Is there hard evidence for macro-evolution?

Faith & Science Conversation
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First, thanks to those who have spoken somewhat in my defense. Appreciating your friendship here.

Yes, great! I’m in agreement with you. But this thread is asking if there is hard evidence that macroevolutionary changes are by natural processes only, with no outside help. For atheists that is a requirement, and there are some on these threads.

And you will go in circles if you remain exclusively in the biologos sphere because for you it is an echo chamber. For the Progressive Creation perspective, check out reasons.org. Definitively not perfect either, but you’ll see another take. I came to my Progressive Creation view long before I ran across RTB. It has taken me quite a bit of time and effort to understand and respect the Evolutionary Creationist perspective, and I feel I can articulate it fairly. In fact, I try in presentations I give to even present it convincingly. I think there is plenty to commend it, even though there are things I don’t agree with.

Interesting summary. Minor Clarification: I think there are good reasons to doubt the scientific consensus. I’m OK with people having different opinions until someone claims that the receipts have arrived. Then I ask for the proof, and don’t get it. We’ll see if Matt’s paper brings anything new in that regard.

Thanks, Bill!

Interesting Chris… thoughtful question. This kind of exchange is more fun.

I see your specific questions as probing what we don’t understand, whereas there is plenty of hard data about the big bang. In particular, big bang cosmology and relativity made specific predictions which were testable and found true. So there are things we know, and questions that are open.

Contrast that to the assertion that all of life came about by natural processes only. Having run the math myself, I have my doubts that mutations are adequate to present to the other processes enough delta to bring about all we see. I feel there is a fundamental problem mathematically, so I am skeptical.

Since this thread is asking if there is enough hard evidence that natural processes are adequate to do it all, first of all I have reason to doubt it from the math, and then I don’t think the data proves me wrong.

As we enter the genetic era, this becomes more testable and we’ll see what that shows us. I’m going to dive into the paper Matt (and Bill) linked, and will respond to that.

First of all, I think there is a bell curve of people believing what they want in all camps. But to assume that this is the reason someone disagrees with you is bad form. These kinds of comments were why I posted my first entry on this thread. These forums are difficult to decipher sometimes, but I come here because people disagree with me and that’s where I learn the most. But I also speak in defense of those who disagree with you.

Chris and I have some history of exchanging questions and perspectives, which, I think, has led to enough respect to try to engage well. If your opinion is that everyone who disagrees with you is a scoundrel, well, I sure don’t respect that and I won’t be engaging you much. Please consider @Bill_II comments above as we are both trying to argue for a more connected and gracious approach. Please help us keep these forums from going the way of politics in our country!

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Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

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A requirement for what? Are you saying that in order for them to believe that there has to be proof that evolution could not have occurred on its own? This sounds like just another way of “proving God”. I don’t think that is possible. Faith is the belief of things unseen. Though that may not mean that one should not use some reason when deciding what to believe; I don’t think that it swings completely the other way either. In other words, one may well find that Science does not dispute their beliefs but I don’t think that they can accurately say that Science supports them either.

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No Cindy, not saying that! Definitely not saying that.

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@Marty

Please correct me if I’m wrong… but based on your choice of words, it would appear that you think the fossil evidence is ambivalent?

The fossil record shows that large mammals do not appear until dinosaurs disappear.

And that large bears do not appear until after smaller versions first appear.

That large cats like lions and tigers do not appear until after smaller versions of lions and tigers appear.

And that large elephants do not appear until aftersmaller versions of elephants appear.

The only other way to interpret this evidence is to believe God systematically used special creation to make the small versions of each type of creature … and then allowed them to evolve (or, the more usual Old Earth position that God created small versions by super-natural means, and then, later, also created the larger versions by super-natural means).

Is this a more-or-less reasonable description of the general level of your skepticism about macro-evolution at this point, @Marty

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My latest post (nr. 58, Jan 17) received a number of comments, which I did not answer yet.

Indeed, tsunamis and mudslides routinely happen on this planet. But they do not produce fossils, because the covered dead organisms are digested quickly by micro organisms and disappear. See further the Biologos scientific evidence thread: ‘Do 100 or 1000 years old fossils exist?’

Also the cross checks and the decisions which measurements are correct and which are not, are based on presuppositions.

Please read the peer-reviewed paper: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective. After spending 30 minutes you will know the basic scientific facts on how living nature adapts to changing circumstances.

Underneath the thin crust of our Earth, there is no gigantic nuclear powerplant present which is keeping the rocks fluid for 4,532 billion years yet. The horrendous melt down in Tsjernobyl and recently in Fukushima did not make the solid rock underneath fluid. There are many areas on earth (for instance on the Canary Islands) where the earth crust is no more than 10 meters thick and meat can be roasted above the fluid red rocks that can be seen below. Tourist are allowed to walk there, without protective clothing against nuclear radiation.

The difference between change of a (biological) system in its parameters : (a1, b1) –> (a2, b2) , and the change of a (biological) system in its dimensions : (a1, b1) –> (a2, b2, c2) can be seen by anyone who has followed an elementary course in mathematics. Nothing mystical about this! Please accept the mathematical fact that changing the parameters of a system billions of times for billions of years, cannot change its dimensions.

You keep thinking that living nature adapts to changing circumstance by mutations. Please read the scientific basic facts in the peer-reviewed paper: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective.

Mutations are continually repaired by mutation repair systems, for the discovery of which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 2015. If they are not repaired, they cause cancer and hereditary diseases and severe selective disadvantage.

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Dear Moderator Pevaquark

As soon as the theory of evolution is criticized (for instance: first-order change cannot be extrapolated to second-order change), you frame the opponent as someone who is missing enough knowledge on the theory of evolution, or as someone who makes a strawman version of the theory. You make the theory of evolution immune for criticism. By this, you take away the predicate ‘scientific’ from evolutionary theory, because a scientific theory must always be open for refutation. A theory that cannot be refuted, is a dogma. Please allow the theory of evolution to be criticized from science, and do not push us back to the Dark Ages.

You referred to a paper that would provide hard evidence for macro-evolution:

Molecular evolution tracks macroevolutionary transitions in Cetacea, by Michael R. McGowen, John Gatesy and Derek E.Wildman. McGowen and his colleagues have ordered proteins of Cetacea (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) into a family tree. But this does not prove that natural processes can transform simple proteins into more complicated proteins. In general, natural processes cannot transform simple molecules into an ever growing amount of ever more complicated molecules. If natural processes would be able to do so, energy would become available for free, and the chemical industry would be out of business. This is absurd. Therefore, this claim must be rejected, according the rules of science.

See further conclusion 1,2 and 3 at the end of my post nr. 53 on Jan 13; and conclusion 4 at the end of my post 58 on Jan 17. For the convenience of the followers of this discussion, a reprint below.

Conclusions

1. ‘ Evolution ’ (= slow change) is not a robust scientific concept. After more than one hundred and fifty years, the concept of evolution urgently needs to be defined more accurately by distinguishing ‘ first order change/variation ’ (= the change of a system in its parameters) + the motor of first order change + the empirical evidence for it, from ‘ second order change/innovation ’ (= the change of a system in its dimensions) + the motor of second order change + the empirical evidence for it. The consequence of this distinction will be that the empirical evidence for variation of the DNA (for instance, the change in the form of the beaks of Darwin finches, produced by the mechanism of recombination of gene variants and selection and by gene regulation), can no longer be used as evidence for innovation of the DNA (for instance the transformation of a land animal into a whale, by the supposed mechanism of accumulation of non-repairable, heritable, instantly advantageous, code-expanding mutations).

2. The claim that natural processes can transform simple molecules into an ever growing amount of complex molecules and structures of molecules, is pre-Victorian Alchemist faith.

3. ‘ Macro evolution ’ (= the transformation of a bacterium into a human, by natural processes) can only happen in a fantasy world, not in our physical reality.

4. The claim that the family tree of fossils can be seen as a billions of years lasting ’film’ of second order change of bacteria into humans, is contradicted by a multitude of scientific facts and must be rejected according the rules of empirical science

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@WilliamDJ

Ah… so, magical mathematics now.

You can’t be serious…

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I liken it to be something like this:

image
image2848×2136 672 KB

Many people are only aware (to use an analogy) of the stuff at the top of this mountain. To them, it seems absurd that this mountain top can be supported on its own (not realizing that there is an entire mountain of stuff holding up the mountaintop). When someone is not aware of say the many intermediate fossils that I shared earlier, it is very reasonable to conclude that macro-evolution is junk. Or when someone is not aware of all of the pseudogenes that we and all living things have or of all the ERVs, Alu insertions, etc. that are shared in our genomes, it is very reasonable to conclude that macro-evolution is junk.

Yes please provide evidence of your claim if possible. The ‘there’s too much change’ argument isn’t really a very impressive one except if one wants to use the argument from incredulity.

I think the field of evo-devo has provided a lot of helpful insights into the changes required at the genetic level (including @jpm who shared a link above about the bat wing). A few neat experiments highlighted by @sfmatheson on his blog (for the curious reader of links):

My best shot link? I just thought it was a cool paper that actually tried to do what anyone who claims ‘the changes are too big for 15 million years’ argument needs to do. They need to try and characterize what changes are required to produce macroevolutionary changes and then demonstrate what they look like at the genetic level. I.e. compare many specific genes and the types of changes required. And then demonstrate that you could never get such changes via the methods we know genomes to change by (note this is not just natural selection + random mutations- that can produce interesting changes but is definitely not the only mechanism).

An interesting paper that I came across recently was this one that aimed to classify changes genetically on the macro-level:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03667-1

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Both are true in certain cases.

I do? The theory of evolution is quite fine without any of my comments as per the thousands of publications every month that work just fine with the theory.

While I appreciate how impactful you think our forum discussion would be here, I find this to be extremely ironic.

Wrong.

No it doesn’t and when you made claims about how all scientists do this and agree with you, you were wrong about that too.

Is that what macroevolution means? I can never figure out how far is too far for God’s created mechanisms to not work.

No its not. :tired_face:

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Rates of “microevolution,” observed in experiments in the wild, are not merely adequate. They are evidently far faster than “macroevolution” as inferred from the fossil record. In fact, this disconnect led Stephen Jay Gould to name it “the paradox of the visibly irrelevant.” Gould was famously focused on stasis (“stasis is data”), and this “paradox” fed into his narrative. The paper that really highlights the disconnect is below. It’s a classic. To summarize: we don’t need to wonder whether evolution that we can see (“microevolution”) is fast enough to power evolution on larger scales.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/275/5308/1934

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@WilliamDJ Strange statement considering we can detect the neutrons that are emitted by this “nuclear power plant”. Or do you have a different explanation for the 40 Tera Watts of heat that is currently flowing from the earth’s surface to space?

From a review paper on the thermal budget of the Earth.

Full paper is available at
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007RG000241

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A classic older paper coming to similar conclusions based on a broad range of data:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/222/4620/159.1

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You seem to value Darwinism more than the science of mathematics.

The earth is a sphere of red hot liquid rock covered with a thin crust that is cooling down. See further my post nr. 58 on 17 Jan.

Rates of Evolution: Effects of Time and Temporal Scaling, by Philip D. Gingerich extrapolates morphological variation (first order change) to macro evolution (second order change).

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You seem to sacrilize magicsl thinking.

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@WilliamDJ Your back of the envelope calculation is so full of unstated assumptions that it isn’t meaningful. Lord Kelvin calculated it would take 20 million to 400 million years for a completely molten earth to cool to the current temperature. His calculations I would trust.

You also ignored the fact that the neutrons that are being emitted by radioactive elements are currently being measured. Care to explain that?

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I’m generally agnostic about the details you raise, George. Some of those surely may be microevolution. I’m just skeptical that the processes we know about (in particular “random” mutation) are anywhere close to adequate to produce all the complexity we see. Evolution needed help, but I’m doubtful we can be sure exactly what that looked like.

I need to close out this section, so here’s the perspective on Matt’s papers.

Regarding the first paper that was linked, for those who have not looked at it, it’s a great survey of the literature on the correlations between morphological changes and genetic changes among species related through the mammal to whale changes. But of course the DNA is related to features. It’s not clear to me what Matt expected to convince me of with that, since even a Young Earth Creationist may not find much to complain about there.

The more recent paper is an interesting take on back calculating the time of species divergence by comparing genes with (originally replicated) homologous sequences that are not subject to selection, and running the math based on mutation rates. It’s a good idea.

But Matthew, you have once again with many words answered a question I am not asking, and demonstrated that you probably don’t even know the question I am asking. I recommend you spend some time with some Zacharias material and digest his statement, “Behind every question is a questioner.” While you may be an expert in the case for biological evolution, your presence and style here are remarkably ham handed. Most of the moderators here are gracious and thoughtful, but you apparently skipped that class.

You and I are probably done. I’ll stick with people who don’t default to looking down on those who disagree with them.

The paper you linked is an example of natural selection. But we know genomes have variations and selectionist pressures can push morphology a long way. It would be good to repeat it with complete genome sampling before and after.

Hi Steve. This one predates genetic data and is also focused on selection and morphological change. But, for example, we have known for a long time from dog breeding that morphological change can be pushed pretty far by artificial selection.

I’d love some mathematical demonstration that at the molecular (DNA) level and the arising of complex and coordinated proteins and features, we’re not simply assuming unreasonable good luck. You might know of some studies on those lines, and I’d love to get that data, if it exists.

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@Marty,

I havent defended “Random Evolution” for more than 2.5 years.

The one thing Behe holds to which i agree with in principle:

Guided Evolution is sufficient to address all cases of Irreducible Complexity!

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The paper I linked is about experiments that resemble natural selection. It’s in the first sentence of the abstract.

Yes, and that’s how we know that “microevolution” can go many hundreds/thousands of times faster than is needed to explain “macroevolution,” and that was the topic at hand.

That doesn’t have anything at all to do with rates of evolution.

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Marty. This sounds like you are looking for the evidence that shows cells could arise from a non-cellular sources. Or am I misreading you?