"Best" evidence for evolution.

If it's not logical or intuitively obvious to you, sorry about that but it is to me.

Your assumption is irrational and you only believe it because of your anti-science prejudices. Sorry about that.

But Wait...There's more.Not only is it not logical or intuitively obvious to you, it is refuted by ALL of the evidence from every discipline and line of research for the last several hundred years.You position is simply willfully ignorant and wrong.

I don't have an anti-science point of view, I have an anti-evolution point of view. Evolution is not science even though a lot of science gets poured into it as if it were. Sad waste of time and resources. But I did arrive at my argument about microeolution simply from thinking about the facts and over the years I've posted plenty of actual evidence for it. Yup. I know I'm up against the establishment. Way it goes.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As a reminder, the discussion was about things like a few different species of mice that couldn't interbreed. This is clearly not what is usually meant by macroevolution. Species doesn't have a definition, and it bothers me that people keep pretending it does. Species is a vague and nebulous concept, and while it certainly predates evolution, the definition of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding doesn't - this was only really formally defined in the 20th century. Note that Linneaus included multiple species of human; I don't think he believed them incapable of interbreeding.The Biological Species Concept is inapplicable to broad swathes of biological diversity, and it's rarely actually applied where it is applicable. There are countless examples where different species, different genera and sometimes even different families are not only capable of interbreeding; but engage in it regularly. No one suggests collapsing vast taxonomic groups into single species, because it would make it hard to discuss diversity.So the BSC is an idea that sounds good in principle, but when you test it against the natural world it turns out to be near useless for actual taxanomy. And yet for some reason people keep pretending this outdated idea is the default. It's not.

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I don't have an anti-science point of view

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Yes you do.

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I have an anti-evolution point of view.

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Which is a form of anti-science view, and your objections are frequently anti-scientific, lacking both a sound base in theory or evidence.

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Evolution is not science even though a lot of science gets poured into it as if it were

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Faith, when will you learn? If you want to pretend that you don’t have an anti-science view don’t provide the proof that you do - in the same post.

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Sad waste of time and resources

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And that’s your anti-science view showing up again.

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But I did arrive at my argument about microeolution simply from thinking about the facts

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No, you didn’t. You’ve avoided even finding out the facts that you would need to make the case.

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... and over the years I've posted plenty of actual evidence for it.

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No you haven’t. You haven’t posted a single piece of evidence that was worth anything. You can’t even be bothered to look for evidence.

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Yup. I know I'm up against the establishment. Way it goes

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You mean that you’re up against people who won’t be bullied into worshipping you. Which is your only tactic at this point,

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As a reminder, the discussion was about things like a few different species of mice that couldn't interbreed. This is clearly not what is usually meant by macroevolution.

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That is taking it way back past the context. To the best of my knowledge speciation is considered to be macroevolution. And let us also note that you acknowledge that the mice are different species.

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Species doesn't have a definition, and it bothers me that people keep pretending it does. Species is a vague and nebulous concept, and while it certainly predates evolution, the definition of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding doesn't - this was only really formally defined in the 20th century. Note that Linneaus included multiple species of human; I don't think he believed them incapable of interbreeding

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Species may not have a hard definition, but your argument goes in the wrong direction. There are species which engage in hybridisation on occasion - but you would need to argue that populations that don’t interbreed are the same species. That is a rather different point. A condition may be sufficient without being necessary.

I'm really pleased you posted that. I was taught many years ago that species is a biological concept that real organisms find amusing. But we have to draw some lines somewhere just for tidiness sake. Even if we rub them out later.

This makes no sense. If we're just reducing the genetic variation present in an initial parent population, then the alleles each subpopulation possesses were once part of the same population. A genetic mismatch implies something has changed in at least one of the subpopulations; otherwise joining them together would just mean mixing together the original population's alleles. You'd make the original species again.As we can see from real life examples, when you have actual subpopulations with greatly reduced genetic diversity, they are more likely to produce fertile young when mixed together than they are apart. The reason being that you have less individuals homozygous for harmful recessive alleles.

Depends who you ask. To quote one theoretical biologist (Adam Wilkins):

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For most evolutionary biologists, however, microevolution is synonymous with speciation, and the term macroevolution, when it is used at all, denotes those larger evolutionary differences that distinguish higher taxonomic categories, in particular orders, classes and phyla

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My thinking is that it's daft to argue about whether something is macroevolution or not. The more important question is whether that in fact defines a useful concept at all. 'Evolutionary change greater than some arbitrary and undefined quantity' is not a worthwhile concept to define.If creationists want to argue that microevolution is possible but macroevolution isn't; we shouldn't be arguing over the definition of the latter word. It's the responsibility of the creationists to provide a clear definition of what that actually means. There are lots of species that regularly and consistently engage in hybridisation. It's not an occasional and unusual thing, but pervasive, and plays an important part in evolution. I think this fact is underappreciated, which is one of the reasons I keep being crotchety about the subject. Okay, fair enough - I see what you're saying here. But I still think this line of argument leads us on a semantic tangent that puts the emphasis on the wrong place. We go on the endless circle of 'that doesn't count because they're still mice' and 'that's only microevolution' instead of focusing on the core of what's wrong with Faith's arguments.

Oh goody, the taxonomic system is getting a much-needed drubbing. As I recall I do. Interbredding isn't my standard though. As for diversity I'm happy with "subspecies."

Oh nonsense. It's not all that hard to place organisms into their rightful morphological camps, which I think should be called Species. The difficulties are fairly rare really. This idea that the species all blur together is an artifact of the ToE. Without that interference it is not all that hard to classify creatures.

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My thinking is that it's daft to argue about whether something is macroevolution or not. The more important question is whether that in fact defines a useful concept at all. 'Evolutionary change greater than some arbitrary and undefined quantity' is not a worthwhile concept to define.

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The trouble is that higher taxonomic groupings are, if anything, worse. Species may turn out to be rather fuzzy, but they are as good as anything.Besides Faith’s approach to macroevolution is whatever it is, I’m against it - she doesn’t care what it means. So any definition will do, and the definition which includes speciation certainly appears to be used.

Of course but you have new frequencies of them and sometimes many have been lost. You have a lot more homozygosity for instance. An increase in homozygosity at different loci could cause such problems. As a matter of fact you don't because you are mixing new sets of allele frequencies and that does produce something different than the original population if you mix them all together. If they CAN interbreed and reproduce together that would probably be true. The hybrids would be stronger in many ways than the separated populations. Makes sense. But the homozygous genes don't have to be harmful. The cheetah and the elephant seal and "purebreds" all have many fixed (homozygous) loci. It's practically the definition of a purebred. In dogs this doesn't prevent interbreeding but it does in many species. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You think all birds are one species. Your understanding of biological diversity is incoherent.