Another Proof of Evolution and Problem for Creationism: Ring Species

reply to post by theindependentjournal


This is why I created a whole thread on classification.

Rabbits: Family Leporidae
Birds: Class Aves
Monkees:60s pop band
Monkeys: ...that's a bit more complex
Fish: Various classes.

Please, learn some taxonomy.

Furthermore, nobody has defined a kind. I started a thread years ago and recently bumped it and not a single satisfactory scientific definition has been provided for this vague and nebulous term.

Even furthermore, evolution doesn't require birds to become monkeys. So...it seems like I could raise an army of straw men from the contents of this thread.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
Well, because that claim of yours is without evidence.

Well you're not disputing that the warblers don't group by similar plumage type and song pattern are you? I'd say that the evidence that they do currently live in groups of like birds is solid enough to raise the question. There is no evidence that West Siberian (P. t. viridanus) and east Siberian (P. t. plumbeitarsus) warblers never lived in the same location. All variations of these birds are alive today so why couldn't they have started in the same place? Why the necessity to move before new song patterns arose?

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
I could also say that they sprung forth from trees in those areas

So now trees produce birds? That's not even a valid point.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


All I will say, so that you understand I am not pouting or upset, is; You can't see the forest for the trees and I simply do not have the time to offer an uncivilized animal's childishness (not being said in a derogatory nature - I'm just pointing out that I understand what we are in physical form and that your posts are not patient, considerate, truly knowledgeable, or effective - I hope you take some time to digest the things I said to you previously as there is much more there than you are able to digest/respond to with your current world-view such as truly civilized conduct justifying our sanctification within the animal kingdom [the next step of "evolution/creation/design[whatever]" has already occurred and is spiritual in nature - another step is coming]). Thanks, and, unless it is to discuss something productive regarding the truths we actually know with certainty so that we can all move forward, please leave me out of this from this point.

I would also like to say, to those on this thread who understand and express the Provision of Our Father;

Be of good cheer. Worry less about whether the creation story is literal, or whether evolution is proven right or wrong. A good servant is concerned with heavenly things, and I am not referring to "magic," but things like grace, justification, good judgment, gracious shepherding, etc. For the servant who is serving well, the end of time and beginning of time are not as important as the health of the spiritual body. Know the stories, and let them be a comfort and guide, but their exact interpretation is useless while the salt loses it's saltiness.

Truly civilized conduct is godly conduct. Don't be deceived by the false civility of spiritually dead animals, but do raise them up with us so that they might enter the kingdom through spiritual understanding (faith) by God's grace. Quarreling for no profit and drawing far-reaching conclusions without proof is unwise, facts are only tools, but it is their use for honorable profit that is righteous regardless of the methods that Our Father used to raise life up from the void.

This thread should be honored for what it is, interesting facts to learn about and from, but if our relations lack godliness (civility), both sides will simply appear foolish.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I remember seeing a show on Animal Planet a few years ago that found the same small changes going on at the genetic level in opossums separated by a major highway.

An article about a study of highways on wildlife can be found here:

Effects of Highways....

It's a really dry read, but basically we are seeing DNA changes sped up due to the effect of animals being killed in the crossing of our roadways or in being separated from their groups by the highway. It serves as a barrier and creates a distinct population over time.

reply to post by dbates


dbates, your reading comprehension skills are better than that. I'm saying that your idea that all birds were created and then migrated is no more valid than the idea that birds spring forth from trees, not that it's my actual belief.

Now, the evidence all points towards descent in this instance, which is why your point doesn't make much impact.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
Now, the evidence all points towards descent in this instance

Yes I believe that I have a dissenting opinion on this issue as well. Glad you could agree with me.

But seriously the entire issue is far more interesting than the discussion of old fossils. Dig something like this up again if you can think of anything. I rather enjoyed it.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by theindependentjournal

 

This is why I created a whole thread on classification.

Rabbits: Family Leporidae
Birds: Class Aves
Monkees:60s pop band
Monkeys: ...that's a bit more complex
Fish: Various classes.

Please, learn some taxonomy.

Furthermore, nobody has defined a kind. I started a thread years ago and recently bumped it and not a single satisfactory scientific definition has been provided for this vague and nebulous term.

Even furthermore, evolution doesn't require birds to become monkeys. So...it seems like I could raise an army of straw men from the contents of this thread.

Yes I gave you a definition for kind, but it's not a scientific term. It was how the farmers decided to divide up and organize their farms and the animals. That means each farmer probably has his own idea of what a kind was and wasn't. It wasn't standardized like we standardize things today. And God never gave a standardized list either.

It means, what's a kind and what isn't a kind, depends on who you ask because every farmer had his idea about it. The only thing they all agreed on is IF two animals produced offspring that the offspring would be the same kind. But what kind the parents were, probably depended on the local culture and what everyone agreed on.

In one village, two birds could have been the same kind. Walk over to the next village and those people would probably tell you they're two completely different birds. That's how things used to work for simple farmin people.

See, that's what I've been trying to tell you the whole time. The Bible's system IS NOT THE SAME SYSTEM as your system of evolution and there is no mapping or direct correlation that would allow you to convert from one system to the other. Only you and your scientists were obsessed with knowing which animals were having sex with what other animals. Farmers weren't worried about that unless it could produce them more livestock.

And for them, if two sheep had a baby sheep, it was good enough for them to call the baby a sheep too. They weren't like scientists today that say, well those two sheep had something, but I'm not sure if it's sheep or not. Better follow it around and get under it and make sure it's sticking its penis in other sheep before I go calling it a sheep! lol. They weren't concerned with all that. They just said, well if two sheep have a baby, it's a sheep. They were very simple people.

reply to post by tinfoilman


Understanding species is vital for wildlife management and assessing things like biodiversity and species richness. Species richness in certain groups (salamanders, benthic macroinvertebrates, etc,) can be used as an index for assessing environmental health.

The species concept is extremely important. Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean better (however you want to measure that), but you seem to be implying that it does.

Originally posted by theindependentjournal
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

This is found in many species we know to be the same. Not a change of KIND the birds aren't turning into monkees or fish it's still a bird.

No, but you may have noticed... there are different sorts of birds. Lots of different sorts, in fact. A chicken is not the same as a goldfinch is not the same as a hoatzin is not the same as a giant moa is not the same as a blue-footed booby or common tit. They're all birds, but there are some pretty enormous differences.

Well, okay, the warbler is a songbird; is it then the same as an American robin, a house wren, an oriole, a wood thrush, or a meadowlark or a European starling? Nope!

But oh, it's a sort of warbler; but then is it the same "kind" as the hooded warbler, the marsh warbler, the willow warbler, the ovenbird, the waterthrush, or the chestnut-sided warbler?

No. It's not.

Your argument is spurious.

Just like the rabbits of Alaska and Florida can no longer have offspring but they are still rabbits.

Well, no, the rabbits in Alaska are actually hares.

And if they lost all ability t procreate they would become extinct. I see nothing but GOD's Hand here...

Well, tell him to let go of your face, "guess who!" is an annoying game.

reply to post by PieKeeper


I understand you think that's all important. Understanding animals is important, I don't disagree with you. What I disagree with you on, is that you imply that the understanding MUST be through the modern day understanding of species and trying to project that back onto prehistoric farmers that didn't know anything about that.

The people in the Bible had no understanding of what a species was. I'm not saying classifying every single animal by what they mate with so you can put a picture of them in a big ol book isn't important to you. I already know modern day evolutionists are highly obsessed with evolution. I get that. I totally agree with you. All I'm saying is, it wasn't relevant to prehistoric farmers.

So your argument really has no bearing on mine. I know all that is important TODAY, but we're not talking about TODAY. We're talking people that lived maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago depending on how far the story got passed before it was finally written down. Or it may just be an allegory written after the fact, that's besides the point though.

The point is, there's no requirement that one has to use the modern day evolutionary species system to understand animals depending on what one's purpose is. There are other ways to understand animals. The species is a good system to have today, but that's today in a more complex world. The people in the Bible had no requirement for such a system and even if they did, well that's too bad, they didn't have it.

I'm not saying the concept of evolution isn't important. All I'm trying to express to people is that when the Bible was written, that concept wasn't covered, or it was, and they just didn't understand it yet. Either way, it was irrelevant to them at the time. That was a different time though.

You need to understand the reason why people use different systems. It is because they all have different purposes. For example, the files on your computer may be organized alphabetically and that's great. But since I'm a programmer most of the important files on my computer are organized logically by module or code library and not alphabetically.

So I use a different system. One that's probably totally irrelevant to you and probably more complex for what your needs would require. Modules probably mean nothing to most people and they'd rather just have their stuff listed in alphabetical order. That's fine, but that wouldn't serve my purpose.

You must understand that the purpose of Genesis is to tell a story to relate to the first farmers with very little knowledge about the world. Believe it or not, the purpose of Genesis was not to have a very detailed scientific list of what animals were sleeping together for the purpose of proving evolution wrong thousands of years later on a thread on AboveTopSecret.com. Believe it or not, that was not the purpose of the first page of the Bible. The purpose was to tell a story about how Adam and Eve became farmers, and the story is told in that context and serves that purpose.

Its purpose was to give very general information to very simple pre-historic farmers who didn't obsess over what animals were mating with each other. They just needed to get their farm going, and the system they used fit their purposes and worked for them.

So, to say it's wrong doesn't make any sense. It worked for them. That's all that was required and it did that. After all, we're all here simply because they didn't starve to death and knew how to farm. So, their system must have worked for them or we wouldn't be here. Therefore it worked for us too. And we want to bash that? Without it we might not even be here.

I understand you think evolution is important today. But that's today and I don't really disagree with you. I also don't disagree that my complex module system for my code is important to me today. But that's TODAY. None of that would have made any sense to prehistoric farmers and while it's relevant today, for our big ol animal sex book if you will, what I'm trying to say is all that was too complex and not relevant to prehistoric farmers.

It shouldn't be too hard to understand that.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by dusty1

 

They aren't 'cooking', they're mixing the ingredients to recreate conditions as found in the very early years of the Earth. It's running a miniature version of a natural phenomenon. I explained this to you, but you're obstinate enough to not care.

Madness, you flat out misrepresented the article you cited as proof. link

The experiment did not produce RNA.

As to whether "cooking" was involved.

They mixed the molecules in water, heated the solution, then allowed it to evaporate, leaving behind a residue of hybrid, half-sugar, half-nucleobase molecules. To this residue they again added water, heated it, allowed it evaporate, and then irradiated it.

Check out one of the definitions of cooking.

cook 1    [kook] Show IPA –verb (used with object) 2. to subject (anything) to the application of heat.

As far as your original post.

It is an interesting take on the theory of evolution, but I don't think it has anything to do with disproving Creation.

Your OP states that Eastern Siberian Greenish Warblers and Western Siberian Greenish Warblers are part of a ring species, and that they do not interbreed.

From what I could find, this is apparently the evidence that the two groups Phylloscopus trochiloides plumbeitarsus and Phylloscopus trochiloides viridanus do not interbreed.

Let me quote the research paper.

Two major clades correspond to western and eastern individuals. We sampled intensively across about 500 km in each of the regions where the two clades meet. In central Siberia the concordance between haplotype (western or eastern clade) and song (viridanus or plumbeitarsus) was perfect (17 western birds and 35 eastern birds), providing no evidence for mitochondrial introgression between the two Siberian taxa.

Letters to Nature

Is this the evidence that the two do not interbreed, and form a ring species?

reply to post by dusty1


The application of heat to the solution was to simulate the conditions of the early Earth.

If I want to simulate the Mojave desert in my living room, I'm going to make the room hot. Does that mean I'm cooking the room?

Listen, that quote...read it again. Introgression...it means genetic flow. There is no evidence for introgression. They do not breed with each other, yet their haplotypes can be traced by to a source.

Please, improve your reading comprehension skills, as I begin to feel embarrassed for people when I have to point out that what they're quoting refutes the position they're putting forth.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by dusty1

 

The application of heat to the solution was to simulate the conditions of the early Earth.

If I want to simulate the Mojave desert in my living room, I'm going to make the room hot. Does that mean I'm cooking the room?

It means your room experienced climate change at the hand of a guiding intelligence.

Listen, that quote...read it again. Introgression...it means genetic flow. There is no evidence for introgression. They do not breed with each other, yet their haplotypes can be traced by to a source.

Please, improve your reading comprehension skills, as I begin to feel embarrassed for people when I have to point out that what they're quoting refutes the position they're putting forth.

No evidence for introgression?

So the cute cartoon video stated that Siberian Greenish Warbler, viridanus in the west and plumbeitarsus in the east, can't interbreed.

Hmm. can't interbreed?

Yet the scientific study that provided the evidence for the video states that

In central Siberia the concordance between haplotype (western or eastern clade) and song (viridanus or plumbeitarsus) was perfect (17 western birds and 35 eastern birds), providing no evidence for mitochondrial introgression between the two Siberian taxa

Hmm... so the study doesn't say the two birds can't mate, but that there is no evidence that they mate.

I read Irwin's study. Ring Species

Apparently the researchers had DNA samples from 25 warblers in the central Siberian area where they (viridanus and plumbeitarsus) overlap.

3 samples from the location KD were not harvested by the researchers but came from a museum.

From what I could tell, only 3 viridanus birds were tested from the area of overlap.

At any rate, the staggering amount of 25 Eastern and Western Siberian Warblers were sampled from an area larger than the country of Japan, and no evidence was found of interbreeding.

Wow, knock me over with a feather.

They also played recordings of the birds to check their responses to each other.

Playback experiments We prepared each playback tape by recording a singing male for 10 min. Whenever possible, three recordings (each from a different bird) from a source population were used in the playback experiments. At each target population, we conducted playbacks by locating a singing male, placing a speaker directly below the tree he was in, randomly determining which source tape to play (choosing from three tapes of each possible source population), and playing the tape for 7±10 min.We judged the response of the target bird on a scale of 0 (no response) to 3 (strong response, aggressively approaching the speaker).

Apparently the Eastern and Western Siberian birds did not want to mate with the researchers stereo equipment.

I personally would have suggested some Elton John.

reply to post by dusty1


...ok, and how does that create a problem for ring species? You do realize that part of evolution would include morphological and societal failures to mate beyond actual genetic incompatibility.

As has been brought up before, a chihuahua cannot have the children of a great dane due to many physical issues that I'm sure you can figure out the problem of a creature that weighs less than six pounds giving birth to a child that weighs around 2 pounds.

For some reason, you (and others) are mistaking this as being a full speciation event, when it is merely one of those instances of big grey areas that demonstrates small bits of evolution.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

For some reason, you (and others) are mistaking this as being a full speciation event, when it is merely one of those instances of big grey areas that demonstrates small bits of evolution.

Wonder how we could have gotten that idea?

They both have the same ancestral population, yet population W and population D are not able to reproduce.

Creationists reject the idea of evolution beyond a 'variation in kind'...and typically a kind is somehow linked to reproduction...but there's a point where two populations that should be in the same 'kind' cannot reproduce.

I'm sorry...but where is the evidence that they mate and produce fertile offspring? You're claiming it, I'd like to see the citation.

What does the researcher have to say?

Darren Irwin: Well, what we know from genetic evidence is that the two Siberian forms, the West Siberian form and the East Siberian form co-occur in Central Siberia without interbreeding there; we see no evidence that there’s hybridisation.

We don’t know further down to the south whether a bird from one side of the ring might interbreed with the other but what we do know is that there’s a gradual genetic change all the way around the ring on the southern side, indicating that each population can sort of interbreed with the next population going around the ring.

Interview

Once again the researchers claim of no evidence of hybridization is DNA samplings of 25 plumbeitarsus and viridanus warblers, only 3 of which are confirmed viridanus

Only 25 birds sampled from a huge geographic area.
He does admit that they don't know if the two birds mate further south.




The problem I have is with you and the youtube video in your OP.

You start with,

Another Proof of Evolution

And end with,

when it is merely one of those instances of big grey areas that demonstrates small bits of evolution.

Talk about going out with a wimper.

The video in your OP as well as your opening statement, embellishes the actual research (which produced an extremely small amount of evidence), by using misleading words to support a point.

There is a big difference between "cannot" and "no evidence", especially when the evidence is limited.

"Nancy and Tom cannot have children."

"There is no evidence that Nancy and Tom have children."

Or.

"We genetically tested 25 children in Nancy and Toms country, the tests were all negative. There is no evidence that Nancy and Tom have children. Therefore Nancy and Tom cannot have children."

reply to post by dusty1


Evolution doesn't just mean speciation. You're clearly ignorant on the subject and are trying to poke holes. I'm not saying that it's a speciation event, I'm not even saying that it alone is the definitive proof of evolution, all I'm saying is that it's another piece of evidence that can be explained by evolution and not by creationism.

If you have anything substantive to add, I'll be willing to discuss it.

reply to post by dusty1


dusty1 - excellent post!!

looks like madness has NO answer to your elegant debunking of his own thread but to resort to name calling.

To quote mims:

You're clearly ignorant on the subject and are trying to poke holes.

A sure sign of retreat.

I wonder though if the mods will put a stop to this kind of useless drabble.

What I would like to know though is - what would happen if they take some of the Western Siberian form and let them live in the East for a while - say about a year or more - will they adapt to their new environment and start interbreeding (with the Western kind)? My thought, I 'think' they will. The same thing will happen if they take the Eastern Siberian form. The result? Another kind / variety of wabler - of the "bird kind".

So it's not "proof of evolution" but proof of the Bible's accuracy when it said that animals, plants and humans reproduce “according to [their] kind.” (Gen. 1:11, 21, 24, 25)


ty

reply to post by edmc^2


Thanks edmc^2
Isaiah 50:7-9


In this particular thread the evidence presented in favor of evolution was a little slim.



Have you ever had someone else take credit for your hard work?

Or have you ever had someone belittle or marginalize your hard work, because they had no clue as to what actually went into completing the task?

I have.

If you've had that happen as well, then we've both received a small glimpse of what the Creator goes through every day.