I’m still really interested to hear about these gaps. Which gaps are you talking about?
(P.S. Reference to Gould doesn’t count.)
This is honestly puzzling to me, Edgar. There’s a fascinating, awe-inspiring, scientifically coherent explanation for macroevolution that makes sense, and you don’t even have a theological objection to it… yet you spend an awful lot of time rejecting it instead of understanding it better. Taking my debate-combat gear off for a moment… I just don’t get it.
Here, I’ll give you another intermediate position that you can take without embracing natural selection: You could believe in common descent. BUT you could still say that God miraculously inserted tweaks – added information – into the genetic code at key points in order to nudge evolution along.
This is more consonant with the evidence of natural history, without needing to believe that “new information” arose through stochastic processes. What do you think of this position?
My progressive creation model doesn’t demand a ladder-like direction of increasing complexity. My model doesn’t demand anything - it’s based on whatever the fossil and geologicial records reveal.
I would really like to see your research. I’m curious as to your studies background, and like to learn more about personal backgrounds sometime, if you get a chance. I was born in Africa, and like learning about different cultural histories (if you are American, that’s different from mine too!)
" Any real evolution (macroevolution) requires an expansion of the gene pool, the addition of new genes (genons) with new information for new traits as life is supposed to move from simple beginnings to ever more varied and complex forms (“molecules to man” or “fish to philosopher”)."
At best, the writer doesn’t understand the terms “gene pool” and “new genes.” A simple, factual question for you, NTassie:
Start with your genome and a mouse genome.
How many genes do you have?
How many genes does the mouse have?
These are questions about objective facts. The answers are totally inconsistent with the picture presented by the AiG author.
“Suppose there are islands where varieties of flies that used to trade genes no longer interbreed. Is this evidence of evolution? No, exactly the opposite. Each variety resulting from reproductive isolation has a smaller gene pool than the original”
This is simply false. Again, it’s a factual claim.
Yet that’s precisely what the sequence data, with very little interpretation, tells us.
But you’re unwilling to look at the data, making a silly and obviously phony excuse that you’d need an advanced degree to understand it. How can you at the same time credibly claim that anyone else’s interpretations are wrong, if the analysis is so far beyond your capability?
But the sequence evidence shows how they are contiguous.
But you haven’t looked at the fossil evidence and you refuse to look at the sequence evidence, while misrepresenting your position as being derived directly from the evidence.
Why do you persist with this blatant misrepresentation?
You said that you understand “zero” about stochastic models. How do you know that a stochastic model cannot provide a good explanation of the evidence?
Please do study stochastic modeling. Did you know that Einstein did not win the Nobel in physics for the theory of relativity? He actually won it for the application of stochastic modeling to Brownian motion.
That’s not even a common creationist definition of microevolution. Mutations and natural selection underly macroevolution, too. You’ve offered zero mechanistic differences between micro and macro.
Hi George, quick look and quick reply.
This article doesn’t show that they evolved from a common ancestor, it starts by assuming they did so. This is much the same as assuming that cats and dogs evolved from a common ancestor and then producing a tree showing that hypothetical common ancestor as the original “kind”.
I might have more comments later when I get more time.
The diagram I posted is certainly a simplification. The tree of life is a bush, not a linear sequence, and science is constantly finding new fossils that lightly modify the general picture.
Let’s not miss the forest for the trees. I think you’re picking at the details because you know that the general picture supports the standard evolutionary model quite well.
I liked the following article. Perhaps much of our frustratuon is lost in translations. A bit like we are all sitting in a large bush, trying to yell which branch we on?
My next question is how can life continue to 'find a way" after great extinctions? Modern/current lifeforms must have an existing tree, more easily traceable and supported by clear speciation. Perhaps this is the mammal story of above…
Good morning, Chris. My point was that Tiktaalik is a fossil of a species that was chronologically and morphologically intermediate. Lobed fin fishes appeared in the fossil record before them, and land walkers appeared after them.
The existence of Tiktaalik fossils refutes the claim that the fossil record contains no transitions. I made no claim that Tiktaalik was the most capable species of its own day with respect to using land for locomotion.
Moreover, I fail to see how the co-existence of different species with different locomotion capabilities somehow disproves the theory of evolution. The theory makes no such predictions.
Best regards,
Chris Falter
EDIT: IIRC, lobed fin fishes appear in the fossil record at 525 MYA and amphibians at about 440 MYA. Tiktaalik is at about 480 MYA, and the ichnofossil you are referring to shows up at about 490 MYA.
480 is between 525 and 440. 490 is also between 525 and 440. How does an intermediate ichnofossil at 490 MYA disprove a transition between 525 MYA and 440 MYA?
If they are assuming common ancestry as you claim, and not testing against the null hypothesis (that they did not descend from a common ancestor), what exactly do the p values refer to?
That’s interesting, since a few days ago you seemed to have no problem admitting reading nothing other than creationist quote mines about the gaps you claim are so numerous and important:
T_aquaticus examines the evidence that God provided, unlike you. Making predictions is the very essence of science, which we use to study how God created.
I don’t see how you can make such claims when you have admitted that you don’t know anything about the gaps beyond deceptive creationist quote mines:
If you’ve read “sweet bugger all” about gaps, what makes you qualified to claim that there are too many of them?
Doesn’t your progressive creation hypothesis predict much larger gaps between “kinds” than evolutionary theory does, and the same number and size of gaps within kinds as evolutionary theory does?
Wouldn’t it be important to learn about those gaps from something other than creationist quote mines—if one is seeking truth and understanding as to how God created the many different kinds of life we see today and in fossils?
The genomes of the three branches of the marsupial group in question are undeniably closely related, with only one population of a predecessor population that has been found.
You aren’t going to prove the credibility of YEC by simply refusing to accept the evidence for Evolution. Your position is simply stone-walling anything that concludes differently from you.
The same can be said for whales… you have zero explanation for where whales come from.