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Author Topic:   MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it?
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 66 of 908 (402972)
05-31-2007 5:17 AM
Reply to: Message 63 by MartinV
05-30-2007 4:12 PM


Re: front-loaded macroevolution
One of them is phylogeny of human tapeworms. Listen to what absurd conclusion this "phylogeny" led: The closest relatives of human tapeworms did not colonize either cows or pigs. Instead, they lived inside East African herbivores such as antelopes, with the lions and hyenas that kill them as their final hosts. So the darwinian conclusion (or better another weird darwinian fancy) is this one: human ancestors followed lions and ate the remains after them.
So the parasite switch to humans and afterwards to pigs. So human were scavengers by parasite phylogeny conclusion. Believe it if you like
Or they could just kill and eat the antelope themselves like the lions and hyenas would do to pick up the parasite. What do you know, that is what they say in the paper (Hoberg et al., 2000)!
Hoberg et al. writes:
The origin of the host-parasite assemblage is attributable to direct predator-prey associations between hominids and bovids or via the scavenging of bovids killed by carnivorous predators...
And I'm not sure what would be so unbelievable about a hominid scavenging either. Do you have anything other than incredulity to back up your argument? You don't seem to have made any sort of case at all as to why this is somehow an 'absurd' conclusion. I'm not even sure where you think your phylogenetic claim comes from that...
MartinV writes:
The closest relatives of human tapeworms did not colonize either cows or pigs.
What they say is that humans did not originally pick up the tapeworms form cows or pigs. So it is the ancestors, not the closest relatives, that didn't colonise cows or pigs.Perhaps You mean that their closest living relatives do not use cows or pigs as intermediate hosts.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by MartinV, posted 05-30-2007 4:12 PM MartinV has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 83 of 908 (441873)
12-19-2007 5:53 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by Elmer
12-18-2007 10:30 PM


Genetic balderdash
Just watch a film of a giraffe drinking at a waterhole if this is not obvious to you.
What is your point supposed to be? That giraffe's splay their legs when they drink. I didn't notice any giraffe's failing to drink and dying of thirst. So in what way do longer necks 'force' a giraffe to eat off tree tops, are you saying that Giraffe's have no range of vertical motion in their necks? Giraffe's can eat grass so how can you possibly contend they are forced to eat from the tops of trees. Your knowledge of giraffe's seems as made up as your knowledge of genetics.
Secondly, genetic determinism says that a random genetic mutation does not simply 'influence' a long neck, but rather, as you yourself just finished saying, it _causes_ it. Unavoidably and directly/linearly.
And what is your evidence to the contrary? There is plenty of clear evidence of genetic mutations leading 'unavoidably and directly' to specific morphological changes, including changes in things like vertebra number and character, so why do you think it is unlikely to be directly determining a characteristic like vertebra size?
It may not be the only thing determining the exact adult size of the bone, other factors like diet will obviously influence those things, but genetic changes certainly can directly influence morphological characteristics, to think otherwise is to ignore everything we know of gentics sin Mendel.
'one gene, one trait'
This is by no means a tenet of modern genetics so perhaps your 'genetic determinism' is just one more in a string of strawmen. If you think modern genetics insists on 'one gene, one trait' you obviously haven't read any genetic research for the last 20 years or more. Genetics has moved on since Mendel just as evolution has moved on since Darwin.
All of the facts can be derived by web research, but the conclusions are derived by examining the logical inferences to be reasonably derived from those facts, and for that nobody needs a "source". Asking me to provide one is simply a demand that I use the fallacious, 'argument from authority'.
I think he was just asking you to make an argument rather than a random catalogue of things none of which support, and most of which contradict, your position. You seem to think that a simplistic strawman of how you think 'Genetic determinists' think genetics should operate is the same as a coherent argument against the massive importance of genetics in deteermining form., and it isn't.
To say that genes are merely 'correlated' to the same traits in different taxons is to severely abuse both the word correlated and the genetic literature. When you can show that knocking out or overexpressing the same gene in different species leads to the loss or ectopic development of the same structures then to not infer a causative role is to firmly plant ones head in the clouds.
That little gish Gallop contains much that is erroneous and some that is simply pure nonsense. Are you seriously claiming that there have been no master control genes identified? What about Pax-6 in eye development?
Which fact takes genetic determinism, along with the RMNS darwinism that depends upon it, and shoots it down in flames.
Except it doesn't at all. The epigentic effects feed into exactly the same molecular pathways as the genes, and frequently only act by modifying the expression of genes. It doesn't matter if other factors modify an organisms morphology, the only ones which will contribute to evolution will be the heritable factors. There is some evidence for the inheritance of certain epigenetic trait
s but the extent to which this calls for a revision of the evolutionary view of the genome is not yet clear. So far epigenomics is more concerned with the determination of specific cell lineages in development rather than evolution.
But 'contributing' is miles away from 'determining', and reiterating [inheriting]is leagues away from generating novelty.
Just saying this rubbish doesn't make it true, and putting words in inverted commas doesn't make a substantial argument. There are hundreds of instances from the literature of specific genetic changes producing specific morphological effects, clear determination. Not being the sole contributing factor to a particular morphology does not stop genes determining that morphology to an unavoidable degree, and certainly not in the context of heritable morphologies.
As to novelty you haven't even begun to make any coherent point.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by Elmer, posted 12-18-2007 10:30 PM Elmer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by Elmer, posted 12-19-2007 6:51 AM Wounded King has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 85 of 908 (441882)
12-19-2007 7:24 AM
Reply to: Message 84 by Elmer
12-19-2007 6:51 AM


Re: Genetic balderdash
And that is why, even though you object that giraffes can eat grass, they do not.
Except that they do eat grass and they do drink water. It clearly isn't dysfunctional as the giraffes are drinking water every day. It certainly may not be the ideal posture for drinking but since long necked giraffes have not yet died out surely you would admit that whatever disadvantages you contend their long necks may represent to drinking and eating grass over long periods they haven't been so severe as to kill it off. your point doesn't seem to have a point.
More importantly, I see that you still haven't learned how to behave properly.
Please don't stand so high up on your injured pride. You continue to make sweeping assertions and unsupported claims and then when I question your possession of appropriate knowledge you wail and moan about the personal insult done to you. Why not try and demonstrate some actual knowledge rather than mere assertion and braggadocio?
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by Elmer, posted 12-19-2007 6:51 AM Elmer has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 88 by RAZD, posted 12-19-2007 10:15 AM Wounded King has not replied

  
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