Show me empirical proof that one "kind" of animal
can/has produce(d) an animal of a different "kind."
Dear Candle2 (and what have you done with Candle1?!?)
Imagine that you have a gallon bucket of yellow paint and a gallon bucket of blue paint and a large pail. Pour the two buckets of paint into the pail and stir: you will get a pail of green paint, That is creationism creating a new “kind”. Now star over, but just pour the yellow bucket of paint into the pail. Then add a drop of blue paint to the pail and stir. The paint is still yellow. Take a tiny smidgen- much less than one drop - of the yellow paint (plus that one drop of blue) and make a thin stripe on a long strip of paper. Then add a second drop of blue to the pail and draw another thin strip on the long strip of paper. Continue this process until all the blue paint is in the pail and your strip of paper has hundreds of colored stripes on it. The paint remaining in the pail is now green and the last stripes on the paper are green, a distinctly different color from yellow or blue.
At what point did the stripe on the paper suddenly change from yellow to green? One of the arguments that creationists make against evolution is that a member of a population is born with a gene mutation that will lead to speciation, then that member is a new species, different the the other members of the population, and cannot successfully reproduce with other members. So what is the probability that he/she/it will just happen to find another individual with exactly the same mutation (and opposite sex) so that they can reproduce and start a new species? That probability is minuscule, so the argument goes, that evolution is disproved. But that’s not how life works. Of the almost 8 billion people on earth, no two have the exact same genome. In fact, of the approximately 30 trillion cells in your body, very few, if any, have the same genome. Cell division, in which 6 billion ATCG base are replicated, is amazingly error free, but
not completely error free - there are typically several dozen errors for each cell duplication. 99.999..% of these errors are inconsequential. Some will cause cancer or other ill effects. A few will improve the survivability of that cell, and if in a gremlin cell, survivability of that individuals offspring. Another example of the genetic diversity within a population: you can look at pictures of probably over 1000 humans and identify each one; family, friends, sports figures, entertainers, politicians, historical figures, etc. And that differentiation is just from facial features. Imagine if you were a medical examiner examining 1000 differse livers and seeing the same degree of difference! OK, maybe, don’t imagine that.
The point is that the individual with the beneficial gene mutation can still mate with most the members of her population and so can several generations of her descendants. And that beneficial mutation might be bread out of the population or it might become pervasive in a subpopulation. It will take many such changes, and their becoming pervasive to create a new species (I won’t say “or kind” since their is no such biological categorization).
But, dear Mr./Mrs./Whatever Candle2, you are missing the really import thing about understanding and appreciating evolution. Evolution is not just a vestigial process of random chemical reactions. It is essential for the continuance of life on Earth! In high school biology we are taught that there are six processes essential for life: injestion, digestion, excretion, respiration, metabolism, and reproduction. But they need to include a seventh essential: Evolution! Evolution grants ‘Survival of the Fittest’. But fitness is determined by the environment and the environment is constantly changing. At two different times the environment can be as different as day and night. In fact, day and night represent two radically different environments. Plus there are seasonal changes, centennial changes, millennial changes, and horrendous changes over longer periods. It’s an adapt or die world we live in. The fossil record is replete with the millions of species left behind and millions that adapted, by evolution, to live on.
The real message here is that evolution is God’s gift to life. That bears repeating:
EVOLUTION IS GOD’S GIFT TO LIFE!