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originally posted by: vasaga
Even when framed like this, the question is loaded with assumptions. Among others;
- If you don't believe evolutionary theory, you must be a creationist. This is already insulting and dishonest, since it's pretty much an attempt to ridicule anyone that does not share the same view.
- What is classified under 'major changes'? How is anyone answering this supposed to know? Family, species and genus is still too vague, because it cunningly bypassed detailed problems.
- If we don't know what these major changes exactly are, how do we know he has evidence for them or that they have been proven right, for anyone to try and disprove it?
He's says he's referring strictly to the theory of modern evolutionary synthesis, that's also known as neo-darwinism.
As part of the disagreement about whether natural selection alone was sufficient to explain speciation, George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism to refer to the version of evolution advocated by Alfred Russel Wallace and August Weismann with its heavy dependence on natural selection. Weismann and Wallace rejected the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics, something that Darwin had not ruled out.The term was first used in 1895 to explain that evolution occurs solely through natural selection, in other words, without any mechanism involving the inheritance of acquired characteristics resulting from use or disuse
Most scientists would say there is no controversy over evolution. Why do you disagree?
All scientists agree that evolution has occurred—that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?
it's interesting which portion you chose to put in bold as I found the first sentence far more apt than the one you chose.
And you don’t believe that natural selection is the answer?
This is the issue I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection. If you want bigger eggs, you keep selecting the hens that are laying the biggest eggs, and you get bigger and bigger eggs. But you also get hens with defective feathers and wobbly legs. Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create....
she disagrees with natural selection and then uses an example that isn't "natural" selection. Her example isn't quite how things work in the natural world.
Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify and organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change-led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.
What kind of evidence turned you against neo-Darwinism?
What you'd like to see is a good case for gradual change from one species to another in the field, in the laboratory, or in the fossil record--and preferably in all three. Darwin's big mystery was why there was no record at all before a specific point [dated to 542 million years ago by modern researchers], and then all of the sudden in the fossil record you get nearly all the major types of animals. The paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould studied lakes in East Africa and on Caribbean islands looking for Darwin's gradual change from one species of trilobite or snail to another. What they found was lots of back-and-forth variation in the population and then--whoop--a whole new species. There is no gradualism in the fossil record.
Gould used the term “punctuated equilibrium” to describe what he interpreted as actual leaps in evolutionary change. Most biologists disagreed, suggesting a wealth of missing fossil evidence yet to be found. Where do you stand in the debate?
“Punctuated equilibrium” was invented to describe the discontinuity in the appearance of new species, and symbiogenesis supports the idea that these discontinuities are real. An example: Most clams live in deep, fairly dark waters. Among one group of clams is a species whose ancestors ingested algae—a typical food—but failed to digest them and kept the algae under their shells. The shell, with time, became translucent, allowing sunlight in. The clams fed off their captive algae and their habitat expanded into sunlit waters. So there’s a discontinuity between the dark-dwelling, food-gathering ancestor and the descendants that feed themselves photosynthetically.
What about the famous “beak of the finch” evolutionary studies of the 1970s? Didn’t they vindicate Darwin?
Peter and Rosemary Grant, two married evolutionary biologists, said, ‘To hell with all this theory; we want to get there and look at speciation happening.’ They measured the eggs, beaks, et cetera, of finches on Daphne Island, a small, hilly former volcano top in Ecuador’s Galápagos, year after year. They found that during floods or other times when there are no big seeds, the birds with big beaks can’t eat. The birds die of starvation and go extinct on that island.
Did the Grants document the emergence of new species?
They saw this big shift: the large-beaked birds going extinct, the small-beaked ones spreading all over the island and being selected for the kinds of seeds they eat. They saw lots of variation within a species, changes over time. But they never found any new species—ever. They would say that if they waited long enough they’d find a new species.
Some of your criticisms of natural selection sound a lot like those of Michael Behe, one of the most famous proponents of “intelligent design,” and yet you have debated Behe. What is the difference between your views?
The critics, including the creationist critics, are right about their criticism. It’s just that they’ve got nothing to offer but intelligent design or “God did it.” They have no alternatives that are scientific.
This one is very important. She herself is a critic and a scientist. One does not have to be a creationist in order to criticize neo-darwinism. Get that through your thick skulls, and stop calling everyone that disagrees with you a creationist. Chances are they are more scientific than you with your evolutionist cult.
In before "it's just the opinion of one person".
Aren't the fundamental genetic mechanics the same?
It's the same genome, the same code and regulatory mechanisms that govern the organism's outcome. I'm not a molecular biologist, so terminology may be incorrect - but it seems to me that the "flow chart" of evolution doesn't distinguish between micro and macro.
She completely misrepresents things, again, to push her own theories.
originally posted by: vasaga
The quoted stuff is very relevant, not off-topic. The part about God is actually indeed irrelevant and the smallest part of all the quotes. There's a reason there are bolded parts in it. I left more text in for people to see the context to rule out quote mining. The red herring is on you, because rather than trying to understand everything that was said, you focus on the last sentence in order to dismiss everything.
But yeah. We all already know that the answer you want to hear is; "We don't have anything that can possibly show that the changes do not add up over time to create genus, family or species". So there. In fact, I'll raise it. I'll say that not only 'us', but no person that ever existed nor ever will exist, nor any supercomputer that will be created nor any AI from now till the end of time, will be able to show why the process does not continue for trillions of generations. That's my answer. Are you happy now?
And sign off with a cryptic message about your relative version of truth and how you know more than every one despite not getting the basic fundamentals of evolution and the question posed... Use more logic, reason and evidence in your post. Do you have evidence that mutations would stop after trillions of generations, if the earth was still in existence? Nope, you are guessing because you know the earth can't last forever. I'm talking about 3.8 billion years ago to the present. I'm not talking about hypothetical scenarios where the earth is around for trillions of years. Stop taking everything to the extreme. I mean, accelerating to the speed of light, throwing a ball to the moon, and now earth surviving trillions of generations? I would expect by then that life would be spread out onto numerous planets across the galaxy by the time the earth gets engulfed by the red giant sun, and evolution will continue there. We can speculate about that all day, but it's off topic unless you start posting evidence and reasoning that isn't flat out denial and ridiculous exaggerations of epic proportions.
The ones that are aware will see the truth. The ones who are not, well, I leave them in their delusions and give them what they want.
originally posted by: PhotonEffect
Almost everything has gone extinct.
Ill take that as a compliment.
In all seriousness, the idea of kicking the bucket was to analogize extinction, not any sort of intelligent interference….
I will get in my truck and run them all over. Mass extinction event.
Either way, I think you may be confounding natural selection with genetic drift/extinction.
Not talking about mutations “emptying the bucket”. I’m talking about extinction “emptying the bucket”. It’s happened 99.9% of the time. That’s a lot of buckets.
How does MES ignore epigenetics? It is part of the environmental influence on evolution. The environment affects everything. How is it not part of natural selection?
Has MES been extended to include epigenetic factors? "Environment" is not an answer. DNA methylation? Histone modification? Non-coding RNA? Are these part of the MES now? Let's see what wiki says:
Modern Evolutionary Synthesis
Evolution encompasses changes of vastly different scales — from something as insignificant as an increase in the frequency of the gene for dark wings in beetles from one generation to the next, to something as grand as the evolution and radiation of the dinosaur lineage. These two extremes represent classic examples of micro- and macroevolution.
"The gene for dark wings". What a load of malarkey.
At best this is improper use of terms, at worst it’s genetic determinism.
And who is to say they can (without some faith)?
As the lovely Ms Vito says in one of my favorite movies "No one can answer that question. It's a bullS##t question."
Are you asking it because you actually think there's an answer that would satisfy you? If there is an answer out there, then what do you think it is?
My feeling is, you are only asking this question to call out those who have, in your eyes, misconstrued the relationship between micro and macro evolution. Should it necessarily follow that if something happens on a small scale, it must happen the same way on a large scale?
So you buy that particular story of the whale then? Hook line and sinker? Are you sure you watched it?
Really? 1,000,000 is way more than 100? Ok, so we’re back to the question of mutation rates, the types of mutations, their potential affects and so forth. Is it the rule that millions of mutations necessarily must lead to a whole new genus? I don’t think so.
shows no evolution in 2.3 billion years? That's a whole lotta time. Think there were some mutations? The quick/easy/lazy explanation is that these lucky little guys had no reason to evolve because of lack of pressure to do so. Darwin was right! IOW, stasis due to stable environment. But stable for 2.3 billions years? I have some questions about this given some of the specifics of the paper. What are your thoughts? (you can download it for free from that site)
But I don't think you actually believe there's an acceptable answer.
originally posted by: PhotonEffect
Besides, if they are, then what's the point of asking the question posed in the OP?
I'm not either, but the phylogenetic tree shows evolution on the macro scale I would think.
If there is no difference then why this delineation in the first place? Where did this separating of evolutions come from?
What do we mean when we say the same genome? Aren't they all technically different?
Yes, I would bet this is quite a common behavior in humans.
originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut
Natural selection is entirely dependent upon there first being genetic change.
The mutation comes first.
There is nothing to 'select' if there is no genetic change.
This places mutation rate at the lower bound of possible evolutionary change rates.
It is not possible for natural selection to operate faster than the genetic changes it 'selects'.
It is not possible for natural selection to speed up mutation rates.
Mutation rates are not given for individuals. They are given for populations. Once a mutation has occurred, it can spread through the population far more rapidly than the rate at which mutations occur.
Really, this is kindergarten stuff.
originally posted by: chr0naut
Groups do not mutate, DNA does.
So that is why mutation rates are usually measured in populations, it is not the only way to establish mutation rates (shock, horror!).
To imply that groups mutate is unreasonable. Groups merely express the cumulative effects of mutations.
originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut
I did not provide all the answers to your questions because they were mostly strawman arguments and irrelevant to the discussion.
The questions were extremely relevant, and simple. I will answer them for you.
This post:
- Why?
They don't.
- And who will the mutant mate with in order to propagate the new species?
Its conspecifics, because it is still a member of the parent species.
- What would define such a species?
All species are link species.
This post:
- What determines whether they are expressed or not?
The environment, which in this case includes the rest of the genome.
- What determines whether the expression is beneficial or detrimental to the organism?
Ditto.
The man of straw is your insistence that speciation cannot occur because it is something that happens overnight.
From Wikipedia:
originally posted by: peter vlar
Not really. A lot of people refer to it as such but there really is a huge distinction. Neo Darwinism was thought up in 1895 by George Romanes to bridge the gap between Darwin's Natural Selection and Mendellian Genetics while ruling out Lamarckian explanations.
As part of the disagreement about whether natural selection alone was sufficient to explain speciation, George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism to refer to the version of evolution advocated by Alfred Russel Wallace and August Weismann with its heavy dependence on natural selection. Weismann and Wallace rejected the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics, something that Darwin had not ruled out.The term was first used in 1895 to explain that evolution occurs solely through natural selection, in other words, without any mechanism involving the inheritance of acquired characteristics resulting from use or disuse
whereas Modern Evolutionary Synthesis didn't come about until somewhere between 1936 and 1947 and reflects the consensus about how evolution proceeds. They are two different concepts and somehow deemed interchangeable by some people.
Following the development, from about 1937 to 1950, of the modern evolutionary synthesis, now generally referred to as the synthetic view of evolution or the modern synthesis, the term neo-Darwinian is often used to refer to contemporary evolutionary theory.[7] However, such usage has been described by some as incorrect;[1][4][8] with Ernst Mayr writing in 1984 that "the term neo-Darwinism for the synthetic theory is wrong, because the term neo-Darwinism was coined by Romanes in 1895 as a designation of Weismann's theory."[9]
Despite such objections, publications such as Encyclopædia Britannica[10][11] use this term to refer to current evolutionary theory. This term is also used in the scientific literature, with the academic publisher Blackwell Publishing referring to "neo-Darwinism as practised today",[12] and some figures in the study of evolution like Richard Dawkins[13] and Stephen Jay Gould[14] using the term in their writings and lectures.
originally posted by: Barcs
originally posted by: chr0naut
Groups do not mutate, DNA does.
So that is why mutation rates are usually measured in populations, it is not the only way to establish mutation rates (shock, horror!).
To imply that groups mutate is unreasonable. Groups merely express the cumulative effects of mutations.
I don't think he suggested that individuals in a group all mutate together as a group.
Mutation rates are measured in a number of individuals and then these figures are averaged to determine the estimated mutation rate for the species. The sample size per population is still pretty low, but the picture gets clearer as more genomes are mapped and compared.
Just imagine the knowledge we will have 30 years from now in the field of genetics. I reckon that cloning, reverse engineering of DNA, and altering it to engineer new species could very well be common place. This is why I love science. Pondering how much it will "evolve" literally gives me the shivers imagining the possibilities. Fighting science is a lost cause. Don't fight it, become a scientist and help correct it if you feel there are aspects you don't agree with. Help the scientists of today pave the road to the future. After all, they are the ones who are out there in the field and in the lab on a daily basis trying to learn things that can benefit us all.
1859–1899 1859–1899[edit]
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was successful in convincing most biologists that evolution had occurred, but was less successful in convincing them that natural selection was its primary mechanism. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, variations of Lamarckism, orthogenesis ('progressive' evolution), and saltationism (evolution by jumps) were discussed as alternatives.[9] Also, Darwin did not offer a precise explanation of how new species arise. As part of the disagreement about whether natural selection alone was sufficient to explain speciation, George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism to refer to the version of evolution advocated by Alfred Russel Wallace and August Weismann with its heavy dependence on natural selection.[10] Weismann and Wallace rejected the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics, something that Darwin had not ruled out.[11]
Weismann's idea was that the relationship between the hereditary material, which he called the germ plasm (German, Keimplasma), and the rest of the body (the soma) was a one-way relationship: the germ-plasm formed the body, but the body did not influence the germ-plasm, except indirectly in its participation in a population subject to natural selection. Weismann was translated into English, and though he was influential, it took many years for the full significance of his work to be appreciated.[12]
As for your reply to the quotes. Well, suit yourself. All I can tell you is that political agendas are a lot more powerful en masse than solo. Take that for what you will.
And? Does that mean the mutations do not add up in the surviving organisms?
You can run over all buckets of water on planet earth? How are you going to pull that one off? Natural selection causes extinction, they are pretty much the same mechanism, but extinction is not relevant in this discussion because we are talking about mutations adding up in creatures that DON'T go extinct.
Evidence has only been found recently for epigenetics and honestly there isn't that much. It's still new and the scientists are looking to figure out how it fits in. It seems to be the evolution denier go-to word these days. Do you really expect Wiki to have the entire theory of MES listed on that page? You should ask a biologist about that if you really want details, but it's off topic for this thread. This is about mutations adding up, not what causes them or influences gene expression.