediate transitional forms for no reason whatsoever.A dishonest creationist (which describes most creationists) would not even bother to look. You are emulating your Idol (Trump) by projecting your own issues onto others in order to falsely accuse them of wrongdoing.You just "know" that evolution is impossible, so you deny that it could possibly happen. That is a true example of Begging the Question. As a result of steadfastly ignoring the copious evidence, you can create your deception and never have to face the fact that your pontifications are complete contrary to reality.----------------------"Eppur si muove!" ("And yet it does move!") -- Galileo Gallilei

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Which is only because you assume evolution from one to the other

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We do not assume it, we conclude it from the evidence.

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Which means you don't have to try to explain how it happened genetically, you just "know" from the fossil record that it did.

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The actual consideration is practicality. It simply is not possible to work it out. That is not sufficient reason to set aside the evidence. It simply means that it isn’t something that can usefully be considered at present.

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Which I believe is the fallacy called Begging the Question.

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No, it is a simple matter of pointing out that we can’t reconstruct the genetic changes whether we are right or wrong. Maybe there is something somewhere for some small feature, but I don’t know how to find it. Nor do I think you would accept it, if it could be found, even before considering the fact that it would necessarily be speculative and a clear example of historical science.

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As a result, of course, you will never have to face the fact that genetically it is impossible.

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That would be closer to begging the question since it is just an assumption.You can try to show that there is an impossibility. You can offer an alternative explanation that better accounts for the evidence. Either option is valid. Calling your opinions facts is not.

No Faith, as usual you have it backwards. We look at the fossils, and we look at their relative positions in the spatial/temporal matrix.And we ask: what is the best explanation for this group of fossils that are close in time and close in geographical distribution?Can Creation/Flood concepts explain this? No.Can Evolutionary processes explain this? Yes. The changes from one population to the next are minor and well within observed changes in other species, there is time enough for these changes to take place, and they are located within the ecological bounds of each other. None of the changes are impossible creatures.You have no idea how powerful a tool the spatial/temporal matrix is and has been in showing the paths of evolution. With this tool each fossil is like a footprint on a path, not directly connected but located close enough in time and space for them to happen, just as you could trace footprints across the US to connect a person's locations on each coast. We don't have to try to explain how it happened genetically because the fossils provide a complete story, but we also know from the genetics and common ancestry that this is also in the right place at the right time for the development of the mammal genetics. One set of evidence reinforces the other. No, that would be your flood modeling fiascos, and your insistence that it is impossible, while you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence to support such assertions.Enjoy

RAZD, you are, again, forgetting you're talking to someone who isn't very smart and not really able to read simple English talk about your more advanced English.She doesn't even get what you are asking her to do when you request support.I'm not going to bother to make the effort to word it in small enough words but maybe you can since you clearly have a lot more patience than I do.I think what is needed are two species (that she agrees are separate "kinds" or whatever) and she has to show that the genome of one can not be changed to match the genome of the other when using known mutation types.
Seems simple enough to me and to you I'm sure but it needs to be spelled out in much more baby steps.More directly related to the post I am replying to:
"spatial/temporal" matrix is obvious to you and I but the lower IQ individuals have more or less no grasp at all of what that is saying.

The point is not only that multiple genes are involved in eye colour, but that there is no gene that's involved only in eye colour.Genes make proteins. Some of these proteins are the substances out of which our bodies are made - collagens, actins, myosins, keratins etc. Other proteins are not structural ones, but are involved in the biochemistry going on within and between cells. This category would include transcription factors, like the Hox genes you mentioned earlier. Transcription factors are involved in transcribed DNA into RNA - a step in the process of turning a gene into a protein, and so are very important in development. Different activity of transcription factors plays a big role in deciding what genes get expressed where, and so explaining why you have different types of cells forming different structures when they all have the same DNA.Why does any of this matter? Because very similar genes make these proteins in different species (and a different places in the same species). The structural stuff we're made out of is not so different. Myosin II in the skeletal muscles of a rat is pretty much the same as in a human; as is the myosin II in the heart of both species. And they're both made by very similar genes.And the same goes not only for the structural proteins, but for things like transcription factors that help to decide how these structural proteins end up being distributed around the developing body - how the heart ends up being a particular shape. Transcription factors with the same binding domains can be involved in all sorts of different developmental processes, both within the same species and across different species.Mutations in Hox genes do not just swap legs for antennae - these are just dramatic obvious mutations which first helped to identify them (they are where the word 'hox' comes from - it's shortened from 'homeobox' where the 'homeo' refers to homeotic mutations - ie. a mutation which causes a part to develop as a diffferent part). Nor are hox genes the only transcription factors (not transcription factors the only types of gene involved in DNA regulation). Changes in these genes can cause all sorts of changes in development.In summary - the same structural genes, and the same regulatory genes, with some changes in sequence, produce very different animals. How, then, do we not have a mechanism for changing one species into another?

You say this as if it seems obvious to you that such a mechanism must exist, but as you describe all these processes I get the opposite impression: that why and how the same basic chemistry produces such different animals as you say it does remains a huge mystery. If the processes themselves determined the particular structure or phenotypic expression then these would not be different for different species and yet they are VERY different.If, say, a certain gene or gene complex or whatever in chimps makes a particular protein that contributes to the hand-like feet of the chimp, while the same or analogous gene with the same protein product makes the human foot, then it's not about the basic chemistry in DNA, it's about something else that you haven't yet defined.I don't know what all the relevant comparisons and analogies are, but if the same basic chemistry makes a hoof in a horse but a flipper in a dolphin, how do you account for the difference?And all this makes it even more unlikely that you could ever get the evolution of say a mammal from a reptile by any known genetic processes, or normal genetic processes or whatever the terminology should be. The very fact that the same basic chemistry makes such very different structures makes evolution impossible.