Stem-amniotes are pretty obviously transitional between fish and amphibians-they still have lateral lines like fish; but have necks, lungs, and a number of other amphibian-like features; a dentition unlike anything else; and the wrong number of toes for anything modern.
Rostroconchs show a pretty obvious transition between something like the early-Cambrian “monoplacophorans” and scaphopods.
Ancestors of kingdoms are going to be old enough that finding them is all but impossible, let alone recognizing them.
Most ancestors of phyla would look like generic worms, and are thus all but impossible to identify. Examples of distinctive, very basal members of phyla seem to include radiodont arthropods and myllokunmingiids.
An obvious example for transition to a class is the long series of non-mammal synapsids.
For orders, the series of fossils intermediate between generic cetungulates and modern cetaceans come to mind.
And an obvious case for transition to a family would be Echinofulgur and the busyconids. And given that Busyconidae seems to fall out closest to Fasciolariidae on genetics, Echinofulgur makes perfect sense as a transition.
Sure, there’s an entropy defined in information theory, but there’s no 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in information theory and there’s nothing whatever in information theory that says that genetic information can’t increase.
Abiogenesis would have to have happened from an evolutionary perspective though. Do you really think that I could not understand an argument for the evolution of sexual reproduction? What is this personal incredulity fallacy you are accusing me of? What is unsubstantiated in my #2? I did not get verbose in #2 so there may be a lot left to interpolate, but I think that I communicated the basic concept. If you venture an attempt to answer it, I don’t need to hear about species that can change gender or females that can reproduce by themselves. I want to know how you propose that the first two organisms of a species were opposite genders. If I can get a tenable evolutionary explanation for that, I’ll be done here.
Are you disagreeing with my point or not? I understand that evolution happens to a limited extent. I am confident however that there are many things in life forms that evolution is an inadequate explanation for.
Nope, evolutionary theory only deals with life, it makes no claims about how life began and none of its claims are dependent on assuming life arose from nonlife by chance.
Usually people who have questions about the evolution of sexual reproduction are very confused about sexual reproduction and how far back in the evolutionary tree it goes.
Christy, I still think that the “evolution” of sexual reproduction is about as insurmountable as abiogenesis. I don’t want to disregard someone’s epic level of physics education though. Do you believe that abiogenesis occurred?
What do you mean our species is found higher because we’ve only been around since Adam and Eve? You mean in later geological periods? As in layers closer to the surface?
I believe speculation about abiogenesis at this point is speculation, not science, and I don’t think science should be a matter of beliefs. I subscribe to zero truth claims that require belief that abiogenesis occurred. I know it is an area of research, and if at some point, a viable model of abiogenesis is proposed, it will not disturb my faith, because I believe God can use natural processes to create and bring about his will. I also have no problem with the idea that the first life was supernaturally created by God independent of natural processes. As a Christian, I believe God created everything that is, visible and invisible like the creeds say, and I think “invisible” includes natural processes that science describes and processes that are random from our perspective.
The difference is that scientists have working models of how sexual reproduction developed that fit with the rest of evolutionary theory and observable facts in the world today. Scientists have no working model of abiogenesis. I don’t know how you determine something is insurmountable when in fact it has been surmounted.
I am not a scientist though. I’m a linguist. I just read stuff.
No, it wouldn’t. If God created the very first simple replicator and all life evolved from that replicator then the theory of evolution would be unchanged. Even Darwin described life as being created by a creator:
Are you aware that there are many, many species out there that are both sexual and asexual? Many bacterial species exchange DNA through sex pilli:
Let’s look at your claim from the first post:
All it is a bunch of empty assertions. Not one of your claims is supported by evidence.
Let’s look at the others:
How do you determine if a species appears abruptly? How do you determine what its ancestors and descendants looked like?
This is yet another empty assertion. You also supply no criteria for what a fossil would need for you to accept it as a transitional fossil. It’s just denial.
There is no reason to believe that the sequence specificity needed for chloroquine resistance applies to every protein interaction.
That’s just made up.
Can you cite a single genetic difference between humans and chimps that could not be produced by known and observed processes of mutation? If not, your claims are lacking any real world support.
I was an ID proponent and disbelieved evolutionary biology until several years ago when I learned of neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution. It demonstrates that information and complexity can indeed increase generationally via mutations and that contrary to what I formerly understood, it can take multiple generations and even more mutations to produce even one morphological change. [Those of you more knowledgeable in the topic, please clarify or correct that layman’s description.] It was not taught in my seventh grade biology class (in fact, the initial paper on the subject hadn’t been written yet, over half a century ago ; - ).
(Also, I don’t believe you have responded to my reply about God’s sovereignty, above, and the linked narrative in it.)
A physicist like myself is well aware that a simple mathematical formula can produce infinite complexity (e.g. Mandelbrot set). Things often look miraculous to those who are simply unaware of the reality of what can be observed in the world. It is frankly how any magician amazes and astounds his audience… because of what the audience doesn’t know and doesn’t see. Sure the child may use the word “magic” to understand what he has seen, but more educated people know better.
But entropy is not defined by some vague perception or human judgement of order or disorder, which can mean just about anything. Entropy is defined mathematically from counting the number of possible states in some classification. The more possible states there are in a classification the more probable it is – this is what we mean by a higher entropy.
The incorrect application of the second law by your argument is easily demonstrated. We can watch the entropy decrease in a container and know that the second law is not violated because of an overall increase in entropy due to exchanges with the environment. This happens in a refrigerator or in the creation of diamonds (natural and artificial) - two quick examples from an endless list.
I’m not even sure what to say here. To say this in the nicest way that I can, if you don’t understand what I said in my last post, then you’re probably not in a position to understand the subject well enough to properly judge or discern whether or not the science is true.
You have to be able to walk before you can run. And you have to be familiar with the basics before you can navigate the waters that you’re trying to navigate. If you have specific questions about what I’ve said, feel free to ask and I’d be happy to lend a hand though.
As has been pointed out, this is a terrible way to argue your point. You make a bunch of unjustified assertions that you’ve heard from young-earth and ID sources, rather than seriously asking “this seems like a problem - how do you explain it?” For example, the evolution of sexual reproduction has been studied in a variety of organisms; it can occur step by step. Volvox and its relatives are one good example. There are also numerous examples of reversion back to asexual reproduction from sexual reproduction. As far as I know, every organism that has a relatively simple form of sexual reproduction also can reproduce asexually - you don’t jump from one to the other, but rather add sexual reproduction and then, in some cases, lose the ability for asexual reproduction. .
In bacteria, sex and reproduction are separate. Bacteria can transfer a copy of some DNA to another bacterium. This allows various mixing of DNA, creating new combinations. That’s the key biological aspect of sex. But they reproduce by dividing in two. Some one-celled eukaryotes are likewise able to join up and mix DNA before splitting to produce new individuals. Developing a more complex system goes along with developing multicellular organization, which also occurs step by step (and has been replicated in lab).
The mechanism for malaria developing chloroquine resistance is only an illustration of the complexity of an adaptation that requires the precise placement of two amino acids in a polypeptide chain. For polypeptide chain binding there must be at the very least three precisely placed amino acids on each chain being bound. Arguably if the two chains are identical and the three amino acids bind them together on account of being placed in identical locations it would require an adaptation that would be unlikely without somewhere around 10^60 organisms having lived. This is more than have lived in the history of the planet even give or take ^10. Hemoglobin in humans is 4 polypeptide chains bound together, and many other proteins are bound chains as well. If polypeptide chains evolved to bind together once, okay they got lucky. More than that defies credulity.
“… and our brains a byproduct of irrational physical processes.” -C.S. Lewis… You say that C.S. Lewis was fine with evolution? This is a quote. “In order to think we must claim for our own reasoning a validity which is not credible if our own thought is merely a function of our brain, and our brains a byproduct of irrational physical processes.” If you have a manner of interpreting that quote theologically in which “irrational physical processes” does not refer to evolution, I’m all ears.
