THE END OF EVOLUTION?

Evolution works through populations. The world population has just become larger, and is becoming less diverse. Where formerly numerous small populations could take a new mutation and let it develop in relative isolation, now those mutations will have to develop and spread in the population as a whole.Why should that cause evolution to stop? This is especially true as evolution takes place on the micro level, within the genome, and the size of the population makes no difference there. A change will still spread downward through the generations.It would help if you had included a source for that quotation so we could see what the context of the sentence was.And what all of this has to do with the second law of thermodynamics escapes me. Unless you are just repeating the totally discredited creationist nonsense that the second law somehow prohibits evolution.Edited by Coyote, : Speelling

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

That is not accurate.But if you believe it is true, then please tell us why evolution must reach equilibrium. And please don't bring up the second law nonsense; it simply does not apply here.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Or any living thing.(Goddidit?)OK, how about a snowflake or a hurricane? Or a crystal? A stalagmite/stalactite?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This whole concept is a religious, not a scientific, one.Its origin is in "the fall" -- following the Adam and Eve/apple myth.The religious belief that mankind was once perfect, until sin entered the world, and that the genome is degenerating since that event is the source of the second law of thermodynamics nonsense.There is no science there--its all religious belief trying to force scientific facts to conform to dogma.But for those who believe, no stretch of the data seems to be too much if it makes that data conform to dogma.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

What you have been posting amounts to junk science, or less, and you have been posting it in the science forums.In reality, what you are posting is religious belief couched in scientific terms. That doesn't make it science, nor does it belong in the science forums.(See tagline.)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The problem is that I do understand. I have learned a bit of science in my 40-year career, and learned to research what I don't know.I have learned enough to recognize that you are posting science based on religious belief, not science based on the scientific method.And, sadly, you reinforce this with virtually every post you make, so I and many others here understand quite well what you are doing. This entire thread is a prime example

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

If you do not follow the scientific method you have no right to call yourself a scientist.This is where creation "science" went wrong: creation "science" is a lie from the very beginning, as they are pretending they are scientists when they are not. They are trying to gain the respectability accorded to science when they are doing the exact opposite of science.Creation "science" is religious apologetics, and everyone buts its practitioners knows it.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

There is a lot more to evolution than just speciation.We are mutating and evolving (what creationists would call micro-evolution) in relation to a variety of factors, ranging from exposures to pesticides to aids, influenza, and other diseases. All of these hundreds or thousands of environmental pressures cause change in the genome over time, but those changes go in many different directions--the changes that help against malaria are not necessarily helpful, or even related to, changes that help against aids. Some individuals may have one, or both, or neither of these changes. Only time (and now technology) will settle out where these changes lead and which are fixed into the overall population.But its possible that we have already changed sufficiently to not be interfertile or capable of bearing living offspring vis a vis groups of archaic humans going back, say, 160,000 years ago. But as you say, that's a tough one to test.But look for significant changes when humans begin living in space! Change the environment that much and you are sure to get changes in the genome, and perhaps rapid changes. Stay tuned!Evolution ended?NOT!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I grew up with Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and the rest. I assumed that moving into space would be natural.I never imagined NASA as we know it: excelling largely at coming up with reasons why something can't be done on time or within budget, or can't be done at all.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The separation can be either geographic or temporal.Geographic: Look up "ring species" to get a feel for this. One example is a series of related groups of salamanders found around the central valley of California. Each adjacent group can interbreed with the next group, but where the "ring" joins at the far end the two adjacent groups do not interbreed. So what you have is a species that has separated such that the extremes can't interbreed--geographic speciation (with all of the "transitionals" still in place). Now if you cut the ring at any location you have two distinct species--defined by the lack of an ability to interbreed. This speciation was caused by geographic separation. Ancient apes appear to have undergone this same separation, when one group left the forests for the grasslands while the other group remained in the forests. The former led to humans, while the latter led to modern apes.Temporal: RAZD has posted a good explanation of this:

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For instance with Pelycodus:

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Pelycodus was a tree-dwelling primate that looked much like a modern lemur. The skull shown is probably 7.5 centimeters long.

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The numbers down the left hand side indicate the depth (in feet) at which each group of fossils was found. As is usual in geology, the diagram gives the data for the deepest (oldest) fossils at the bottom, and the upper (youngest) fossils at the top. The diagram covers about five million years.

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The numbers across the bottom are a measure of body size. Each horizontal line shows the range of sizes that were found at that depth. The dark part of each line shows the average value, and the standard deviation around the average.

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The dashed lines show the overall trend. The species at the bottom is Pelycodus ralstoni, but at the top we find two species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus. The two species later became even more distinct, and the descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of genus Notharctus.

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As you look from bottom to top, you will see that each group has some overlap with what came before. There are no major breaks or sudden jumps. And the form of the creatures was changing steadily.

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Color for empHAsis: this is the kind of continuing change we are talking about.

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http://EvC Forum: Speciation + Evolution = More Diversity -->EvC Forum: Speciation + Evolution = More Diversity

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The gene flow from one end to the opposite end is likely exceedingly small. Beats me. That the salamanders in this ring species do not interbreed is sufficient to attest to speciation.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You are confusing evolution with speciation.In language that may make more sense to a creationist, you are confusing micro-evolution with macro-evolution.And your assumption that "it should have happened by now" is baseless.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I think your answer is in a) above.You correctly state that there was geographic limiting of early populations. That is one of the quicker ways to get speciation. The lack of isolation that we currently have is preventing speciation based on geographic isolation. But we still have changes occurring throughout the human population, and we are gradually drifting apart from earlier human species as time passes. At some point it will become a large enough difference that then current humans and archaic humans will not have been able to interbreed. That will most likely take time, selection pressure, genetic drift etc., but there is no reason to believe that evolution has stopped. Just be patient!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You don't have to outrun the T. rex, you just have to outrun the guy next to you!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Is this the "kind" or "baramin" belief that you're pushing? The belief that micro-evolution is fine, but macro-evolution is verboten?If so, perhaps you can provide the mechanism that prevents all of those micros from adding up to a macro.Otherwise, your insistence that genus Homo is finished evolving makes no sense in light of millions of years of evidence.Even some of the most ardent creationists accept evolution and speciation! For example, Lubenow and "Woodmorappe" accept rapid speciation! In his essay The non-transitions in ‘human evolution’—on evolutionists’ terms "Woodmorappe" writes:

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Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis can best be understood as racial variants of modern man—all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel. Source

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And as I have noted elsewhere in response to this claim:

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The change from modern man, i.e., Adam and Eve, to these four species of fossil man took place since the Babel incident, which is usually placed after the global flood and in the range of 4,000 to 5,300 years ago. The change from modern man to Homo ergaster would require a rate of evolution on the order of several hundred times as rapid as scientists posit for the change from Homo ergaster to modern man! This is in spite of the fact that most creationists deny evolution occurs on this scale at all; now they have not only proposed such a change themselves, but see it several hundreds of times faster and in reverse!

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So if you accept the "kinds" or "baramins" belief, how can you reconcile your belief with a fairly common creationist belief that several species of Homo evolved in just a couple of thousand years?And if you accept an old earth and the fossil record, how can you reconcile your belief with the obvious speciation that has occurred in genus Homo and its ancestors going back millions of years?In other words, what is your evidence that evolution has halted?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.