"Best" evidence for evolution.

You are extremely dishonest in your repeitition of that false claim over and over again. I've even spelled it out in detail in earlier threads.Here I'll try again. Life was originally created in separate Kinds, each of which is designed to form hundreds of wonderful variations when isolated into separate populations which brings about new combinations of traits that cause each new subspecies to differ from all the others.During the Flood the enormous genetic variability that each was created with was severely bottlenecked, but at that time there was still an enormous amount of genetic variability in every individual so that the bottleneck only reduced the heterozygosity in each genome to a very limited extent, allowing for the great number of wonderful variations on all the creatures we see today, including all the races of humanity. I believe we have something like 7% heterozygosity left in the human population and probably some comparable percentage in other species, but at the time of the Flood it must have been much greater, 80%?: 50%?The Fall had brought death and disease into the world which had previously not existed, though all creatures nevertheless lived for hundreds of years up until the Flood when the changes in the environment brought about by that event, and the genetic bottleneck of each creature, contributed to the decreasing longevity and health we see in the genealogies of the scripture. This general decrease or deterioration occurred over the following centuries until we are finally left with seventy or eighty normal years of life subject to all kinds of diseases, genetic and otherwise. As for those genetic diseases, mutation is a disease unto itself, a mistake in the replication of the genetic material that brings about such diseases. It changes the genetic code so that even if disease does not immediately manifest and the results are "neutral," that change is like a ticking time bomb for further disease when other mutations continue their work of destruction at that locus.If there had been no death in the world every creature would simply vary in endlessly wonderful ways, in beautiful different forms, the ultimate in biological diversity. No creature would ever become extinct. Sheer beauty and divine creativity would characterize all living things. But death brings all life to death in the end. The second kaw if thermodynamics expresses the situation after the Fall as everything is running down toward death and destruction in the universe, including the planet itself. The Flood contributed greatly to the destruction of the planet, leaving us with enormous stretches of uninhabitable spaces, not even counting the places where it is possible to grow food but only by enormous toil. Since Christ, however, things have improved in that God has given us many means of making our lives easier. Death will nevertheless continue to rule us until He comes again.The means by which creatures vary is selection. That's the mechanism that causes all the variation ibnto all the wonderful new phenotypes. Each Kind has its own genome that can vary in these ways, always within the parameters given for the characteristics of that species and no other. You can never get anything but variations on the given species. One species cannot turn into another species.A great part of the genome of every species is formerly functioning DNA that no longer functions, or "junk DNA." This is a record of all the formerly functioning capacities God built into every creature at the Creation, that have since been lost because of the Fall and the Flood.I know I'm forgetting a lot. It will come back to me eventually.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm sure with time a truly scientific model could be made of that information. For now it really is a sufficient model for the realities of how life came to be and how it varies.The only "procedure" indicated would be how we are charged by God with being husbands to his Creation, making the best of it, developing beautiful gardens, cultivating edible plants to their maximum of perfections of different tastes and nutritional value, cultivating animals to form new varieiteis that nature itself doesn't bring about, breeding in other words. This can't really happen in this broken Falllen world beyond a very limited extent, but in the New Creation there should be glorious opportunities for us to develop the Creation according to the intelligence God gave us.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Problem is YOUR model is a total fantasy.

Obviously I can talk until I'm blue in the face and you'll never get it. You don't have to agree with it, just get it for pete's sake.Of course I'm going to say that the different phenotypes we get from variation are not evolution. Just acknowledge that that's what I mean instead of saying "so?" as if you donb't have a clue. Of course maybe you don't since you don't get anything I say and donb't want to.\As for mimicry of course there are adaptations like that that can be selected. God built in the stuff that makes all such adaptations possible. Makes for wonderful fun don't you think?As for convergent evolution no I'm not going to say they are the same species for pete's sake, and how does it help your case to say something so obviously a misrepresentation? Many of you do resort to this level of "argument" though, you are so sure of yourselves and so unable to think through anything I'm saying. Some of the same functions show up in different species, so big deal.You are asking me stupid questions, RAXD, that I've answered many times that you ought to know the answer to by now and if you don't I just assume you don't care enough to follow the argument because I don't think you're that stupid.I have to come back to this after I let my ulcer calm down.

Gosh, beaks, wings, bird legs, feathers and you can't see them as one species?

Oh and besides beaks, wings, bird legs and feathers there's the basic body shape, plus the fact that if it has long legs it also has a long neck and vice versa. They also have pretty distinctly bird eyes. All of them share these characteristics. A bird is a bird is a bird and nothing else.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Those other taxonomic groups do not share all their charaacteristics as birds do.

I took a look at ducks, geese, swans and hawks and don't really see any great discrepancy between length of necks and legs in any of them as you suggest.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

To address your last question first: There's too much in the higher taxonomic groups that doesn't fit the characteristics of birds while the bird group share just about everything in common. The only real differences among them do seem to be the claw feet versus the paddle feet.Swans don't really have short legs, and actually their necks aren't even as long as I at least ... expected anyway. they seem longer than they are because of the way they are folded back. I'll try to find pictures to post.Birds of prey look like they have shorter necks than they do because of the way their wings fold up near their heads when at rest. They may still be shorter than their legs but I'll have to look again.Probably the best way to assess this is to find skeletons of each bird. the skeleton of penguins was a real eye opener to me because it's a true bird body that is revealed that way, that is not evident under their feather padding.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not sure what the exceedingly thin smoke means exactly but hey I'm a creationist, I have to identify the Kinds, and actually it's not hard at all when you really look at the creatures, though I'm sure there are cases that are difficult to fit into a Kind.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So I looked up the Linnaean taxonomy for birds and they are in the Class Aves. That's the Bird Kind as I see it. What I call Species, but the taxonomic system only uses that term for very specific species of birds, such as Robin. I still want to call them all a Species but I guess I'll have to use Kind and probably clarify that from time to time as the equivalent of the Class Aves.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I looked up this taxonomic group and would call the Dog Kind the Canidae. Aves are a Class but Canidae are a Family.The Cat Kind would be the Felidae Family.But I have to give some thought to the Caniformia and the Feliformia which are Suborders of the Order Carnivora that have doglike or catlike characteristics but are classed separately.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Neither you nor I think that. Nor do I think they must be the same species as you first absurdly suggested.You call it convergent evolution, the idea being that they evolved separately. Which is pretty much what I''d say too. So there really isn't much of an issue here. But just calling it "convergent evolution" doesn't explain why "species A looks like species B" anyway, it just says it happens. I don't have an explanation either except that the same function can show up in different species, which doesn't explain it either, just says it happens, same as you say it happens. It's a wonderful mystery really.In fact there are a lot of wonderful mysteries to ponder in either theory. The strikingly specific kinds of animals that I'm imputing to the same genome is a great mystery. I don't think they were separately created which would easily solve the problem, I do think they "evolved" from the original, say, bird, or cat or dog genome, but they are such specifically designed creatures with such specifically different adaptations it's truly wonderful. I have to try to understand how the penguin came out of the bird genome, or the ostrich. The penguin with its peculiarly specific bodily structure and behaviors, the ostrich with its peculiarly specific bodily structure and behaviors, each perfectly adapted to its environment.In my scenaio they evolved, just as they did in your scenario, but their specificity is too wonderful for that explanation. No I don't think they were separately created, I do think they evolved from the original Bird Kind, but it's hard to see how the random methods of evolution could have brought that about. And of course I mean microevolution, and of course so do you.Same wonderful mystery with dogs. As I concluded from the Linnaean taxonomy, the Dog Kind includes wolves and foxes and coyotes and dingos and perhaps some other odd variations. If I believe they all came from an original Dog Kind then I believe they evolved, just as you believe they evolved.I could raise the question from my point of view whether such specific variations had already arisen before the Flood and were taken into the Ark as separate species, or evolved AFTER the Flood from the two chosen. I probably won't be able to answer that for sure but my feeling is that they must have been treated as separate species so each would have been brought in twos onto the Ark.These very specific variations of birds or dogs or any other Kind or Class or Family seem very hard to explain on the basis of evolution which always suggests something piecemeal. But these creatures have an organized wholeness whose parts would have to have evolved all together it seems. I ran into this same issue when thinking aobut how apes could have evolved into humanity. So many parts of the creature work together it's hard to figure out how they could have evolved one at a time through mutations. In the case of the Kind it's hard to imagine how even though they share a genome all the different functions they need that are built into the genome still have to be inherited as a unit rather than piecemeal by population splits. The penguins all have total body feather coverage, they all nurture their eggs between their feet, they are all supremely adapted to swimming in freezing water, how did all that adaptation come together by mere evolution, whether the ToE version or the Kind version? it's hard to explain either way. Oh I know it can be explained but I mean such adaptations defy the usual explanations and need a more satisfying explanation than the usual ones.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thanks, those are good pictures. Yes they give a different impression than I had from the picture I saw at Google Image, but still, those are creatures with long necks and long legs. Those parts aren't matched perfectly but I didn't say they were: the general statement is still true that the birds with the long necks also have the long legs and those with shorter necks also shorter legs. It isn't a crucial point, it was just something I thought seemed to be part of the bird phenomenon, and it does seem to be as a general principle. Meaning you won't find a bird with a very short neck and very long legs or vice versa. Again, not that it matters hugely but I think there is some principle of proportion going on here, that's all.If the swan had truly short legs it would waddle. It's legs are long but not as long as a flamingo or crane's. If you want to dispute this, fine, it really doesn't matter a lot. It just looks to me that in general creatures are designed to some principle of proportionality and it makes me wonder how this is determined by the genome..Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are aware that "species" is simply Latin? Greek? for "kind," right? If you are all very strict about sticking to the Linnaean taxonomy in your use of the word then I'm happy to comply and do my best to avoid confusion. However, when I'm talking about variations, variations of anything, cat, bird, oak, whatever, the word "species" is still going to have to be in there somewhere and I don't think merely identifying the Kind is going to solve that problem.For instance, although you want me to stick to the Linnaean use of the term "species" it is not clearly used in that sense for "ring species." Each population that has evolved from the previous population is called a "species." Even that can gtet confusing if there isn't an attempt to distinguish which species in the ring is meant. That is where the word is going to get confusing no matter which system or theory is used it seems to me. But of course I think the whole idea of speciation in which the speciated new population is considered to be macroevolution is wrong. in fact it is mere wishful thinking because it implies that this new population can evolve into more species. But it seems to me that when you get to the point of having a new species, or variation, or subspecies, that can't breed with the parent population you are very likelyh to have the genetic situation I'm always talking about: reduced genetic diversity. And that genetic condition allows LESS possibility of evolution, not more.So I think you are all kidding yourselves. Just as in Dawkins' WEASEL program you are always all thinking of openended possibilities of evolution, so the program just shows that openended evolution, just one new phenotype after another, without any recognition whatever of what is going on in the genetic substrate. If you understand that new breeds have to lose the genetic substrate for other breeds, surely you must also see that any phenotype in the wild has to lose the genetic substrate for other phenotypes. This is essential to evolution, period. And after a series of population splits developing new phenotypes you are going to have LESS genetic diversity and often so little further evolution is absolutely impossible. Calling that "macroevolution" or just "speciation" is wishfulness without even a shred of reality to it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.