Summations Only

Hi, idscience, I think I can speak to your point.A research paper came out a few years ago, and when I presented it to creationists and ID proponents such as yourself, I found they had no response to it:

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More Evidence of Evolution - Geomyidae and Geomydoecus

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Consider the plight of the pubic lice. Pocket gophers construct individual tunnel systems which one gopher will habitate; individual gophers rarely meet except to mate. Their lice are specialized, physically, for clinging to the hairs of their host; they are not highly mobile on other terrain. As a result, gopher pubic lice rarely encounter disparate individuals except when their hosts meet to mate.

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From an evolutionary perspective, these ecological realities mean that gophers and their lice should undergo speciation in response to the same events; thus, we should see a large degree of convergence between the evolutionary histories of these organisms as their unrelated lineages speciate in parallel. That this prediction from ecology is satisfied by genetics is further support of the accuracy of evolutionary models.

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http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?action=msg&f=5&t=751&m=1I recommend you read the post, and the paper in Systematic Biology, in its entirety.Now, obviously pocket gophers are nothing at all like public lice; gophers are mammals and public lice are insects. And moreover, the similarity here is not DNA sequences that you could somehow explain as the result of similar biologic function, but patterns of phylogenetic inheritance. The creationist perspective, of course, is that there is no such thing as phylogenetic data - that the patterns of inheritance and ancestry illuminated by DNA sequence comparisons are nothing more than noise, with no more significance than interpreting the shapes of clouds.Geoyidae and Geomydoecus prove that this contention of creationists is 100% wrong. If phylogenies are noise, then they cannot possibly ever be congruent. This example of surprising congruence verifies the science of molecular phylogenetics (almost single-handedly, I would say) and phylogenetics proves evolution. To my mind, this single paper should have completely settled the debate. Needless to say I've not succeeded in getting a single creationist to even read it. Maybe you'll be the first?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Certainly it can, it has been observed that it can, and the overwhelming and unimpeachable evidence from molecular systematics (see my earlier post about Geomyidae and Geomydoecus) is that it has.Random mutation, combined with natural selection, is more than adequate to produce all known biological features. The entire panoply of protein sequences in the living world inhabits such a small corner of the possibility space (that is, all possible combinations of all possible peptides) that it's mathematically possible to get from any one protein to any other by single residue substitutions via proteins that, at the very least, exhibit phosphate binding activity. That's mathematical proof that evolution is possible. Molecular phylogenies provide the proof that it did.

Because there's no possible design explanation for phylogenetic concordance between these species. The concordance is real - less than one chance in several million of being coincidental - and the only possible explanation is that they repeatedly speciated in concert over evolutionary time.If there was a design explanation, you would have been able to provide it, or someone already would have. Your retreat proves the hollowness of your position. Probably, but speciation is macroevolution. Accepting this example means you've already conceded the debate.

You didn't really look at it, though. You gave it the once-over and then claimed that it didn't count because it didn't demonstrate that public lice evolved from pocket gophers, which is not anything that any biological scientist thinks is what happened. With that track record, why would anyone else go to the effort of showing you any research at all?Based on your nonresponse to the Geomyidae and Geomydoecus, you've got enough on your plate as it is. Why don't you take a stab at providing the design explanation for the unlikely congruence of their completely independent phylogenies?

Speciation occurs because all populations are in a constant state of genetic change, so when two populations becomes separated, they develop independently. Eventually they develop to a point where they can no longer interbreed, and since we define "species" along reproductive communities, that's the point at which speciation is said to have occurred.

Well, no, because species essentialism is wrong. We don't define species as a certain specific genetic configuration, but as a reproductive community. Conceivably there's a sequence of events by which you and Percy might find yourselves in isolated reproductive communities as a result of successive microevolutionary change, which would constitute a macroevolutionary speciation event. That's how bulk microevolution leads to macroevolution.